Stonehenge 'No Place For The Dead' Says BU Expert

Alpha Galileo ^ | 11-16-2006 | Timothy Darvill

[blam]

16 November 2006

Stonehenge ‘No Place for the Dead’, Says BU Expert

Professor Timothy Darvill, Head of the Archaeology Group at Bournemouth University, has breathed new life into the controversy surrounding the origins of Stonehenge by publishing a theory which suggests that the ancient monument was a source and centre for healing and not a place for the dead as believed by many previous scholars.

After publication of his new book on the subject - Stonehenge: The Biography of a Landscape (Tempus Publishing) - Professor Darvill also makes a case for revellers who travel to be near the ancient monument for the summer solstice in June to reconsider. Instead, Professor Darvill believes that those seeking to tap into the monument’s powers at its most potent time of the year should do so in December during the winter solstice when our ancestors believed that the henge was ‘occupied’ by a prehistoric god - the equivalent of the Roman and Greek god of healing, Apollo – who ‘chose’ to reside in winter with the Hyborians, long believed to be the ancient Britons.

The basis for Professor Darvill’s findings lies in the Preseli Mountains in west Wales where he and colleague Professor Geoffrey Wainwright have located an exact origin for the bluestones used in the construction of Stonehenge some 250 km away.

“The questions most people ask when they consider Stonehenge is ‘why was it built?’ and ‘how was it was used?’” says Professor Darvill. “Our work has taken us to the Preseli Mountains to provide a robust context for the source of the bluestones and to explore various ideas about why those mountains were so special to prehistoric people”.

“We have several strands of evidence to consider. First, there have folklore in the form of accounts written in the 14th century which refer to a magician bringing the stones from the west of the British Isles to what we know as Salisbury Plain,” he continues. “It was believed that these particular stones had many healing properties because in Preseli, there are many sacred springs that are considered to have health-giving qualities; the water comes out of the rocks used to build Stonehenge and it’s well established that as recently as the late 18th century, people went to Stonehenge to break off bits of rock as talismans.

“Also, around the Stonehenge landscape, there are many burials, some of which have been excavated and amongst these there are a good proportion of people who show signs of being unwell – some would have walked with a limp or had broken bones – just the sort of thing that in modern times pressurises people to seek help from the Almighty.

“In the case of Stonehenge, I suggest that the presiding deity was a prehistoric equivalent of the Greek and Roman god of healing, Apollo. Although his main sanctuary was at Delphi in Greece, it is widely believed that he left Greece in the winter months to reside in the land of the Hyborians – usually taken to be Britain.

“Altogether, and with the incorporation of the stones from Wales, Stonehenge is a very powerful and positive place of pilgrimage, although whether the monument’s healing power actually worked is a matter for further discussion,” he concludes.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[theFIRMbss]

In ancient times,
Hundreds of years before the dawn of history.
There lived a strange race of people
...the Druids.

No one knows who they were
Or what they were doing...
But their legacy remains...
Hewn into the living rock of...

Stonehenge...

Stonehenge
Where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live
And they do live well

Stonehenge
Where a man is a man
And the children dance to the pipes of pan

Stonehenge
Tis a magic place where the moon doth rise
With a dragon's face

Stonehenge
Where the virgins lie
And the prayer of devils fill the midnight sky

And you my love, won't you take my hand
We'll go back in time to that mystic land
Where the dew drops cry and the cats meow
I will take you there
I will show you how

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Good interesting theory of Stonehenge

Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died
(1972)
A novel by
This rousing adventure story set in the Europe of 1473 B. C. Above all sets out to entertain. But it also has a rather more serious purpose - to expound another theory about the reasons for the building of the fascinating stone circles.

[Callahan]

Let's ask an eye witness:

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Harry Harrison's Stonehenge

[lexington minuteman 1775]

Well there had to be a reason why it was built where it was, because moving rocks that size over 200 kilometers must have been some task.

[theFIRMbss]

>moving rocks that size over 200 kilometers must have been some task

But humans are strange. Their reasons for doing it centuries ago might be just as dumb as whatever Chicago had in mind with this . . .

[GoLightly]

I think that piece of art would be proof of humans with too much time on their hands.

[Xenalyte]

Stonehenge ‘No Place for the Dead’, Says BU Expert

Then don't let 'em go in there!

[sine_nomine]

I imagine Velikovsky has a theory about Stonehenge.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Harry Harrison's Stonehenge was made to entertain and a lot of it is an unusual theory about henge's manufacturers.

[Joe 6-pack]

I love that song...I usually crank my volume all the way up to 11 when I listen to it....

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
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[SunkenCiv]

"Apollo built the walls of Troy using music." -- Mary Stewart

New glacier theory on Stonehenge
BBC News | June 13, 2006
Posted on 06/13/2006 10:27:54 AM EDT by billorites
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1648503/posts

"A geology team has contradicted claims that bluestones were dug by Bronze Age man from a west Wales quarry and carried 240 miles to build Stonehenge. In a new twist, Open University geologists say the stones were in fact moved to Salisbury Plain by glaciers."

[GoLightly]

What would Mary Stewart know about moving big stuff?

This link was probably from a previous post in your list, but...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRRDzFROMx0

[SunkenCiv]

It's a line (remembered, so probably not verbatim) from one of her Merlin novels. Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

[Blind Eye Jones]

What does "henge" in Stonehenge mean? The name means what exactly? So if you take the henge out of Stonehenge you are left with stone... not just one stone but many. Many stones like dominoes, like a crop circle in a quarry, which is a quandry of query for querulous questioners. But it's not about "q"s unless there was quartz involved. My theory is that it is about the "s&h," about sh*t hitting the ancient mind in the form of a rock solid rock from nowhere that bred with other rocks to create a family or a circle of friends. All IMHO, of course.

[SunkenCiv]

Velikovsky mentioned Stonehenge as a possible observatory.

[SunkenCiv]

"Henge" means hanging, the hanging stones. Wikipedia quotes an expert saying that "henge" is derived from the Old English word for "hinge", and oddly enough, that it pertained to the look of the gallows. Hengist and Horsa were both named for everyone's favorite transportation animal, if memory serves, but I'm not sure how that works out. They were of the Jutes (Jutland is in modern Denmark) who were among the (mostly) post-Roman invaders of Britain, and Hengist appears (along with his employer, Vortigern) in the Arthurian stories.