Stonehenge Phase 1 - by 7500 BCE
A Recent paper by the University of London, Southampton, and Manchester; about the discovery of the quarry that provided the 'bluestones' for Stonehenge at Craig Rhos-y-felin caught the eye of the world by archaeologists announcing Stonehenge was originally built in Wales then transferred to Salisbury Plain 500 years later.
Video Evidence
Which is
totally incorrect and wholly inaccurate?
The ‘Craig Rhos-y-felin: a Welsh bluestone megalith quarry
for Stonehenge’ was a report published in December’s Edition of Antiquity
Magazine 2016, it stated that a series of radiocarbon dates were found on the site
by a 4m long monolith (ready for transportation) made of a rock which was
microscopically identified as the same bluestone as the rocks that surround the
existing Stonehenge site.
Moreover, the report’s authors had decided that just two random sample dates (the
two closest to their well-publicised
hypothesis on Stonehenge's construction date) would be headlined and advertised
to the mass media.
Mike Parker Pearson et al. Craig Rhos-y-felin: a Welsh bluestone megalith quarry for
Stonehenge. Antiquity, 89, pp 1331-1352. doi:10.15184/aqy.2015.177.
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In spite of these published radiocarbon dates the archaeologists
had an obvious problem, as the samples were still 500 years older than the
dates, they were hoping to find. So they
had to invent a new ‘story' to compensate for this ‘poor science’ and so
started the speculation, in their report, that the monument was originally
built in Wales then moved at a later date. This will no doubt
be followed by another report in a few year's time (archaeologists love to do
the lucrative lecture tours on limited ‘titbits’ of information) finding
remains of a few small bluestones within a short distance from the quarry site
and claiming them as evidence of the original Stonehenge – this would probably
followed by even more lucrative lecture tour.
Nevertheless, if we take an
unbiased and more analytical view of the report, we find something very
different from the media claims and much more scientifically interesting.
Mike Parker Pearson et al. Craig Rhos-y-felin: a Welsh bluestone megalith quarry for
Stonehenge. Antiquity, 89, pp 1331-1352. doi:10.15184/aqy.2015.177.
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What was contained in detail within the report but
overlooked, was the fact that a considerable number of Mesolithic carbon dates
(fourteen compared to just two Neolithic dates the report headlined) were
obtained from actual human-made hearths which were much, much earlier in
history compared to two random nutshells found in an ‘occupation area’ - which
could have been scattered by animals or even the weather?
Consequently,
the lowest material found in the excavated area (remembering not the entire
site was excavated) was dated at 8550 - 8330 BCE.
These
earlier and more frequent dates are from hearths
rather than just random nutshells and was
completely overlooked by the team, as it was 'perceived' to be too early
to have a connection to Stonehenge. Nevertheless, this connection was well
established some fifty years ago and was reported in a press release by
myself in August 2011 - entitled ‘The Stonehenge Enigma; an inconvenient
truth’:
The
article shows that English Heritage did their utmost to conceal the truth about
the real 'probable' date of Stonehenge being 5,000 years earlier than their
current position. This scientific evidence was
based on radiocarbon dating of the
three giant post holes found in the visitor’s car park during its
construction in 1966.
At the
time the wooden remains of the posts (found at the bottom of the post holes)
were labelled Neolithic in origin to support the existing antler pick dating
hypothesis and was placed on a shelf probably for eternity. Fortunately, some years later an inquisitive Ph.D.
student writing a thesis on the Stonehenge’s environment found these samples
and concluded that they could not be as claimed by the archaeological
community, as they were from pine trees which pollen analysis had concluded
were ‘extinct’ in this area at this time of Stonehenge’s supposed construction.
Old Visitors Car Park showing the post hole
(white circles on the tarmac) and the suggested shoreline of the Avon during
the Mesolithic Period
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The officials (of the Historic Buildings and Monuments
Commission, which was later renamed English Heritage) were dismay when they
found out that their 'experts' were wrong, and the student was absolutely
correct (sadly, never gave her a deserved job as she clearly knew more than the
supposed experts) in her assumption as the carbon dating placed them at the
start of the Mesolithic of 8860 to 6590 BCE just after the ice age.
So, rather than then admitting their fundamental error and
re-opening the site to look for more holes and dates to get to the bottom of
this unique mystery (which would have been the case for most credible
scientific disciplines) they came up with a remarkable and unproven story
that these were random 'totem poles' placed by wandering 'hunter-gatherers'
which did not relate to the Stonehenge site just 50m away. But was a sheer
coincidence, which should be totally ignored.
Over the last four years since my
‘press release’ was ignored by the archaeology world, the story has moved on
with even more evidence of English Heritage’s continuing cover-up.
