37 replies to this topic

[galician]

If those hypotetical future scientist find that those bread and wine are only finely ground wheat, baked, and fermented grape juice, it would be because that's exactly what they are, although they could mean something different for Christians. Just the same as a statue. For the scientist's measurement and analyzing devices, perhaps it's only a carved piece of oak wood, and they could even tell you where and when the tree grew. For a believer, it may be his God, and science can not confirm or deny it.
That's not what I disagree. I know that those future archaeologist will need to know about Feng Shui to understand why some Chinese houses are built in a special way. Without this knowledge, perhaps they will be as puzzled as we are about megaliths. I can agree that the builders of a megalith, temple, house, tomb, or whatever you want had some peculiar beliefs that made them build it that way. But I disagree when somebody tries to tell me that it is true "because some measurements on magnetic alignements" that were carried on the site...
Religion and science don't mix. When somebody could build and patent a "chi-meter", we'll talk about the "chi force" as one of the known physical forces, along with magnetism, gravitation and nuclear interactions. Until that moment, it's only a part of an ancient (and very respectable, of course) religion. It's nothing personal, I would react exactly the same way to somebody wandering around a Christian church or a Moslem Mosque with a strange device in his hands, trying to measure unknown "energies" around them.
Perhaps I'm wandering out of the main subject. What I mean is that, if somebody claims "Feng Shui-like" theories for explaining megaliths, it's OK. But he should not call science in his support, faith and beliefs can not be measured.

[Arran and Emma]

Yes I agree totally, and you are not wandering off the main subject at all. What are we trying to answer here? "Why were the megaliths built?" We don't know for sure and that is why this is such an intense and fascinating subject.

What we do know is that science cannot provide the all the answers to understand religion, only elemental facts. We need to see into the minds of those that built these things. What was happening in their lives, what did they yearn for and what did they fear? These monuments must have been built to reflect aspects of their lives. It's a very human response.

[Nigel]

Am I schizophrenic? Why does Galacean keep writing exactly what I wanted to say....

Why and how the megaliths were built is a scientific question. It's full of speculation, because we know so little. But it's got to be scientific speculation, because we've got to start with the evidence we see, and try to make inferences from that, because if we start from evidence which is itself pure speculation then there's no limit to how wild will be the speculation we build on it. Worse still, the later speculation cannot be tested for it's validity, and cannot therefore be distinguished from ravings.
Senior doctors always remind junior doctors to exhaust the obvious possibilities before diagnosing something exotic. So it is with megaliths. I've looked at a number of them and I can tell you they often ARE aligned, quite precisely, to solstices and to each other. But the method of these alignments is scientifically observable: it's simply "line of sight" ! The easiest, most obvious explanation happens to be easily and obviously verifiable. This observation doesn't necessitate making an initial leap of imagination, or a stretching of credulity, so it suits me for now. I'm not saying it's right, but it must be discredited before it can be replaced.I'll abandon it the moment that something else is presented which is based upon better evidence.

[galician]

Well, Nigel, I was only posting my own opinion, which is quite similar to your own. It was not intended to offend you, so I'm sorry if I did. You're not schizophrenic... perhaps, there's an echo in this forum?
You've just explained perfectly the "Occam's razor" ("One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything"). That way of thinking is in use since Middle Ages, and has proved its efficiency, so there's little that I can add now to your comment.

[IrishStones]

