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."

Re:And what do those carvings say?

[beantowne]

Looks to me like it says slashdotted.

Bad Link in story

[Brahmastra]

Here's the correct link

That looks familiar

[thrill12]

Isn't that the Mars face ?

OMG StoneHenge was created by aliens!

Hmmm...

[Whispers_in_the_dark]

I'm no archaeologist, but the images have about the same level of conclusiveness as to their composition (that they are "axe-heads") as the Cydonia Face. I'm sure there are other reasons for their conclusions but I sure don't see them from my untrained eye.

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."

Re:Nuclear war

[djeaux]

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

Either that or they were into psilocybin.

But how do they know...

[YanceyAI]

The article says researchers are hoping the carvings will help them better understand Stonehenge. I visited the site, but I can't tell if they are implying that they know the carvings and the arrangement of the stones were done by the same people.

Could the stone arrangement predate the carvings?

Does anyone know if there is proof that understanding the carvings will actually help them understand Stonehenge? Maybe the axes are just bronze age graffiti.

Re:But how do they know...

[stevesliva]

Could the stone arrangement predate the carvings?

From the press release:

The stones at Stonehenge were put up in about 2,300 BC. The axes are of types made around 1,800 BC, so the carvings are likely to be five centuries younger than the stones. Their purpose is a mystery.

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... ;)

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!"

They look rather dubious to me

[los furtive]

They look more like the sort of mark left after the impact of a metal object. Maybe someone just banged an axe against the stone. Cavemen were capable of better art than this (I'm not talking about the alignment of the stones themselves).

Re:They look rather dubious to me

[PhysicsExpert]

This is actually a very good point, the impact marks do look very crude and not at all like the type of art found at sites of a similar age. Perhaps the best way would be analyse the stones in a mass spectrometer to look for traces of metal from an axe.

I think the most impressive thing about stonehenge is that in order to build it, the neaderthal men would have had to understand an awful lot about the world. They managed to align it so that it produces perfectly circular shadows on the two solstice days, which implies that not only did they realise that the sun was at the center of the solar system, but they had correctly estimated the earth-sun distance to within .5%. As an example of how impressive this was, the stones were disturbed in the mid 17th Centuary and the best scholars of the day (including Robert Hooke) were unable to realign them properly. It was only a hundred years later with the invention of mechanical calculating machines that the correct positions could be identified and the correct shadows re-established.

I dunno...

[iiioxx]

Looks more like tool marks than "carvings" to me. I think this is just a bunch of archeologists seeing what they want to see.

Re:I dunno...

[gnovos]

Looks more like tool marks than "carvings" to me. I think this is just a bunch of archeologists seeing what they want to see.

And this is new in archeology... how?

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...

Erm, radio carbon dating huh?

[Senjaz]

From the project website:

"But the advent of radiocarbon dating showed decisively that Stonehenge was much older than Mycenae. Indeed, the idea of making carvings in stone springs from a long tradition."

Right, carbon dating rocks eh? Using what carbon? Carbon dating can only date things which had sufficient carbon 14 content and is based on its radio active decay to carbon 12. It only works on things that were once living (I'm no scientist but I'm pretty sure these rocks weren't) and even then it can produce hideously inaccurate results.

As for the scanning. The markings could be anything. Because of the extent of errosion there is no way you can tell if these were done shortly after construction or years afterwards.

Nothing but misinformation here.

Re:Erm, radio carbon dating huh?

[PainKilleR-CE]

Right, carbon dating rocks eh? Using what carbon? Carbon dating can only date things which had sufficient carbon 14 content and is based on its radio active decay to carbon 12. It only works on things that were once living (I'm no scientist but I'm pretty sure these rocks weren't) and even then it can produce hideously inaccurate results.