Archaeologists have now found charcoal from fires in the
centre of the Stonehenge monument, which date back to the same early period
(but again the news was suppressed) and less than a mile away at the top of the
hill that overlooks Stonehenge a site called ‘blick mead’ excavated by the Open
University, which is showing us that people were living and feasting at this
same earlier period yet this 'totem pole' myth is still firmly entrenched
in EH's view of our prehistoric history through their many costly guidebooks.
Moreover,
recently the Stonehenge site has had a major transformation as it has closed the b-road
that went past the stones and gave access to the old visitor’s car park - which
was now moved a mile up the road to the
new multi-million-pound visitors centre.
Consequently, the aged tarmac was removed and was replaced by grass to make it
look more like it did at the time of Stonehenge’s construction.
Now one might imagine that if you were going to remove the
tarmac from the old visitor's car park (knowing you have found something quite
extraordinary underneath in the past) you would take this 'once in a lifetime
opportunity’ to excavate the car park fully to see if you can find any more
evidence about the Mesolithic Period of Stonehenge’s history?
Did they?
- did they heck!!
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance;
it is the illusion of knowledge.”
― Stephen Hawking
Tim Daw was a warden at Stonehenge, and he has always been
active in taking pictures on the site as he worked on a day-to-day basis at
Stonehenge and published them on his blog site.
Last year, he found patch marks by the centre upright stones that were identified
as the possible missing circle stones of the Inner Circle, therefore his
contribution to the investigation of Stonehenge has been immense.
Tim Daws picture of the post hole - EH would like
to lose!! How much history is being lost
through ignorance and propaganda??
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Tim also took
some shots of trenches dug during the reinstatement of the grass over the old
visitor’s car park and found something quite remarkable - but he was not
allowed to publish as EH had warned him that his unauthorized blog activities
had to stop or else.... three guesses why this happened? Now Tim being a man of
principal resisted and resigned so continuing his blog work and as a
consequence, these new ‘unofficial’ pictures have been made available, showing, even more, post holes are under the car park.
This
newly discovered post hole is on the line of four other known post holes. Moreover, it supports my hypothesis, that they are all on the shoreline of the River
Avon at about 8400 BCE. Furthermore, the fact that rivers in Britain
were ten times larger in the past than today
effected on not only the River Avon. - but the River Nevern, at Craig Rhos-y-felin which the current ‘Brynberian Stream, (which feeds the Nevern) is
only 20m away, from the newly identified quarry
site.
A, B, C are the original 1966 post holes - D was
found by Tim Daw (before he was asked to leave!) and 9580 was found in 1988
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Consequently, during the Mesolithic period, the newly
quarried stones could be placed in boats on the shoreline of the quarry in
Wales and could be sailed almost directly to Stonehenge, via just two or
three enlarged rivers. And not over the longer sea route, some archaeologist have
considered.
This
report also goes into great depth in the analysing
of the Stone structure of the bluestones from other Preseli sites such as Carn
Goedog, Cerrigmarchogion and Craig Talfynyydd, Carn Breseb, Carn Gyfrwy and
finally Carn Alw areas. All of which have streams and rivers connecting them
with the River Nevern – unfortunately, the archaeologists only can conceive
this connection is of a ‘religious’ order rather than something quite
functional. Yet, archaeologists do seem able to consider the existence of a
hypothetical road system which Mike Parker-Pearson’s calls his ox-cart route,
that follows the current A40 route, but sadly doesn’t take into account the woods, swamps
and even forests of that period, which would make road passing almost impossible.
Nevertheless,
this should be no surprise to readers of the Craig Rhos-y-felin report is full of inconsistencies and logical
inaccuracies as the layout of the site was never
taken into consideration. My analysis of the area shows that the
‘Brynberian Stream’ by the rocky outcrop was much higher in the past - such as
in the period directly after the last ice age. The flooding of this area is
well known to geologists as they have found sandy deposits are in the excavation
sub-soil. Sadly, the team seems to have created a false assumption that these
flood waters are from ‘ice melt’ which rapidly disappeared after the ice age
into the sea.
This idea is easy shown to be a false assumption as, if
true, the sea levels would have risen to
a couple of meters short of today’s level then plateaued for thousands years –
but this is not the case as the scientific ocean evidence shows that the
‘seepage’ into the seas took thousands of years to occur and hence Doggerland
off the East coast of Britain, took almost ten thousand years to disappear
under the North Sea.
Craig Rhos-y-felin
seen from space (white circle)
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This misunderstanding of the past water levels has lead to Geologists
misinterpreted the sediments or the past.
A very similar soil found in one location is given a different name to
the same type of soil in another location – so the term ‘Colluvium’ and
‘Alluvium’ is a case in point. If it is
found in a dried-up land area it as called Colluvium, but if it’s by an active
river, it’s called Alluvium – the point is THEY ARE THE SAME MATERIAL – a
combination of silt and sand.
Remembering
this lack of distinction, we find in the report that an old river ran around
this quarry as long ago as 5620 – 5460 BCE and
possibly up to 1030 – 910 BCE.