Nigel, and Galician....  I am not trying to speculate why the megaliths were built, but musing over whether there is a reason they were built in the place they were built, as the thread subject suggests. I am certainly not putting forth a theory. There are similarities in Irish Druidism to the "measurement of energies" that put me in mind of Feng Shui, and I'm curious if there is any cross cultural connection, that's all. I am a complete neophyte in this subject, and trained in science, so I completely understand the knee-jerk reaction to any unscientific claims. I'm trying to go down another, anthropological/psychological/linguistic path to re-start my research juices. As to your question about the natural sciences of geomancy (in China this involved siting, much like survey work) making it back across to Europe, I agree that for my theory to hold true, the sites in England and Ireland would have to be more recent. When I wrote that last message I didn't realize the standing stones were on sites developed before 3000 BCE. That may be too early to make a comparison, since there is evidence of Caucasians in China at that time, but there is no evidence of them carrying back any cultural input. Possibly in Mesolithic and Neolithic times, as with agriculture, a natural need for "proper siting" of sacred places arose spontaneously in many cultures. I don't know about archeologists, but anthropologists put this date far before Sumer, which may be the source of the beginning of history, but certainly not of civilization, or of farming. Especially relevent, to my thesis,would be the possibility that at some basic intellectual level, certain ways of looking at Nature went with Modern Humans, much earlier than understood presently, as they dispersed throughout Asia, on to America, and into Northern Europe. Those basic symbols, for example a focus on circles, spirals, hill shapes and deliberate rituals involving the moon (especially) and sun, must have dispersed with these early societies at least as early as the late ealeolithic era. It will take several generations for the academic to prove the artifacts from the mid-paleolithic era even are real artifacts of a society. Surely we can get closer in our own generation.

[Nigel]

Please don't apologise for offending me, Galacian, you didn't. I was merely trying to complement you for thinking the same as me (i.e. for being right!) I should have added a smiley. When archaeologists examine the internet in the future they'll say it had a dangerous defect...it didn't transmit humourous tones...
So far as what you said, Irish Stones, I suppose it comes down to this...was each individual decision about locating a megalith spontaneous and local, or based upon a retained "universal" culture from elsewhere? As you know, I tend to the former, because there's evidence. However, at this late stage I have to confess I know nothing about Feng Shui. Do you know whether there is anything in that belief system, or others, which would leave a recognisable "footprint" in megalith alignments? Something we can look for which is beyond and distinct from "line of sight"?

[galician]

Yes, Internet doesn't transmit humour tones, and English is not my native language, so very often, I just miss the jokes   !
IrishStones, as far as I know, we know very little about Druids and their rites. It's supposed that they were forbidden to write down their knowledge, so when Roman General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus stormed Anglesley and slaughtered the Druids, almost everything was lost. Even facts like if they offered human sacrifices to their gods are in discussion today. By the way, megaliths were built centuries before the arrival of the Celts, who only gave them a new use. And megaliths exist, with quite similar characteristics, in places faw away from Celtic tribes, or in supposed "Celtic" territories, like my own Galicia, where there's no reference to Druidic religion. Perhaps we should try to avoid mixing megaliths and Celts.
I also know very little about Feng Shui and so, only that it deals with a "mystic energy" called "chi" that runs through invisible channels across the Earth, am I wrong? So placing tombs, houses, temples and so on is related to these "channels" and "chi". I do not doubt that ancent Chinese would place their buildings according to this theory, but...
If you know how temples and sanctuaries are built in many other religions, you'll came to the only conclusion that they are absolutely random, out of any pattern. If a shepherd says that he has seen the Holy Virgin inside a cave, then that cave becomes a Christian Sanctuary. If a Sufi Wise Man is buried in the middle of a desert, a Moslem Sanctuary grows around his tomb. Ayer's Rock, in Australia, is sacred because is a very prominent feature in a plain desert. Even the city where I live now, Santiago de Compostela, grew because some old bones that were found here in the early Middle Ages were said to be Saint James' ones!
So, who can tell us if there's a "pattern" in megalitism? Perhaps they have chosen the places because of random events like the examples I mentioned above...

[IrishStones]

I just spent many hours in a long description of what am studying and the connections I'm trying to make, and when I went ot cut and paste it here I lost it permanently. Too bad, because it was filled with a day's research on dates and references I took notes on. Sigh. This happens fairly consistently with me on the computer.

