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Ancient Village Unearthed Near Stonehenge
cityhunter007 writes to point out coverage on CNN.com about an ancient village discovered two miles from Stonehenge that may have housed workers building the monument, or perhaps visitors after it was constructed. The village, at a site known as Durrington Walls, dates from about the time Stonehenge was built, 2600 BCE. The article says: "The researchers speculated that Durrington Walls was a place for the living and Stonehenge — where cremated remains have been found — was a cemetery and memorial... Stonehenge was oriented to face the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, while the wooden circle at Durrington Walls faced the midwinter sunrise and midsummer sunset."
First one to mod up a mere Spinal Tap reference without a joke as "Funny" gets kneecapped...
(and that includes this post)
Nobody knows who they were
Or what they were doing...
(But they did have the sense to make Stonehenge a bit taller than 18".)
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
but the stones have forgotten them.
Not a bad commute.
I thought I read somewhere that Stonehenge was not originally intended as a burial ground, and that the burials date to a later era. Am I just remembering wrong?
I, for one, welcome our ne^H^Hold Stonehenge building Hobbit overlords... or not.
Now we will truly know how well the banshees lived; that they did live well. Stonehenge!
The article calls Durrington Walls a "place for the living"? The houses appear to have been abandoned while still intact, given the artefacts found within them.
Silly question: where did everyone go?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Nothing to do with Stonehenge per se, just an anecdote. We have a neolithic stone, known as the Long Stone, a ten minute walk down the road from where I'm writing this, which is on the edge of the Wye Valley , right up against the Welsh border. It's a single stone, sticking up at an angle of about 75 degrees, perhaps seven feet tall. A few years ago I had to walk from my village to the nearest town to sign on the dole - a tedious 40 minute slog along unmaintained road verges - but passing the stone, I always felt compelled to reach out and give it a pat. I'm a hardcore, Dawkins-type rationalist, but I don't see any contradiction between that and a consciously irrational but of behaviour like patting the stone... it fits my brain, somehow, and it feels good to be connected with the people who lived here four thousand years ago. Poor bastards, it must have been miserable during the winter nights.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Before Stonehenge, there was Woodhenge and Strawhenge, but a big bad wolf came and blew them down, and three little piggies were relocated to the projects.
2 miles of walking is about half an hour each way. So the Stonehenge workers spent a hour-a-day getting to and from work.
Some things never change.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
no pun intended (or is there?)
In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history.
There lived a strange race of people...the Druids.
No one knows who they were, or what they were doing...
but their legacy remains...
hewn into the living rock of Stonehenge...
Stonehenge,
where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge
Where a man is a man
and the children dance to the pipes of Pan
Stonehenge
Tis a magic place where the moon doth rise
With a dragon's face
Stonehenge
Where the virgins lie
And the prayer of devils fill the midnight sky
And you my love, won't you take my hand
We'll go back in time to that mystic land
Where the dew drops cry and the cats meow
I will take you there
I will show you how
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
beaten to the punch!
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Like, far out, man!
Actually it hasn't been unearthed at all, just detected using a geophysical survey.
Just some background:
Back in the ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, there lived a strange race of druids. Until now, no one knew who they were or what they were doing, but we knew of their legacy, hewn into the living rock of Stonehenge.
The only thing we have learned until now is that they were little people. And oh, how they danced, the little people of Stonehenge...
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Quite a few cultures have whole towns for their dead, where they 'live'. And of course they need their usual tools for their everyday (after)life.
I wouldn't rule out the possibility that this was just that: A town for the souls of the deceased.
Stonehenge would be more a place for the living and the worship of the various nature phenomenons that can be observed from various points inside the megalith monument. The stones are aligned with key points of the yearly changes in sunrise and sunset, and a few other theories are tossed around concerning the meaning of other stones, in respect to other celestial bodies.
But then again, let the archeologists do their job and find out what's cooking. In fact, we're just tossing around theories as well.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
FTA: an ancient village discovered two miles from Stonehenge that may have housed workers building the monument, or perhaps visitors after it was constructed.
