Don't know if that's a scientific approach (this is our theory now prove it rather than this is the evidence what does it prove - or have I been watching too much CSI?!) but it's interesting nevertheless!
I hope they put the healing properties to the test - we visited the site in 1959 (when people were allowed free access to the stones) - my cousin climbed one of the fallen stones, and when he fell off (!) he broke his wrist. Perhaps we should have stayed with the stones to let them work their magic, rather than spending a day in casualty!
It's been summed up and explained on the TV news. Many chips of stone, from the 'blue stones', have been found in the ground around them. It's the first dig of substance at Stonehenge for 40 years. But from this, along with bodies of ill people found as if buried possibly 'on the way' to the place, they've made the leap of deciding that the stones were chipped off to take as talismans or as healing mementos as it were. (So why were they in fact left??)
Who knows, but it seems a big leap to me: chipped off stone - to - it was for healing! Smacks to me of someone with a predisposed theory to prove. What of the astrological alignments, and the fact that these point, as do many ancient sites, to a specific time: 10,500 BC when 'something' we are supposed to remember happened? (Atla going down?)
I'd like to hear more of these 'astrological alignments' which point to BC10,500. I've been taking people to Stonehenge for 25 years and have read a lot about it but have never heard this mentioned before. How do astrological alignments point to a specific time?
Hi, a quickie from work, Sunanda. Will return and edit it if I cut this short. Researchers such as in particular Graham Hancock - particularly see his "Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the lost civilisation" book and if I recall, TV series, have discovered that many famous ancient monuments - the pyramids, that famous site in Cambodia (name?), Stonehenge, and some others, have astronomical alignments (such as to where chief stars would have risen) which would only have been true on that date. The different sites all point to that same date. That is, even though the site may not be so old itself.
Hancock for one theorises that it's pointing to the date when a civilisation ended, and things began again, and that this knowledge was preserved. "Writing" such as the pyramids isn't easy to 'lose' right?
Gotta go, but you could look up Hancock on google for more. Theory is that the survivors were scattered, but all remembered the story and the date. :-)
Me again. Home now. Sunanda, it might almost be said I shouldn't post from work. It's real hard to concentrate so I actually didn't take in the middle sentence from you. 'As a tour guide ...' It is in fact the core of why you posted.
So to revisit the subject with that in mind. First let's give an example. A friend of mine arrived in England from South Africa, having stopped off to sight-see in Egypt along the way. A tour guide was going, "And the Sphinx is 3,000 years old ..." (or whatever) - and it so happened that by chance the small party were all New Agey-type informed, since this kind of knowledge isn't just known by a tiny cultish 'New Age' elite, but is widely read in books, presented on TV series etc ... most of them were aware of the findings of geologist Robert Schlock in the 1990s, since supported by some other geologists, that the Sphinx has to date back at least 12,500 years, because it's weathered by heavy rainfall - which is known not to have been the climate since just after that time.
That's a long other example, but the point being that on the one hand one has the maybe-stuffy academia-oriented viewpoint on things, droned out as 'fact', but only a theory, and then these fascinating people come along and overturn it all. Yet it takes decades if not generations for the new, revolutionary information or theory to become recognised. (Most archeologists still reject Schlock and the great age of the Sphinx, as that age would overturn much of all Egyptology!
What I'm wondering is, as a tour guide, does one have to dosh out the old stuff, old-school academic stuffed-shirt ideas, even when there are major challenges to those views backed by much and fascinating evidence? Is it acceptable, say as a Sphinx tour guide, to mention Schlock and that the Sphinx is probably at least 12,500 years old, when the mainstream text-books aren't yet saying that? Maybe it can be done as, "On the one hand, Graham Hancock and Robert Schlock say this ... but traditional archeology says the other ..."? Well, you'd know. Is one's career on the line by going too far off the mainstream, even if that view has major challenges to it now?
Soooooo - if you're still with me, - to Graham Hancock. I seem to have left his books behind during a move, but I'm pretty sure he includes Stonehenge within several or up to ten of the most major ancient sites, all of which have alignments pointedly pointing to the night-sky only as it was in 10,500 BC. In other words, one function (only) of the sites is to shout aloud that date - for whatever reason.
