Stonehenge Discovery using 3D Laser Scanning

Alligator Descartes writes "The BBC reports - 'High-tech lasers have been used to unlock the secrets of Stonehenge. The work at the ancient site in Wiltshire has already uncovered two carvings which are invisible to the naked eye.' The project website contains lots of images plus some nice animations of the scan data."

Comments

And what do those carvings say?

[corebreech]

Why, "first post" of course.

Re:And what do those carvings say?

[Seehund]

"You don't have to be a druid to predict Stonehenge's future. The hand writing is on the wall: The Middle Neolithic faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for megaliths because the Middle Neolithic is dying."

Re:And what do those carvings say?

[cygnus]

And what do those carvings say?

<spinal_tap>"Where the Demons ROCK!"</spinal_tap>

Re:And what do those carvings say?

[Gorignak]

"No it's a C with a circle around it. Microsoft put it there for later use."

That looks familiar

[thrill12]

Isn't that the Mars face ?

OMG StoneHenge was created by aliens!

Re:Nuclear war

[djeaux]

They had a war, and are warning us not to repeat their mistakes...

Either that or they were into psilocybin.

Purpose

[mopslik]

I can just imagine the conversation that must have taken place when they were building Stonehenge:

"What can we do to immortalize our civilization?"
"Hey, let's build a giant stone monument with no discernable purpose!"
"Man, that will mess with their heads for YEARS!"

Some of the carvings found with the laser

[The_ForeignEye]

Besides the shapes, they also found WRITING incriptions! among them:

• Skimpy was here (1969)
• Ron loves Linda
• Go Western United!
• Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder
• I hate you Bill!

Sorry... it's friday. I couldn't help it. It was a long week for me...

Re:Some of the carvings found with the laser

[hesiod]

> > Go Western United!
> Stonehenge is in England

I know! That's what makes it so mysterious! WooOOOOoooOOOooo...

Re:But how do they know...

[Zocalo]

The markings could have been used to differentiate the stones. Stone C (axe) on top of Stones B (dagger) and C (man), etc..

I now have an image of Stonehenge arriving in huge flatpacks with the ancient rune of "Ikea" stamped on them. Actually, given the typical Brit's bafflement at a set of instructions from Ikea, that probably explains it - Stonehenge was *supposed* to be a five piece table and chair set, but the druids read the plans wrong... ;)

Re:So what's the secret?

[Senjaz]

If they told you, it wouldn't be a secret would it ;)

I think it says "Mom, in a spinning class!"

[japes]

I think it says "Mom, in a spinning class!"

Hurry up and Wait

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

Using state-of-the-art technology, scientists have laser scanned Stonehenge and found a detailed description of the monolithic structure carved on one of the stones.

However, the description was encoded using 128 bit public key (axe,axe,hammer,axe,dagger,dagger,axe,axe,dagger,d agger,hammer,axe,dagger,axe...)

With the current state of computing. It will take 10000 years and the energy of the Sun to decipher the carvings

One of the inscriptions found

[matt-fu]

"Cthulhu was here"

Old languages

[DJStealth]

You think any of those carvings are in the ancient languages of COBOL or Fortran?

Re:Hmmm...

[keep_it_simple_stupi]

Wouldn't that just iritate us if it just turned out to be graffiti? I keep wondering what might happen if someone 4000 years from now found a random sticky note from my desk.

Phrase - "Delete user user's access from domain."

Interperatation - "Some great and powerful leader is able to grant and revoke a drug addict's access to his land. And what is this sticky stuff on the back?"

Real answer - "This is a sticky note from an under paid sysadmin doing menial data entry work on an active directory project."

Using my generator

[stud9920]

Middle Neolitic, era, dead at 5000

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - historical era Middle Neolitic was found dead in Stonehenge this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to world history. Truly an European icon.

Feel free to generate *lithic is dying using the link in my sig.