No, it was something far more sinister. The SPLA: Stonehenge Project Licensing Authority official gift shoppe.
A friend of mine. Silulu. Hot Polynesian Geek Chick.
BCE WTF?? At least Y2K is both culturally OK and well understood. I vote for BY2K.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
cityhunter007
Wonder what his profession/hobby is. And are there actually 6 others with that handle?
The presence of an early Starbucks proves it was a city and likely to be one of the earliest geek sites.
CE and BCE have the advantage of not being religion-based. In paticular, AD is offensive, as Domini is the root for dominate : unsuitable for free minds.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
This is obviously the fabled city which contains the space-time portal to Mars. But if I were them I'd keep it secret: for one thing, just think of pranks you could pull with Spirit and Opportunity.
And, IMHO, it makes at least as much sense as 'common era', since the numbering of the era is intrinsically tied to Christianity, and wrapping it in the name "common" doesn't really change that (and hey, are you trying to be some sort of Western imperialist declaring your era numbering to be the one "common" system and implying other alternative calendars are uncommon? Well, not that they aren't, but... :D)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Actually, domini is Latin for "lord". So AD, which in Latin stands for anno domini, means "Year of Lord". Not as ominous as you'd have it sound..
CE and BCE have the advantage of not being religion-based.
No they are religion based because of the choice of zero year. Renaming them does not alter that and to be honest seems more insulting because it seems to suggest that a non-christian will somehow be stupid enough not to notice what you are doing!
All the major religions have their own system of years so either we ought to use one and call it that for cultural reasons or else choose a non-religious event of world significance (invention of printing press, landing on the moon spring to mind) and use that as zero. Renaming them "BCE" and "CE" is just stupid and from my point of view infinitely more insulting to a non-christian.
On the plus side the first time I saw "BCE" I was in Canada and briefly thought that this must be the Canadian equivalent of "BC"...."Before Christ Eh?"
The OP didn't say Domini wasn't Latin for "Lord", he said: Domini is the root for dominate Which is entirely separate from what you're saying, and correct, to boot.
Boy I bet the ancestors of the Stonehenge builders will be pissed when they get the bill for the delinquent VAT taxes on Stonehenge and the new village.
Renaming them "BCE" and "CE" is just stupid and from my point of view infinitely more insulting to a non-christian.
Ah, yes! It's time once again for that favorite pastime of obnoxious, unsocialized nerds: telling other people what you think they should and should not be offended by.
If my calling you an obnoxious, unsocialized nerd insults you, please allow me to dodge my way out of an apology and instead lecture you on how you ought to feel!
It has been 'BC' for many hundreds of years. Adding the 'E' to the end is just deliberately offensive.
Does Randall Schwartz know?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
While we're collecting, there's Concretehenge here in Oregon:
http://www.maryhillmuseum.org/about.htm/
"...a full scale replica of England's famous neolithic Stonehenge."
(Scroll down to "Maryhill's Stonehenge".)
I guess technically, Klickitat County and the whole north side of the Columbia River is in Washington, not Oregon. I previewed for formatting but not content.
If you travel north through Scotland all the way to the Orkney Islands, you will find henges older than Stonhenge that you can walk up to and touch. They aren't as big, but nothing can compare to touching a man-made structure older than the bible; there are other neolithic and Viking sites in the Orkneys that you can examine with little or no supervision. Unparalleled.
"Killroy was here"...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
although some experts are convinced it says... "First post"... and a few are convinced it says... *The henge "bluestoned" again... we're off to work on Hurd"
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
CE is offensive as it implies that people born in the last 2007 years are common.
They are religion based, but not because of the choice of zero year, 'coz they haven't got this newfangled idea of "zero" yet...
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
I went there just after my 6th birthday (I'm 40 now) and back then you could walk all over the place, touch the stones, etc. I remember trying to push them over, I guess I was a bit too small bit damn I really tried!
But too many idiot new agers went there and chipped off a piece of the stones to take home, the only way to preserve them for future generations from that was to keep people away from them.