... and here you'll see the competing views about him being right or wrong. But of course Wiki only gives us the surface of the real debate going on, with competing views on the subject, behind the scenes, since Wiki pages are negotiated, or even argued out, by the public - hopefully by people who know a few things on the subject. (Often they don't.)
So on whether Hancock (and others) are right on Stonehenge, making the mainstream 'facts' part-nonesense droned out by fuddy-duddies , you'll maybe find it real interesting to go to the discussion tab of that page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Graham_Hancock
LOL, it's a bit like a high-class HP thread, huh? People aren't all agreeing, it's an on-going debate, and yes, of course, we find some folk there denouncing Hancock's views, and then later admitting they haven't read him and hardly seen his data on TV! For a Stonehenge tour guide it may be interesting reading.
What I'm wondering is, as a tour guide, does one have to dosh out the old stuff, old-school academic stuffed-shirt ideas, even when there are major challenges to those views backed by much and fascinating evidence?
In answer to this question, Venetian, I can assure you that a tour guide - or rather a good tour guide - is under no obligation whatsoever to simply parrot any views or ideas whatsoever. My commentary about Stonehenge and all the other places I visit has changed immensely over the course of the 26 years that I have been qualified, and reflects all the up to date and latest theories (both scientific and 'off the wall') research and findings. Thus, with regard to Stonehenge, I now incorporate the latest archaeological information, including the new theories about it being a place of healing, and when I take a group there tomorrow I shall be recommending that they watch the Timewatch programme on BBC2 this Saturday.
Now that you have introduced me to Graham Hancock's views, I shall mention him as well but I remain totally unconvinced by his theories. In spite of delving on the internet I am still unable to understand how these alignments can point to BC10,500. IMVHO that is as 'laughable' as most other 'new age' ideas appear to you. (viz the McCain thread.) On the Wikipedia link on Graham Hancock, I read the following:
Quote:
Although his books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-seven languages, his methods and conclusions have found little support among academics. Often criticised for being a pseudoarchaeologist, Hancock, who freely admits he has no formal training in archaeology, sees himself as providing a counterbalance to what he perceives as the 'unquestioned' acceptance and support given to orthodox views by the education system, the media, and by society at large.
Finally, V, I take it that you weren't referring to me as a 'fuddy duddy' - just all the other tour guides all over the world. Right?
You a fuddy-duddy? LOL, no! I'm seeing the Hancock kind of subject, and theories on Stonehenge, simply from a wider PoV, taking in past examples. For example, I've cited that geologists (a different discipline to archeology of course) such as Schlock, have simply been asked to look at the Sphinx, and some don't hesitate but to say, "It was here at least 12,500 years ago, because soon after that there hasn't been the kind of rainy climate which could have storm-weathered it in this way." So the fuddy-duddies here might be seen as being bespectacled professors who hardly venture out of their lecture theatres and tutorial rooms, faintly smelling of old musty books. Doesn't this finding interest them??
Taking it more broadly still, the seminal work, "Forbidden Archeology" demonstrated that archeology, perhaps more than any other academic discipline at all, is deeply flawed and 'political' - that gigantic book cited hundreds of examples of findings of artefacts from extremely ancient cultures which have been, in effect, shunned by the establishment as they have their pet theories - upon which their careers depend - of when civilisation began, just who was doing what when, and so forth.
I don't know whether Hancock is right or wrong either, but you've quoted simply one of the quotable bits in Wiki against him. I've speed-read through the discussion tab to the Wiki article on him, and there are good points made both pro and contra. It gets a bit impolite here and there, but that's the internet for you. (Fom my memory, someone has written there that Hancock, "Is either a liar who knows that he is lying, or a liar who is doing it subconsciously" - something like that. That's the kind of 'critique' a guy gets when he's spent untold years travelling the world and looking into this subject, in an obviously very dedicated way.)