Nigel writes  <<Do you know whether there is anything in that belief system, or others, which would leave a recognisable "footprint" in megalith alignments? Something we can look for which is beyond and distinct from "line of sight"?>>

This is what I intend to study. I would love to find some description without having to visit all these sites to check out the geographic placement of every site.I know quite a bit about Feng Shui, though not enough about the most ancient Form School (pre-compass). I think "ley" lines are interesting, but they don't have anything to do with the natural environmental science of early Feng Shui ( before the compass and astrological components were added). There seems to be, in the feng shui practiced 6000 - 300 BCE, a ritualized adherence to placement based on cardinal direction and landscape form. The Goddess religion of pre-druidic Ireland seems a natural for the idea of landscape form playing a part in distinctly mother earth megaliths such as Newgrange. There is archeological evidence in China, of artifacts directly referring to direction and fundamental astrological recognition (of four constellation groups) as an important part of the burial ritual in 6000 BCE. Soon after there was advanced arts such as weaving, agriculture and animal husbandry, most likely well in advance of the Sumerian civilization. That is one of the reasons I'm focussing on a "mother tongue" of spiritual or domestic, but distinctly non-religious ritual which may have roots there. The joining thread seems to lie in a female priesthood, and/or a focus on the Earth as a liviing thing in itself. To this is tied a recognitioin of the supremacy of a Heaven, and rituals seemed aimed at uniting the two in some way. This is a very Taoist, ancient, yet sophisticated philosophy which gave rise to feng shui and other such practices as the philosophy became religious-ized.

For our purposes, the notion in feng shui (which means wind/water) is the containment of movement (wind, or metaphysical energy) by means of mountains and trees (windbreaks) and the collection of energy within water (or lowlands) which then, both wind and water could disperse again. In short it was the notion that energies, both in Nature (cosmos - Heaven) and in daily activity (micro-cosmos -self) were all part of the "breath of god" and that man must be "in accord" with the Natural events. This is a very poor summary, but the idea of an environmental science was as much a part of it as the metaphysical. It was important that the ancesters be buried where water would not collect at their feet. Where rain would not erode the terrain, etc..... but it was just a little too important to guess at good placement, so a science was developed. And as a footnote, with quantuum physics and particle theory they are now proving the "material" validity of much that was formerly metaphysical. I have been told that the "chi" energy meridians ussed in acupuncture have been proven to exist, and "chi" or some form of "non-physical" ie. non-material energy is being measured by a "machine" at MIT.

Also in my wandering on the Net today I read an article by a linguist on ancient Irish Ogham and its use by Irish Druids and Gnostic Christians. From the code cracking they have come up with the words they used for good energy in a place and bad energy at sites after war or tragedy. The words the Druids used were "bri" and "bua". These seem eerily like the ancient Chinese words which recognize the same phenomena... "chi" and "sha". I don't consider this Celtic, because the Ogham inscriptions seem to a coded version of a language that is Basque in origin. It seems the North EasternAfrican origins of Irish Culture needs some serious study.

Galician, I totally agree with you that most sites are "holy" because of the local activity that surrounded them within the culture. It may be all there is to it. Certainly the Mythology of Ireland supports your view, with grave sites being tied to legendary activity. I think this would account for most of the sites, megalithic or not. What is nagging at the back of my neck is the feeling that at least some of the Megaliths were not random in placement. And some others, like Ayers Rock were "endowed" with power, or had an intrinsic metaphysical power, becasue of their landform, which is part of what I'm saying might be at work.

Also, Nigel, I am torn between thinking custom is a localised phenomenon, or based upon the diffusion of basic archetypal ideas dispersed "out of Africa" or "out of the Orient" or cross-cultural exchange based on invasion and later trade. I tend towards the archetypal and diffusion theory. But I am just beginning my studies and am open to all thoughts, experience and knowledge you all have here, which seems to be considerable.

