Posted on 01/31/2008 8:31:26 AM PST by BGHater
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Silbury Hill remains an enigma despite extensive excavations
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You're in your jouncing people-carrier, taking in the agreeable but unremarkable view, and then suddenly it's upon you; a pointy attention-grabber at the side of the road, towering street furniture in the shape of a hazard-warning equilateral. This is crushing historical time expressed in trigonometry.
Old Egypt hands could be forgiven for thinking that the terrible shark's fin that I'm talking about is the sort of thing that looms in your windshield as you're driving through the suburbs of Cairo.
But they'd be wrong. Or they'd be half-right. Silbury Hill is a pile of chalk just off the A4 in Wiltshire but it's been called "Europe's answer to the pyramids".
There's its silhouette, for a start. Then there's the fact that the tons of calcium carbonate which went to make it were being quarried at about the same time as the pharaonic tombs were going up.
Perhaps the most pertinent similarity is that no one knows exactly how Silbury was built.
Indeed, as you round a bend out of Marlborough and come face to face with the hill, the thought that our distant kin are credited with building something so utterly alien is what immediately connects it with the ziggurats of the Nile delta.
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Silbury Hill
130ft mound
completed about 2350 BC
excavated in 1776, 1849, 1968
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No wonder that it's said to have been a clod of earth which fell from the Devil's foot as he flew over the Wessex plains, or a landing beacon for UFOs.
Others maintain that it's the mausoleum of a long-lost monarch. King Sil (hence 'Sil-bury') and that he's interred with a statue of his faithful steed, cast entirely from gold.
In fact, no one's sure what they got up to at Silbury as much as 4,400 years ago, though the latest dig has come out strongly in favour of singing and against sacrifices.
On a bright morning not so long ago, motorists may have seen adepts of early music ascending the 40 metre hill with their horns and their fifes, their skins and their bladders, in order to establish that sound carried from the summit to the plains below.
The hill was a bandstand, at least for some of the time. Later, under Norman rule, it was a lookout post.
There are no signifiers of ritual killings, apparently. Silbury is a very clean site, in the jargon, though not as a clean as it must have been before turf grew over the chalk, when it might have looked from a distance like a mammoth's tusk.
Such are the results of the painstaking proddings and scrapings of English Heritage, who are responsible for the hill.
Earlier prospectors weren't so kid-gloved, sinking a mineshaft into the crown and hacking into the flanks. Locals piled in, hopeful of stumbling upon King Sil's 24-carat nag.
The effects of those clumsy fumblings became apparent a few years ago when a hole opened at the apex of the hill. The tunnelers had disturbed the chalk, creating voids or air holes.
Enigmatic silence
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 We were the last civilians to walk inside the hill 
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A great English monument was in danger of falling in on itself like a sagging Yorkshire pudding.
One last excavation was sanctioned and a team from Newsnight joined it in its final stages.
The historians have uncovered arrowheads, and dense, stony antlers which were used as tools.
They now know that Silbury didn't go up all at once but in three stages. Deep inside the hill, beneath up to half a million tonnes of ever so slightly unstable chalk, we goggled at the perfectly preserved fronds of moss which had grown four millennia ago on the slopes of the original mound.
We were the last civilians to walk inside the hill, along its tunnels, beneath groaning beams that wouldn't have been out of place in a gold mine.
That's what impressionable or avaricious people thought Silbury was, of course, though the gilded gee-gee was never recovered, and the latest technology has failed to find any human remains, royal or otherwise.
English Heritage believe that the only way to conserve the hill is to close it up. Miners now labour below ground to pack the chalk and seal it with a special paste. In a few days or weeks, the grail of thousands of years will be beyond reach and Silbury - the great tepee, the big tent, of our woad-striped forefathers - will be restored to enigmatic silence.
Probably here.
"So, I’m guessing my ancestors were R1b somewhere along the line (I’m adopted, so I don’t know what nationality my ancestors are/were). "
Red hair is not exclusive to R1b. My neighbor is haplogroup I1a and he and his brother are red haired.
Very cool! Thank you so much for the link/ping(s). :)
That is Arthur’s hood.
Oh woad, woad is me!
Folks who get a chance to see it should also check out nearby Avebury.
I’ve been thinking about getting one of those cheek swabs...I’ll freak out, though, if it unexpectedly shows French ancestry.
This aerial view of the Avebury stone circle shows the circle enclosing the village. In 2003 missing stones forming part of the great stone circle were discovered underground using computer equipment during surveys conducted by the National Trust. Avebury Circle, built 2800-2700 bc is a Bronze Age causewayed camp—a circular structure with an entrance at the four cardinal points. The circle of sarsen stones just inside the earth rampart encloses two further stone circles.
Firuzabad, Iran.
Whoa....
Whoa...methinks while we dig inside the mounds, we miss the bigger picture. What did the ancients see that gave rise to this symbolism?
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y258/FredNerks/Stonehenge.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y258/FredNerks/AlgerianSahara-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y258/FredNerks/cuicuilco001.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y258/FredNerks/GilgalRefaim.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y258/FredNerks/Orkney12-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y258/FredNerks/orkney1-1.jpg
What did the ancients see that gave rise to this symbolism?
That is a darn good question...
CARAL.
My mother’s family (Colman) has a history going back to the 1700s, and their wives’ families are equally interesting. The family name Williams is Welsh, I am told. We also have a strong concentration of Dutch ancestry, with some Belgian connections. I should get my brother to be tested... as I remember, it was for male descendants, wasn’t it?
One of my wife’s ancestors was an upper class English lady. She fell in love with one of the hired hands and they ran off to America.
Actually, this particular project is for both females and males. :) You can read more about it at the link blam shared here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1423472/posts
I’m thinking of asking my husband to get tested as well. His family is Polish on both sides as far back as we have been able to trace thus far. It would be interesting to see from his DNA if there was indeed a migration or intermarriage, or if they had always lived in that area (at least as far back as scientists could tell from this! LOL).
You have the same DNA as your brother.
The only difference is that he will pass on his Y-Chromosome (male) DNA to his children but not his Mitochondral(female) (mtDNA) DNA. If you are a female, you will pass on your mtDNA(female) but not your yDNA(male) DNA to your children. You (and your brother) have your mother's mtDNA and your father's yDNA.
My father and his mother are both dead. I was able to test my dad's mothers DNA by checking his sisters daughter...my cousin. BTW, my dad's mother was a Smith and she had DNA haplogroup U5a1a. Her relatives were from Scotland when it was still possible to walk (no North Sea) and visit her relatives who are still in Finland.
Probably R1a(see post #8), maybe 'I'. See here for some info.
As above, so below?
Living in Paradise
In summary, for a thousand years during the “Age of the Gods,” from about 4200 BC to 3100 BC, it was Paradise on Earth. The climate in the Middle East was mild and wet. With Earth in an orbit below Saturn, the Sun would not have been at the center of the orbit. The northern hemisphere would have faced the Sun year-round, and there would not have been the drastic changes in seasons we experience today. Mankind lived in harmony with the Gods, who supplied the techniques of agricultural cultivation, the plans for cities and temples, and the knowledge of the wheel, writing, and music. And for a thousand years the images in the sky provided a spectacular show.
http://www.saturniancosmology.org/polar.php#h15
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/040923saturn-ancient.htm
“Worldwide drawings and symbols of the once-dominant luminary show a disc with rays, a disc with spokes, a disc with a central orb or eye, a disc with a crescent upon it”
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Inside Silbury Hill 