“Most of
the site was then covered by a layer of yellow colluvium (035), dated by
oak charcoal to 1030–910 cal BC (combine SUERC-46199; 2799±30 BP and
SUERC-46203; 2841±28 BP). This deposit is contemporary with the uppermost fill
of a palaeochannel of the Brynberian
stream that flowed past the northern tip of the outcrop. Charcoal of Corylus
and Tilia from the basal fill of this palaeochannel
dates to 5800–5640 cal BC (OxA- 32021; 6833±40 BP) and 5620–5460 cal BC
(OxA-32022; 6543±37 BP), both at 95.4% probability”
Consequently, what the report is trying to tell us, is that
an enlarged stream that feed into the River Nevern was flowing at during the
Mesolithic Period up to the quarry outcrop rocks and it remained there just a few metres away even up to 1000 BCE. Therefore, the obvious system of transport for
these large newly quarried stones to their final destination at Stonehenge as we
have seen in other countries with their own stone constructions like Egypt –
was via a boat.
The 'enlarged stream' is more of a huge river -
perfect to float a boat with a four-tonne
bluestone down river to the Nevern
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Moreover,
the site layout also gives a clear indication on when the stone was truly quarried. There is a single monolith ready for transportation by the river on the
east side of the site and the hearths which are clearly man-made are a few
metres south of this monolith – where you would expect them. The problem for archaeologists is that these
are Mesolithic hearths, and they're not just one but four hearths dating from
8550 – 8330 BCE; 8220 – 7790 BCE 7490 – 7190BCE and finally 5210 – 4947 BCE and
yet the report quite clearly states:
“There is
no evidence of any Mesolithic Quarrying or working of Rhyolite from this crop”
This is an
astonishing unscientific claim - for how would they know what tool marks are either
Mesolithic or Neolithic (would they not be using the same tools?) And secondly,
what do they think they were doing there at
the quarry during this 1500 year period?
However,
what is quite remarkable is the fact that this is a ‘rhyolite’ Quarry. For back
at Stonehenge Pit 9580 which was excavated in 1989, was found to be in line
with not only with the four post holes found in 1966, but moreover, the one
found last month by Tim Daw we talk about earlier
The excavation report stated that Pit 9580 width started at 1.3m and was then
widened to 1.9m – so what was this large
trunk of a tree used for? The
archaeologists believed it to be a ‘totem pole’ – but why remove such a pole to
put in a larger version at a later date? What I am sure is that it could take a considerable weight if
required – but what could be the load be?
The answer comes 20cm down the infill of this post hole as they
found a piece of Rhyolite (would you believe?) And the date of this deposit can be estimated
as the soil deposit it was sitting upon was carbon dated as 7560 - 7335 BCE
overlapping with the date of hearth number three found at the quarry site.
The final and conclusive proof of my hypothesis!!
Post holes at Stonehenge on the shoreline of the
River Avon - taking off the Preseli bluestones from the boats
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Moreover,
we can now narrow down the exact date for the construction of Phase I of Stonehenge (bluestone placements in
the Aubrey holes) to at least 8000 BCE (8550 – 7335) – the earliest Hearth Date to the bluestone
found in the fill (showing its use prior to that date). In fact,
if we look at the carbon dating of the hearths at Craig Rhos-y-felin and the
Car park post hole samples date at Stonehenge we see something quite remarkable
– not only do we have one hearth matching radio carbon dates at Stonehenge – we
have all three!!
- Craig Rhos-y-felin (BCE) Car Park (BGE)
- Hearth One: 8550 – 8330 HAR-455 8820 - 7730
- Hearth Two: 8220 – 7790 GU-5109: 8090 - 7690
- Hearth Three: 7490 – 7190 QxA-4220: 7580 – 7090
- OxA 30503: 7490 – 7190 Har-456: 7480 – 6590
- SUERC-51163: 7540 - 7300 QxA- 4219: 7700 - 7420
So was it
a ‘cock-up’ or a conspiracy?
EH has
invested millions in its new 'money spinner' the Stonehenge Visitors Centre.
Within it you will see many claims and models about the origin and possible
function of Stonehenge - this exhibition has cost hundreds of thousands of
pounds to design and build. BUT what would happen if their assumptions are proven wrong?
Not only would it have to scrap all the exhibits and a new
ones installed, but also the books and literature were written over the decades
would need to be 'pulped' as they tell a story of nonsense, just as the
Victorian literature was ‘shelved’ when carbon dating revealed that it was not
a Roman Temple after all. Moreover, the directors
responsible for this multi-million pound
fraud would suffer a potential financial and credibility loss would have to
'fall on their swords' and find new jobs (and there is not many jobs around for discredited archaeologists or
historians).
Or consequently they are just NOT very good at their
job!
RJL