[Nigel]

Well, I think you're taking on a massive task, and I wish you well with it. I suspect that you may find you'll have to visit each site, and walk for miles around it rather than look at maps and diagrams. I wish I was young enough to be able to have the number of years you may need to spend before you have an answer!
Here's a couple of things, from my own experience that you might find useful to consider:
Stone monuments tend to be preceded by earth and timber ones, often by many hundreds of years. Thus, a group of roughly contemporaneous megaliths may simply be the later manifestation of sacred sites of wildly differing ages.
Sometimes there is evidence of timber monuments in places where there are no subsequent stone ones. The postholes in the Stonehenge carpark are 100 meters and 6,000 years away. Where, then, is the sacred site at Stonehenge.
By their nature, most timber monuments will not have been discovered. So what I'm saying is that what we see today is a mere echo of any alignments there may once have been, and this makes your task doubly difficult.
I find timber annoying for a further reason, from my own experience. I'm specifically interested in the placement of just one monument, Silbury Hill.
This in itself takes up a lot of time (which is why I think you're taking on a huge job!) I've concluded there might have been a missing monument on top of it, the reason being that the present day sight lines make a lot more sense if it had a bit more height. I'll email you something about it. The point is, for me the alignment problem has become three dimensional!
Who is to say that many monuments didn't once incorporate tall timber totems. In such cases, a map would reveal nothing of whether the placement was feng shui or line of sight. You'd need a contour map, and probably an idea of the local tree cover to discount the latter.
Having discouraged you with an account of how confused and complicated the evidence is likely to be, I can also offer you encouragement in the form of my own confirmation that wind and water seem to be recurring themes in many placements in my experience, as well as (according to my own aesthetic judgement) a wish to "unite earth and heaven". I have no specific explanation for this. Perhaps, after a long and strenuous life of research, you will!
Finally, may I please register my standard "knee-jerk reaction" regarding non-material energy  being measured by a "machine" at MIT. It seems to me that non-material energy could only be measured by a non-material machine, i.e one that doesn't exist. Thus I'm prepared to accept that they don't have a machine for measuring nothing!!

[IrishStones]

Nigel, what a wonderful reply. It was encouraging and extremely helpful. I'm throwing a lot of stuff into the "wind" to see what settles. My first task, and it will take years, is to simply find out what it is I want to look at and narrow the plan down to three or four sites. I'm no spring chicken myself!

I had to laugh at your reply about the MIT project. Can you tell I'm not a physicist? It reminds me of my life's most embarassing moment, in 7th grade when the science teacher pointed out to my class my terrible answer to "What is the sun?" my answer, "A solid ball of liquid gas".

But those crazy physicists are tracing something which is trying to prove energy IS matter and matter IS energy, just as Einstein hypothesized. Just the fact that they can verify  "chi" (particle level?) energy movements along acupuncture meridiens is spooky enough for me.

I am especially interested in your sense of wind and water being important. I'd love to hear if anyone else has experienced this, literally or metaphorically. Is there a feeling of movement and containment in and around the site? If my theory cal feature in my theory are gone and undiscovered. I'm glad you mentioned this. It will force me to narrow my focus.

I would love any e-mail with further details on Silbury Hill. Perhaps that can be one of my sites since I have an export available? I started to research Silbury a little more thoroughly than I have in the past, so I could discuss it with you, and this interesting piece of synchronicity appeared. At the end of an article on Chris Witcomb's Sweet Briar College page http://witcombe.sbc..../EMSilbury.html

there appeared the following quotation and directly beneath this quote was a link to this (Diego and Paolo's) Stone Pages site...

"In view of the fact that in China mounds like that at Silbury were erected upon lung-mei, the paths of the dragon (see Geomany), there is good reason to suspect that Silbury itself was sited by Pre-Celtic Druids on a dragon line with the assistance of a geomancer's compass. It may also be inferred that the Chinese lung-mei stretch over the entire globe. Many centres of English dragon legend (see Dragons and Dragon-killers) stand at the junction of well-marked leys, one notable long-distance example being the St Michael's line that runs from the Avebury circle to the extreme west of Cornwall." (The View over Atlantis, 1983, p. 70)

Now I have to pick a bone, because there was no geomancer's compass invented at the time of the pre-celtic Druids, and the idea of 'Dragon veins" I believe is not mentioned in texts till about the third century BCE, but the gist of what he's saying, and my thesis, is obviously something that someone has at least explored in the past. But please, don't tell me this is going to get me in to reading about Atlantis!