When I went there last in 1999 I thought it was kind of funny that the stones were "protected" by a rope about 6" off the ground, about 30 feet away. I mean, obviously if you walked over the rope towards the stones someone would come over and tell you you couldn't do that, so I understand why. It is kind of cool that they realized they didn't need a real fence to keep people away, so that it doesn't intrude on the experience at all.
I've always thought that the peoples of yesteryear were a lot more practical than we currently give them credit for. For example, if you are wandering around on a pretty big island, it would have been really great if you could ask directions to the nearest big circle of rocks so that you could go there, watch the sun come up, get your bearings and choose a direction to head off on the next days walk. This would have provided a much more consistent route than asking a local.
Bloody humans, scratch their mark on everything. Earliest graffitti in our house is scratched into the stone door frame, says "SK 1773" (house was built in 1729).
So, what do you call the months (roman gods) and the weekdays (norse gods)?
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
January, February, etc.
Monday, Tuesday, etc.
Most calendars have these printed on them so you can use one if you want to find out what the remaining months and days are called.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Renaming them "BCE" and "CE" is just stupid and from my point of view infinitely more insulting to a non-christian.
I don't really see how either would be insulting. It's just a unit of measurement, no different to miles and kilometres. It just happens that this one was created by Christians but it's all just mythology anyway, not like using the phrase BC carries with it an endorsement of the claim that a bloke was born to the son of a virgin and went on to rise from the dead and inspire people to be incredibly irritating for thousands of years afterwards.
AD and BC are sensible conventions. We can't change the fact that this date was chosen for religious reasons and there's no obvious need to try. I'd sooner spend the time keeping religion out of government than out of measurements.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!!! I bet it could compute sunrise and sunset of every day!
> The village...dates from about the time Stonehenge was built, 2600 BCE.
Holy crap! People in England were worshipping the wrong false god two thousand years before Moses was even born to tell 'em what the right one was! Heck, this was thousands of years before Yahweh had his girlfriend Ishtar and other gods of his pantheon stripped away!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Evidence suggests that the village may have been targetted by the Horde (not further identified). Furthermore, nearby burial plots have been noticeably empty of epic artifacts, suggesting that the attack might have been the result of a large scale ganking of a lower level area.
Life needs more saving throws.
From your link itself:
"Note: Much of this article puts forward original ideas and is based on readings of the English translations of primary source material. The primary source materials for the article are those that are included in the body of the article. Additional resources which may not have previously been linked or referenced above are noted below."
Even the author admits it's his own theory, which he backs up with his own study and research (because he can't find other people who support this idea). It's hard to imagine that the Gospel of Mark was intended as religious fiction (think an ancient 'Left Behind' series) and was then believed en mass by people unaware that it was written as fiction. Certain points of the article have a lot of support- for instance most reasearchers do believe Mark was the first gospel, and Luke and Matthew drew a lot of information from it. He's also correct in that Mark is not written in a formal historical style the way Luke is, but that doesn't mean it's not meant to be a factual account.
Proving the non-existance of Christ would be nice- but that's like proving the non-existance of Julius Ceaser. There's too much evidence that some guy named Jesus walked around preaching to people and got a bunch of followers crazy enough to die for him. Just like there's too much evidence that Julius Ceaser existed and got a bunch of followers crazy enough to die for him (or at least kill for him).
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
The point being that bitching about AD/BC is utterly stupid since even if we name the years after some fictional birth year of Jesus, we also name the months in a similar way, for example March from Mars the roman god of war.
And the weekdays: Wednsday from Woodans / Odins day and Thursday giving homage to Thor, the god of thunder.
Yeah, sorry I was being a bit cheeky there.
I agree with you, these are just names. Personally I'd like to see an end to religion but I would definitely not want to see the stories and myths simply vanish. There's rich history there and some pretty entertaining stories to be found.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
> Not as ominous as you'd have it sound.
Unless you're convinced there is no god, and you don't want to support spreading religious nonsense of any sort.
No, I don't watch too much SG-1.
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
Where the heck did this come from? Next are you going to start singing "throw the Wolf-Vampire-hybrid down the well"?