Is he a "pseudoarcheologist"? I sincerely hope so, since IMHO the mainstream have gotten so much wrong I often don't trust their views. A geologist (back to the age of the Sphinx subject) is also not an archeologist at all, but can date it. A layperson can do better in a subject such as archeology since they approach it with fresh eyes, not an academic semi-brain-washing. It's the concept of being a Renaissance person.
This thread is really interesting, thank you, I will watch the programme about the stones when its on TV.
I read a book many years ago about ley-lines in connection with stonehenge and other ancient sites. Unfortunately I can't remember the title, but I remember I found it completely fascinating at the time.
"Now a team behind the latest dig suggest the standing stones were erected much earlier than previously thought, in 3,000 BC, and used for cremation burial throughout their history and not for healing."
"This means there were earlier connections with Wales, where the standing stones came from, than previously thought and that Stonehenge was always about death and ancestors and burial and not healing."
"Now a team behind the latest dig suggest the standing stones were erected much earlier than previously thought, in 3,000 BC, and used for cremation burial throughout their history and not for healing."
"This means there were earlier connections with Wales, where the standing stones came from, than previously thought and that Stonehenge was always about death and ancestors and burial and not healing."
LOL, so after the big declaration about "what Stonehenge was for", it gets reversed or an alternate view arises within just weeks. TBH I was never convinced. It's difficult of course to see something ancient and unexplained and to then 'explain it away' without putting our preconceptions of our own culture - or our own image of what their culture was like - upon it all.
IMHO it'll be very difficult to say just what the place was for, without someone still around to tell us. But empirically we do know that it has all kinds of things going for it such as sacred geometry, alignments with the stars, and if I recall correctly from Graham Hancock this may be one of the sites with alignments harking back to 10,500 BC (I'll have to check that one) ... so it isn't really just about 'ancestor worship' either? Is my guess anyway. Something very powerful led hundreds of people to spend untold years of their lives making the place. And they had a sacred science behind them too, in the proportions and measurements which hark back to the actual relative sizes of the sun, moon, earth, and their distances from each other, which is amazing.
Much of this comes from John Michell's books, and I'd direct anyone to them.
I have no doubt that Stonehenge was built with healing in mind - and there seems to be some evidence of that - human remains that show chrionic medical problems for instance where people had come for healing.
Where the blue stones came from in the Preseli hills the water coming from the springs at the base of the hill from where the stones were taken for Stonehenge has long been known for its healing properties - the spring is still there. Even today the place has a strong 'feeling' about it and one can still find stones destined for Stonehenge that were broken on the way down the hill. Further up there is a nice stone circle, remote and peaceful with only the odd red kite for company.
Woodhenge nearby, clearly a maze of some kind must be intimately connected I'm sure.
We had a very nice hour in the stones, only a party of five americans there and the sense of ancient activity is still palpable - the energy is clearly visible and it is a good space to meditate.
"Now a team behind the latest dig suggest the standing stones were erected much earlier than previously thought, in 3,000 BC, and used for cremation burial throughout their history and not for healing."
Hi Mrs Novice here. I have never read anything about this subject though I have found this thread really interesting.
One thought did occur to me...even if it was used for cremation/burial, it could still have been used for healing too, since death is a natural (and sometimes welcome) part of life.
Smacks to me of someone with a predisposed theory to prove. What of the astrological alignments, and the fact that these point, as do many ancient sites, to a specific time: 10,500 BC when 'something' we are supposed to remember happened? (Atla going down?)
There's a lot of that in the reputationally terrified field of archaeology. Don't know what it does? Religious icon of course! I guess I can understand that, academics live by their reputation, but still, how much has been swished under the carpet for the wrong reasons?
Stonehenge - built for healing?
- to Graham Hancock. I seem to have left his books behind during a move, but I'm pretty sure he includes Stonehenge within several or up to ten of the most major ancient sites, all of which have alignments pointedly pointing to the night-sky only as it was in 10,500 BC. In other words, one function (only) of the sites is to shout aloud that date - for whatever reason.
, you'll maybe find it real interesting to go to the discussion tab of that page:
For a Stonehenge tour guide it may be interesting reading.
Linear Mode
Learn about therapies
and find a therapist