[Nigel]

I can't find your email through this forum, so perhaps you could post it here.
Water:
I think the frequent proximity of water is well documented by the authorities & you'll have little difficulty establishing that. I don't recall reading an explanation (other than the obvious vague observation that it must have been an important part of the belief system).
Wind:
I can quote no authorities on this, only the sense I get from many sites. Obviously, if they are prominently sited, they'll be windy; but there is also the feeling that they often also have some degree of shelter on one side. The frequent occurrence of monuments "high on" but not "on top of" ridges is certainly worth some thought. I don't know that anyone has done so in any detail.
Uniting Heaven and Earth:
This is purely based upon my own aesthetic judgement. Clearly, both our Cathedrals, and the Neolithic ones, have strong vertical components which can be taken as symbolically stretching towards Heaven. But theirs have this quality in greater measure:
viz: If you look at pictures on the Net or from tourists of, say, Stonehenge there is more often than not a great sky-scape arching above it. We don't do it if we photograph our Cathedrals, or anything else. I think we may be responding at some level to the intentions of the builders. I do a bit of painting of monuments; I often spend more time painting the clouds than the stones, and I always find myself wishing to ensure that each is unified with the other. Now, where does all that come from....!!!
"Feeling of movement and containment...If my theory holds true, there would be constant (not stagnant) movement, and a sense that the "wind" is moving along the sides and down and away from the monument" :
On this one, Silbury is definitely the place for you. You know how you can "see the wind" in cornfields, well you can do it perfectly at Silbury. The fact that the grass is short and it's a cone means you can observe and follow every single puff of wind all the way round it, and the effect is stunning. If I could remember the 1960's I'd probably say that it was the ideal place for bad people to smoke bad things.

One final observation: It sounds like a strict headmaster, but it's meant well, because I want you to succeed, not fail: I think yours would be a great investigation if you start from your original hypothesis that the ancients might have had certain beliefs. But I think you'll struggle to get heard unless you make it clear from the start that you don't share those beliefs. And you'll certainly not be heard if you use source material from people who do share those beliefs. The bitter truth is, although you would like to keep an open mind, and altough both I and Galician
are very polite, we both think (along with virtually every archaeologist and scientist on earth) that feng shui, dragon lines, ley lines and mysterious forces are all complete nonsense and we won't read your book if you "go native".
Alternatively, if you draw on purely scientific sources and prove that the ancients did indeed have such (ludicrous) beliefs then I'd like a signed copy!

[galician]

Yes, Nigel is right (again!). IrishStones, if you approach the subject in a scientific way, questioning every premise, searching for the available evidence to support them, building solid conclussions over your tested premises, and testing again your conclussions to demonstrate that they are as solid as you thought, your book will be an inmediate success, and if Nigel takes the first signed copy, I'll get the second one.
You should try to keep your own beliefs out of your work, because they could introduce a strong bias in it. "Believers" try to discard those data that don't fit their theories, and give more importance to those incidental findings that support them. Of course, it happens in many other disciplines, for example, my own little corner of science, Surgery. But that's what makes the difference between a brilliant investigator, who keeps his mind cool and calm, and will accept that he's wrong if the evidence turns against him, and a peddler who only tries to sell you his product.
OK, IrishStones, go on, and keep us informed of your findings.

[IrishStones]

Thank you Nigel for the additional information. That kind of reoporting will help me enormously in choosing sites. I've been studying Silbury Hill the last couple days, and find much of the physical evidence terrifically compelling.