"I love his boyish charm, but I hate his childishness" - Leela
I hope you realize that you are defending a minority opinion. I didn't even realize there were intelligent people out there who believed this before today. Keep in mind that it is the job of the extremist to prove his point, not scream at the mainstream people to disprove it. (i.e. it is the creationist's job to show evidence for creationism, not the evolutionist's job to disprove it).
This theory has a few problems with it. First:
If Jesus wasn't a real person, why didn't people say so? You'd think that evidence that Jesus didn't exist at all would have been noteworthy back in the day. You're implying that people today are smart enough to figure out that Jesus was just a story, but back then even the critics of Christianity thought they were dealing with the idiot followers of an actual (dead) person.
Second:
Why would people believe an allegory was true in the first place?
It's much simpler to believe that Jesus was some heretic whose deeds were greatly exagerrated than to believe that he didn't exist at all.
I will cede the point the Ceasar has a greater diversity of sources supporting his existence than Jesus does. Of course, Ceasar was also worshipped as a god, but I don't think your belief in Ceasar means that you think he is one. My point was simply that Jesus and Ceasar are both people we have no direct proof of existing, but we have a huge number of sources supporting their existence. It's much simpler to believe in some actual figure than to believe that Jesus was a myth people misinterpreted as true.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
The only reliable documents we have that are evidence of Jesus's existance are Christian ones. (There are plenty of non-Christian evidence of Christians, which is not the same thing). While there are lots of sources, many of them reference each other.
This is established enough not to be an assumption.
You also rely on three assumptions: 1. That Jesus was important enough to be mentioned in non-Christian history, 2. That Christianity is descended from Hellenistic 'mystery religions', and 3. Early Christians heavily edited documents to fake their own history.
#1. is debateable- Even Christian texts seem to indicate that while thousands attended Jesus's speeches, only a small handful actually followed him around and followed his teachings. Some random guy preaching for a couple of years, being denounced as a heretic, and getting killed was actually fairly common. (This is actually quite embarassing for Christians- That despite long-term reach, his short term influence was minimal)
#2 is likewise debateable- There is a lot of correlation between Christianity and certain mystery religions. This can be explained by a) coincidence (There were a LOT of mystery religions, it's not surprising some of them were similar) b) Christianity borrowing imagery/ideas from other sources (which happend) c)mystery religions borrowing ideas from Christianity (which also happened).
#3 is hard to prove/disprove. It's pretty clear that Christians did edit Josephus (though this could have been accidental, as your article points out). Certainly there was a convergence of doctrine that created the Catholic Church, and many opposing views became labeled as heresies (and thus are harder to find). Of course, most the re-writing of the actual 'books' of the New Testament would have had to come before the New Testament was standardized.
From these assumptions (backed, of course, with evidence), it is then argued that it makes more sense for Christianity to stem from a mis-interpretation of a similar mystery religion's fiction than it does for Christianity to have stemmed from an actual person- easy enough to do when you've already dismissed all Christian sources that don't support your point as fiction.
I liked the article and found it well-researched. If Christ is entirely fictional, like he claims, that's how it could have happened. I want you to realize, though, that just because an argument is well-researched and well thought out doesn't mean it's correct. Many people disagree with one or more of his assumptions, and even if they agreed with them all, that doesn't mean they agree with his conclusion.
Your agression in defending this idea is entertaining- you clearly don't want anyone disbelieving your 'one, true way' of interpreting Christian history. But the article you linked to (and the research that your responses encouraged me to do) taught me a lot of interesting things. Thanks for being annoying enough to make me learn something.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Occam's Razor is an early rule for scientific reasoning (and a great one at that).
As such, it would still be valuable when one tries to keep a possible explanation for the disappearing inhabitants of the village lean and clear, without adding too many presumptions at will (some of which might be pretty far-fetched).
Obviously, Occam's Razor is not apt for dealing with the beliefs of people of that era (or any era) in detail.
Occam does not suggest (at least to my knowledge) that simple beliefs might be more "justified" than more complex ones.
