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>

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...

[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!"

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.

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...

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