I thank you for you both, for the warnings, because, in the early stages of research, especially if you have a theory in mind, it is easy to grasp on things which support it. I am fortunate, in this regard, that I am strongly anti-religious, anti-new age everything and find no special use in the modern traditions attached to the circles. Modern Druidism, for example. I am looking at a different aspect of the "spirituality " of these sites entirely. Since China is the only ancient culture at this time in history who had a scientific, as opposed to "occult", religious or other magical sense of the environment, I look to them for a place to begin seeking what they did have in mind. I have nothing but contempt for modern fengshui as it is practiced in the West, by very untrained "practioners" out to make a buck. It is laughable. In its ancient form it was a science, and it inspired much science to measure what seemed geophysically obvious.

I have no idea what my "book" will be, or what I will find. I am only using these ideas as an inspiration. As Bobtheham mentioned in the next-door thread, I think that along with the necessary scientific data, creative thinking must be used to take us in to new areas, and that  "speculation validated by evidence" is a legitimate way to approach theories which may seem flighty and unreasonable to some on the surface.

I think that another area, which I can't yet separate from my thought right now, is the later use of sites. The borrowing of these megaliths by Druids, or gnostic Christians. Can we learn anything  from investigating this? Or is it just a case of cultural appropriation?

[IrishStones]

Thank you Nigel for the additional information. That kind of reoporting will help me enormously in choosing sites. I've been studying Silbury Hill the last couple days, and find much of the physical evidence terrifically compelling.

I thank you for you both, for the warnings, because, in the early stages of research, especially if you have a theory in mind, it is easy to grasp on things which support it. I am fortunate, in this regard, that I am strongly anti-religious, anti-new age everything and find no special use in the modern traditions attached to the circles. Modern Druidism, for example. I am looking at a different aspect of the "spirituality " of these sites entirely. Since China is the only ancient culture at this time in history who had a scientific, as opposed to "occult", religious or other magical sense of the environment, I look to them for a place to begin seeking what they did have in mind. I have nothing but contempt for modern fengshui as it is practiced in the West, by very untrained "practioners" out to make a buck. It is laughable. In its ancient form it was a science, and it inspired much science to measure what seemed geophysically obvious.

I have no idea what my "book" will be, or what I will find. I am only using these ideas as an inspiration. As Bobtheham mentioned in the next-door thread, I think that along with the necessary scientific data, creative thinking must be used to take us in to new areas, and that  "speculation validated by evidence" is a legitimate way to approach theories which may seem flighty and unreasonable to some on the surface.

I think that another area, which I can't yet separate from my thought right now, is the later use of sites. The borrowing of these megaliths by Druids, or gnostic Christians. Can we learn anything  from investigating this? Or is it just a case of cultural appropriation?

[fireflite]

Nigel, sorry for the delay. I was away from my desk...

I believe the magnetic alignments that Brennan was refering to had something to due with the magnetic North Pole, which is slightly shifted from "True" North. I don't remember exactly the point he was trying to make, but I believe it was to refute archaeologists claims that the astronomical alignments are false, due to the fact that that the tilt of the earth 5000 years ago would not have been the same as it is today. I'm probably totally wrong. His book is still available on Amazon.com if your interested.

I believe that Ley lines refer to the magnetic lines that connect the North and South poles. Any magnet has invisible curved lines of force connecting the poles. This can be proven with a magnet, a piece of paper and metal shavings. This is science. Many sites are supposed to be situated on these lines. I am an extremely scientific oriented person, but I can tell you from visiting many of the mounds in Ireland, that there is a feeling of something when standing on, near or in one of them.

As for the water connection, how did "people" travel at the time when the mounds created? Many of the mounds in Ireland are situated near rivers or lakes(supplied by rivers). These could have been a convenient source of travel to and from the mounds.

Wind? yea I could tell you some weird stuff that happened in relation to winds. Many of the mounds are situated near but not on the top of hills. I think this is to align the main passage to the horizon. If it was on top of the hill or ridge it would be impossible to get this alignment.