Cougar – Moderator

One thing worth mentioning is that you can “see” the stones in the sense of “they’re over there,” but they’re fenced off. Too many tourists chipping off little souvenirs I expect. it was understandable but I was quite disappointed when I went.

Nope – fenced off because hippies were enjoying taking drugs around them at the solstice. 80s?

Stonehenge my arse, come to North Yorkshire & see…….
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=22515

Pop over the water to Carnac, theres fields full of them.

They may not be as big as the stones at Avebury/Stonehenge, but I’ve never seen so many in one place before! Wen’t to Men-an-tol in Cornwall 2 weeks ago, very cool.

Castlerigg also awesome. Not because the stones are impressive, but because it’s surrounded by mountains.

Carnac is well worth it for avid stone hunters, although they’ve fenced off some of that now 🙁 Bit of a detour from the Isle of Wight drive.

Avebury is much better than Stonehenge. The bonus there is some good summer solstice hippy drumming around the fire type all night type stuff. At least there was about 15/20 years ago, back in the day, etc etc.

“Dragged”

As a geologist I regard them as erratic blocks that humans gathered up locally, dressed and stood up. Anything else seems like too much hassle.

Nope – fenced off because hippies were enjoying taking drugs around them at the solstice. 80s?

Wrong. The ground around the stones was getting chewed up and very muddy, so, in their infinite wisdom, the ‘experts’ in charge laid down gravel, only to discover to their horror that it was acting as an abrasive when kicked up by thousands of human shoes, and eroding the stones faster than at any time in the previous 5000 or so years, so instead of doing something sensible like putting down a geomembrane with a mesh on top to allow the grass to grow up through, they just fenced off the stones and made visitors view the stones from a distance.
Makes life so much easier for everybody… 🙄

Edukator – Reformed Troll
“Dragged”

As a geologist I regard them as erratic blocks that humans gathered up locally, dressed and stood up. Anything else seems like too much hassle.
Except you seem to know bugger-all about the local geography. The stones don’t exist on that part of the chalk downland, they lie in large numbers along Fyfield Down, extending down the valley into Lockeridge, not far from Avebury, twenty or so miles from Stonehenge, making up the greater system of significant monuments.
And yes they are erratics of very hard sandstone left by glaciation, but the glaciers never reached as far south as the site of Stonehenge, they stopped roughly along the line of the M4; where I live, back then I’d be able to look up at a two-mile high wall of ice, about three or four miles north.
And if it had been too much hassle to drag a bunch of stones twenty miles, then what could possibly have possessed them to drag the Bluestones all the way from a quarry in the Presell Hills in the far west of Wales?
Oh yes, I know, Merlin flew them there! Silly me for forgetting that.

Except you seem to know bugger-all about the local geography

You need to do some reading, Countzero. If you think I know bugger-all you are mistaken.

Donau, Gunz, Mindel, Riis and Würm don’t have the same names in Wales but the priinciples and power of the glaciations was worldwide. The glacer moving down St George’s channel in the Mindel was quite enough to get pembroke blocks into Dorset. It’s late but I might post some links tomorrow. That’ll give you time to do your own research and gracefully admit that your accusation of “know bugger-all” was unjustified and unfair on an Aber geology grad who has never lost interest in glacial history.

I’ll be interested to read how much Pleistocene ice flow there was over the Wessex downland.

Separately, I remember a photo of the Preseli ridge with blocks of stone (naturally) stood upright. I wondered if the placement of the Bluestones at Stonehenge and the standing stones at Avebury sought to replicate this.

I’m quite happy to see speculation, Slowoldgit. It’s just that I don’t see why my speculation is any less worthy that anyone else’s. A quick Google says that what was speculation a few years back is now mainstream, ther’s not even any need to link when articles in respected journals that give credibility to the ice-transport theory are in the first Google suggestions.

Earth turns and the sun appears. Bunch of people in an old construction built to celebrate the opposite (Sun “rising”) because they didn’t know any better, go “ooh, the sun’s rising”.

Don’t much see the point.

Yep. Much better to worship something that doesn’t exist.

Oh, they’re “worshipping” are they?

It’s even more risible than I first thought, then.

I recently read a fascinating paper by a structural engineer on the evidence for Stonehenge being the pillars for a large, roofed building. The local stones support the main roof and the bluestones the ceremonial bit in the middle. All the stones work out to the right size for supporting a big turf and timber roof. I know it’s easy to make data fit the desired end result even if you’re not trying to, but it was very convincing.