compared to http://www.c14dating.com/int.html

Of major recent interest is the development of the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry method of direct C14 isotope counting. In 1977, the first AMS measurements were conducted by teams at Rochester/Toronto and the General Ionex Corporation and soon after at the Universities of Simon Fraser and McMaster (Gove, 1994). The crucial advantage of the AMS method is that milligram sized samples are required for dating. Of great public interest has been the AMS dating of carbonacous material from prehistoric rock art sites, the Shroud of Turin and the Dead Sea Scrolls in the last few years. The development of high-precision dating (up to +/-2.0 per mille or +/-16 yr) in a number of gas and liquid scintillation facilities has been of similar importance (laboratories at Belfast (N.Ireland), Seattle (US), Heidelberg (Ger), Pretoria (S.Africa), Groningen (Netherlands), La Jolla (US), Waikato (NZ) and Arizona (US) are generally accepted to have demonstrated radiocarbon measurements at high levels of precision). The calibration research undertaken primarily at the Belfast and Seattle labs required that high levels of precision be obtained which has now resulted in the extensive calibration data now available. The development of small sample capabilities for LSC and Gas labs has likewise been an important development - samples as small as 100 mg are able to be dated to moderate precision on minigas counters (Kromer, 1994) with similar sample sizes needed using minivial technology in Liquid Scintillation Counting. The radiocarbon dating method remains arguably the most dependable and widely applied dating technique for the late Pleistocene and Holocene periods.

Materials that can be carbon-dated using current methods include:
# Charcoal, wood, twigs and seeds.
# Bone.
# Marine, estuarine and riverine shell.
# Leather.
# Peat
# Coprolites.
# Lake muds (gyttja) and sediments.
# Soil.
# Ice cores.
# Pollen.
# Hair.
# Pottery.
# Metal casting ores.
# Wall paintings and rock art works.
# Iron and meteorites.
# Avian eggshell.
# Corals and foraminifera.
# Speleothems.
# Tufa.
# Blood residues.
# Textiles and fabrics.
# Paper and parchment.
# Fish remains.
# Insect remains.
# Resins and glues.
# Antler and horn.
# Water.

rock art, metal casting ores, water? I'm pretty sure these weren't living, either.

A link from the site to http://www.eng-h.gov.uk/stoneh/start.htm
yields the following:
# A thorough reassessment of all existing radiocarbon dates was attempted.

# New samples were selected according to rigorous selection procedures.

# Radiocarbon dating was carried out on these samples, either using Liquid Scintillation Counting or Accelerator Mass Spectrometry.

# Rigorous quality control procedures at the dating laboratories ensured the scientific reliability of the measurements.

# Statistical analysis and calibration of the reliable results using the calibration and analysis program OxCal (v2.16) enabled us to model the chronology of Stonehenge.

Re:So what's the secret?

[Senjaz]

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

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

Re:What would the builders have thought of this?

[digitalhermit]

I imagine stonehenge was more the equivalent of a present day water works project such as a dam or sewer treatment plant, except that it was likely controlled by priests who, throughout history, have a major goal of perpetuating the priesthood. This is assuming that Stonehenge could have been used for practical purposes such as forecasting the proper crop planting time rather than just some gee-whiz gadgetry to keep the general populace in awe and in bondage.

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?

It just shows

[Anonym1ty]

Isn't is amazing how the aliens who built stonehenge carved pictures on it knowing only modern man would be able to view them once he had discovered lasers.

Bridges... get your bridges right here

Re:What would the builders have thought of this?

[wytcld]

priests who, throughout history, have a major goal of perpetuating the priesthood - some gee-whiz gadgetry to keep the general populace in awe and in bondage

There's a major difference between shamanic and priestly practices - check the anthropological literature. In all likelihood the Stonehenge builders were still a shamanic society. Shamanism is more about freedom than bondage. All cultural groups tend towards conformity - just as you are conforming with a certain image of what all spiritual practice is about in your statement. The role of the shaman has always been to see the world from outside the safe sphere of conventional points-of-view, to bravely go beyond, even at the expense of becoming exceedingly weird.

Priests, on the other hand, often seek to defend the conventional from the perceived threat of shamans, burning them as witches in our most stereotyped example. But the point is Northern Europe was largely shamanic, not priestly, until the Catholics came in roughly 1000 years back. And Northern Europe largely threw off the Catholics in favor of a more individual relation with whatever's real after not so many centuries of allowing those priests to officiate.

The British and American heritage of valuing individual freedom and conscience reflects the closeness of the shamanic past, and the undercurrents from it that still nourish our roots. So the very tradition from within which you're condemning the Stonehenge builders as "priests" owes quite a lot to those builders, and the shamans among them who quite likely encourage this cool architecture not to enslave, but to liberate.

Re:[Blank Stripped]Google cache with pix

[derubergeek]

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:BAqUaiHp3yAJ: www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART18464.html+s tonehenge+laser+scan&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

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.