h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: UPDATE-Stonehenge A9564942 - A41771784
Author: Big Al - Keeper of Mnemonics, Keeper of the Glowing Pickle. Patron Saint of Left Handers. - U723247

My motivation for updating this Entry was comments by littlebluemountain in the Discussion Thread of the original that Preseli was not the source of the bluestones.

However, archaeologists seem fairly unanimousd in their opinion that this was so.

I've incorporated info from a recent BBC Timewatch programme that sets out the evidence for this, and also propounds a new theory that SH may've been a centre for healing - 'a kind of prehistoric Lourdes'.

Forgot to say, I diluted out the construction phases a bit as it would appear that these were more fluid than is suggested by use of the term 'phases'.

A few typos BA:

largeest >> largest
9000 years ago >> 9,000 years ago
BBC Timewatch Programme >> BBC Timewatch programme
Preseli Moutains >>Preseli Mountains
from an alpine region,in the area of >> space after the comma
chippiongs >> chippings
the body could have been disturbed by animals,it >> space after the comma
brokem in half >> broken in half
Camarthenshire >> Carmarthenshire
4000 year old pot >> 4,000 year-old pot

You mention 45 tons as well as 45 tonnes. I assume you didn't intend to mix imperial and metric tons. Since you have given metric equivalents of units in other places in the Entry, shouldn't you give the 45 tons in kgs as well?

Good update

I've done those, h5R - all except BBC Timewatch, as the programme is called 'Timewatch', not 'Timewatch Programme'.

I've expressed one of the 45 tos as 'nearly 46 tonnes', but not the other as it was already in parentheses and it would look clumsy.

I've only just realised my name is on this..! I can't actually remember why - I think it may have been the Spinal Tap quote, which wasn't terribly constructive, but such is the way of collaborative Entries!

As I'm here, I might as well point out that there is now a Spinal Tap Entry (A14611916)...

Anyway, well done, Big Al

Is there any chance you could mark the bits you've changed, BigAl? I don't want to have to read the entire thing again in detail and figure out which bits are original and which bits are your new material.

I'll try. I was thinking of it when I did it but wasn't sure if I knew how to change colour.

A

blah blah

I've done my best to indcate location of modified/added text by using font colour = 'green'.

A

I've had a quick look through this. I thought I had made it clear in the original that the alignments were a feature of the earlier Stonehenge, and even then only of about five of the stones. The way you've rewritten it seems to suggest that the Sarsens are used for astronomical alignments; there's very little evidence to support this view, and in fact some of the alignments were destroyed by the introduction of the Sarsen stones. As far as I can see, the use of Stonehenge for astronomical alignments had been completely forgotten by the time that Stonehenge III was built.

I tried to make this clear but you've blurred the whole issue by changing around the way the entry is laid out.

I don't like it at all.

Stonehenge was built over a period of more than a thousand years. I think the way the original entry was laid out made that clear. Putting the movement of the bluestones and the details of the astronomical alignments in the section relating to the layout that featured these makes much more sense than the way you've laid it out.

Yes Gnomon. When I was putting in the font colours, I realised that I'd missed out the whole section of the 'astronomical alignment stones'. This was partly due to me having difficulty reading things on screen and partly because the dating of the bluestones has totally blurred the discrete chronological phases. Hence I didn't quite know where to put. I was hoping to put that right before you noticed. I've put it back in now.

Ref 'Putting the movement of the bluestones and the details of the astronomical alignments in the section relating to the layout that featured these makes much more sense than the way you've laid it out':

To be honest, I found the way you had it laid out was confusing as I'd be reading one section 'ostensibly concerning what was erected when, when it would suddenly deviate to, what top me, was an 'aside' e.g. solstices.

To me, it makes more sense to have separate sections for the 'When' and the 'How'

I tried to separate them because only Stonehenge II appears to have been used for astronomical alignments, and the movement of the blue stones seems to relate to Stonehenge II only.

I'll be happy as long as it is clear that the problem of moving the stones is not related to the giant trilithons, and that the present Stonehenge is really nothing to do with a calendar, as all that stuff was torn down when they built Stonehenge III.

Yes, I think we're in agreement with each other, and so I still haven't got it quite right.

It should be:

Earthwork > bluestones > astronomical alignment stones/reaarangement of BS > trilithons/outer circle.

At present, I have it as:

Earthwork/astro alignment stones > BS > trilithons/outer circle.

I think your idea that the BS were moved to allow astronomical observations to take place during a very discrete phase of SH's history makes a lot of sense, particularly as Darvill and Wainwright state categorically that the BS were the very first stones on site.

I think the astronomical observations are datable from some post holes found in the car park. But I'd have to check my books at home and I won't get a chance to do this until this evening.

i THINK i've got it right now. See what you think

Yes that looks better. But I haven't time to give it a detailed read at the moment and I'm not sure whether you talk about the summer solstice before you've explained what it is.

One thing: if Stonehenge was built by the Bronze Age Beaker People, then it is not Neolithic, which means New Stone Age. The New Stone Age came before the Bronze Age. I used the term Megalithic meaning "Made from Big Rocks". I don't know why you changed it to Neolithic.

Well, it might be a matter of semantics, what do we take as the beginnings of SH? There was activity there in the mesolithic!

What I said was this:

'Stonehenge is the ruin of a neolithic stone circle, considered to be one of the greatest engineering feats in prehistoric Europe, if not the greatest!'

The HMSO Booklet, 'Stonehenge and Avebury' has this chronology (as a chart, as I've shown below:

3200 BC Long Barrows Early neolithic

2800 BC West Kennet Long Barrow

2400 BC SH cursus Late neolithic
SH 1

2000 BC SH II (Beaker Folk)

1600 BC SH III Early Bronze Age


i.e. The Beaker Folk preceded the Bronze Age.

Also, one of my encyclopaedias says 'The movements of the Beaker Folk helped to speed the development of bronze metallurgy'. i.e. They were at least at the interface of Stone Age and Iron Age, and this could be interpreted as preceding the Bronze Age.

The carbon-14 dating of cereal grains found beneath a blue stone by Darvill and Wainwright (2008) definitively dates the first erection of bluestones to 2300 BC (i.e. late neolithic).

The chart didn't space itself out quite as I intended, but I think you can see what I mean. (BTW, another reason I changed megalithic to neolithic is that I thought to say that it is a 'megalith' was rather a statement of the blindingly obvious

They were at least at the interface of Stone Age and Iron Age >
They were at least at the interface of Stone Age and Bronze Age...