Earth turns and the sun appears. Bunch of people in an old construction built to celebrate the opposite (Sun “rising”) because they didn’t know any better, go “ooh, the sun’s rising”.

It’s how religion and politics used to (and maybe still does) work. The top guys have worked out how the sun appears to behave, so they say “we’ll have a big party in Stonehenge in 6 days time and we’ll arrange for the sun to shine exactly in the right place” – thereby demonstrating their power and getting the tribe to do as they’re told.

getting the tribe to do as they’re told.

The main purpose of any religion 🙂

Ironic, that the control being exerted on the Summer Solstice club is from a now dead culture…

Although as far as I am aware, the knowledge that the earth turned against the backdrop, only came about through the work of Copernicus and Galileo – himself persecuted by the superstitions of the day for simply stating a truth they were too inflexible to accept.

No need to pay to see the stones, you can see them from the A303, so just slow down and take a good look!

Anything else seems like too much hassle.

Not really scientific, is it? 🙂

Seems like too much hassle to you, but possibly quite important to them.

they stopped roughly along the line of the M4; where I live, back then I’d be able to look up at a two-mile high wall of ice, about three or four miles north.

Crikey – you’re older than I thought. 🙂

The top guys have worked out how the sun appears to behave,

It would be a perfectly valid theory – the point of a theory being to predict an outcome. However in relation to that arrangement of stones it doesn’t matter whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice-versa the outcome is exactly the same – sun rise. We’ve actually got no idea whether they believed one theory or another, theres no evidence to support what anyone thought or believed. But we can flatter ourselves by thinking we know something that they didn’t.

thereby demonstrating their power and getting the tribe to do as they’re told.

Maybe. Or maybe they just wanted a place to celebrate something important. I feel pretty good about the longest day, maybe they did too?

recent hypothesis suggest the stones are aligned to the winter solstice rather than than the summer solstice. It has been suggested that Stonehenge represents the domain of the dead and the Woodhenge a short procession away to the banks of the Avon, the domain of the living. There are many cultures around the world that see stone = dead and wood = alive, and it’s suggested that the gaps between the stones at Stonehenge are “doors” that only spirits could pass though, some are very narrow (you can’t squeeze through them). It’s also apparent that the faces of the stone vary between being rough on one face and smooth on another, what this signifies is still debated.

Well if I’m being scientific:

There was never a two-mile high wall of ice where the M4 now runs. There was a gradually rising ramp of ice sometimes pushing a terminal moraine that wouldn’t have been very impressive. Ice depths over the UK were of the order of tens to hundreds of metres and the melting front would’nt have been a wall. Two miles of ice is what covered central Scandinavia.

The Mindel was about 450 000 years ago. There isn’t a lot left of the deposits it left in most glaciated areas because they were removed by subsequent glacial events and/or water errosion. Evidence that it even happened came from river terrace study in the Alps, Pyrenees and North America. As for previous glacial events, they are even more poorly represented as glacial sediments. Maximum ice extension lines on maps are not perfect or definitive, the southern limit for ice extension in the UK is still a debated issue. I’m inclined to believe the most southerly estimates and then some.

We’re still learning about the paths glaciers took. As erratic blocks come under the microscope (literally) and are correlated with outcrops the picture becomes clearer. However, short of drilling holes down to bedrock everywhere (including under the sea) we aren’t going to find all the outcrops that had erratic blocks plucked off them by the ice.

The stones were clearly moved to the site and propped up, but from how far away? There’s good evidence that ice transport did most of the work and the human factor was limited to gathering them up, IMO from the right side of the Bristol channel and perhaps even closer to the site. Someone has to find a scrap of Mindel or even Riss moraine to absolutely prove it.

So I googled and first up was this –

http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/proc/files/92p271.pdf – 45pp

– which I’ve read, I found it a thorough rebuttal of the ice-transport theory.

I’ve just started reading Pearson’s ‘Stonehenge’, 2012, Simon & Schuster. It includes a photo of a part-excavated quarry at Craig Rhosyfelin, with what may be an abandonned bluestone which broke.

Molgrips: longest and shortest days please, the shortest definitely calling for a piss-up.

sometimes pushing a terminal moraine that wouldn’t have been very impressive

Out of interest, is there a vague line of morraines somewhere across Britain then?

Did the line of glaciation influence the course of the Thames?

No need to pay to see the stones, you can see them from the A303, so just slow down and take a good look!

Slow down? A303?

That will be reverse gear.

That paper was 1997, Slowoldgit.

How about something from 2015

And then Google Dr Brian John for his blog.

Yes, the previous Thames ran well to the N. Proper answer with detail later. Not sure about end moraine.

In answer to the question about the Thames, Molgrips: yes it was diverted but I don’t remember the detail.

There isn’t a line of moraines as glaciers advance and retreat leaving moraines which are then bulldozed or overriden as the glacier advances again and so on. The furtheest push of a glacier may leave little trace apart from erratic blocks and small quantities of moraine. A glacier that melts rapidily due to a ripid change in altitude will leave a lot of moraine in one place but that is rarely the case in the UK.

In the UK there are a lot of periglacial features to support the idea that areas were covered with ice. Drainage channels, fluvial features associated with periglacial conditions. It would be nice if there were a continuous line of moraine for the maximum extension but there isn’t, so a picture has to be built up using all the other evidence..

I seem to remember there is a big area of morraines in Wisconsin which produces distinctive countryside. Perhaps the flatness of the underlying countryside has an effect or maybe climatic conditions were different.

Re the stones being transported by ice – if this were the case there’d be other bits of the same stone all over the place, as it would seem unlikely they’d picked up evevery single one, and all the pieces were stonehenge sized.

What’s so important about one day having more, or less, hours of light than the others?

It’s like a numerologist saying “12121” is significant because it has a pattern.

In reality it’s no more inherently significant that any other number.

Erratics are just that, the odd block here and there. Some have survived others haven’t. They’re a source of building materials and many have been broken up and used in constructions that may or may not have survived.

Man has been playing with stones for longer than Stonehenge has been around. The first thing a geologist does when arriving in an area is look at the stone used in the oldest buildings. I agree that if the stones made part of the journey by ice then there’s a chance that others may be found, probably in very old constructions so we need to be looking in barrows and so on. Other stones have been found but those in favour of the human transport theory say those were transported by man too.

Sea levels were lower in the last glaciation and have risen since to a current high, the source of the stones may now be under water but considereably closer to the site than the source outcrop. The same problem faces those trying to define the maximum ice cover, it’s not easy defining how far south ice got in St George’s channel or how far lobes of ice travelled east when the whole area is under water today.

What’s so important about one day having more, or less, hours of light than the others?

Because the hours of sunlight start increasing again (from the winter solstice). The world turns, and everything is as it should be.

“Phew, what a relief” says the clan chief “let’s have a knees up”

“Wayhay” says the clan

Galileo – himself persecuted by the superstitions of the day for simply stating a truth they were too inflexible to accept

Quite. Galileo put forward a sensible defence of the heliocentric system in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, backed up by observations of the effect of the sun and moon on tides, so being able to produce tide tables effectively providing proof that the universe as it was known then revolved about the sun, not the Earth. The church couldn’t produce any evidence to the contrary but the Pope said that heliocentrism was heresy anyway and that was enough for Galileo to be handed a death sentence, later commuted to a lifetime of house arrest. The Dialogue went on the Index of Forbidden Books where it stayed for around 200 years, until 1832.
And people still give credence to the church

What’s so important about one day having more, or less, hours of light than the others?

To you, nothing.

To me, it feels good and makes me happy. Why not use it as an excuse for a pissup?

Sea levels were lower in the last glaciation and have risen since to a current high, the source of the stones may now be under water but considereably closer to the site than the source outcrop.

I thought that the theory had them transporting them most of the way by water? If so, then there’s not much difference between Wales or Wiltshire is there? There’s a clear drag up from the river to the Stonehenge site.

Boddington Tank Museum..

..A museum of beer tankers? It’s a bit, well, minority interest, innit?
A museum of beer and tanks? I’m in

What’s so important about one day having more, or less, hours of light than the others?

In December, I go to work at night and go home at night – it’s miserable
Just now, I go to work in daylight, go home in daylight and go out to play for a couple of hours in daylight. It’s brilliant.
Lighter days are warmer, I love that too.
Local shops are full of strawberries and locally produced fruits which appear during the longer days. Fantastic.

The church couldn’t produce any evidence to the contrary but the Pope said that heliocentrism was heresy anyway and that was enough for Galileo to be handed a death sentence

The church was dead against Galileo but from what I have read the situation was not black and white. There were other people who talked about heliocentricity, just a bit more quietly. It’s called the Copernican model for a start.

And people still give credence to the church

As if the 17th century church was anything like today’s! Lolz