First, there is a difference between a bad analogy and a lie- or even a mistake and a lie. Equating the two is rude.
Secondly, this is Slashdot. No one here makes eloquent arguments- they merely link to people who do. Certainly you were anything but eloquent, even if your link was.
Thirdly, if you know 10% as much as you think you do, you would realize that most historians believe Jesus was a real individual, and they aren't idiots. This is mostly because we have many second hand accounts (people who met people who claimed to have met Jesus). Luke, for instance, claims to have met hundreds of such people (though he never saw Jesus himself). Paul is also supposed to have known Peter and James, who did know him. Now, we can dismiss it all as entirely fictional (your stance, which requires an interesting conspiracy, fiction misinterpreted as true, and much deliberately false history) or we can assume that these sources had their basis in a (sorcerer/ faith healer/ lunatic/ god/ alien/ preacher) who walked around.
I find your article well researched, like I said- It's got much more of a factual basis than the DaVinci Code, for instance. However, it's asking people to accept a theory that seems much less plausible than most mainstream theories. Yes, it's possible- but I don't buy it.
P.S. Saying Josephus is the only source worth anything, and it's obviously (fake/ accidental addition), therefore no other sources are worth anything, is called a circular argument. We all know Josephus's text isn't considered reliable enough, that doesn't invalidate everything else.
P.S.S. You can believe whatever you want- and find evidence to support your own worldview. I'm just trying to warn you that no one else has to believe you. Furthermore, while you might be intelligent (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt) being insulting won't win you any debates. It will just get other fanatics riled up, and the occasional eccentric that likes conversations with fanatics interested.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
"When Peter came to Antioch, I [Paul] opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he [Peter] was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group." (The N.I.V Bible, Galatians: 2:11-12)
/.- something that will haunt you for the rest of your life.
So it looks like Paul did mention meeting these people. You're certainly not qualified to talk about what the New Testament says- you'd better stick to what your article says, which has much more correct information that you do. Otherwise your mistakes might mean some idiot calls you a liar on
Certainly if you dismiss everything in the New Testament wrote as entirely fictional, your point that the New Testament is entirely fictional holds. But you do weird leaps of logic where you accept Paul's claims of recieving 'visions' as proof of the non-existence of Jesus, and somehow interpret that as him not having any other contact with Christians, something that he most emphatically denies. (You could say that's all lies too, but why would that be so?) Also, you claim that all Christian works are unrealiable, but you somehow claim that Josephus (which is a Jewish work that still has references to miracles and the supernatural) as reliable? What discredits all the Christian testaments in your mind as completely false? Luke, especially, was written by a well-educated man in the classical historical style, and though he certainly borrowed information form Mark (which you point out was not written in the classical historical style), he also claimed to have talked to many eyewitness of Jesus, as well as following Paul for parts of his missionary journeys. (All this can be verified by simply reading Luke, and though we aren't certain that it was Luke who wrote it, it's reasonable to assume he was). It's not enough to believe that Mark was fake and Luke mis-interpreted it... In order for your theory to hold, Luke has to be a deliberate lie, Paul would have to be aware of Luke's fake story to fake his own compatible stories, and almost every book in the new testament would have been written as a deliberate lie/exageration. Furthermore, all this would have to be done long before the Church was widespread or powerful enough for this elaborate deception to be worth the effort. On top of that, the people who wrote the New Testament (Paul especially) faced huge persecution and death for proclaiming the things they had written- which makes them more likely to be deluded idiots than intelligent liars.
And you think that your conspiracy theory is the 'Brutally Honest Truth'.
You're right in that there is no way to win a debate on religious issues- all we really have is historical evidence. Historical evidence that points to there being a real Jesus that walked around preaching to people, as documented by numerous, seperate second-hand accounts. The only way of disputing that is by claiming there is a vast religious conspiracy that was so successful that we don't have good evidence for it. Believing in vast, invisible conspiracies is like believing in magical invisible fairies- you attribute amazing powers to them, incredible deeds, and no solid proof they exist.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Ah, yes! It's time once again for that favorite pastime of obnoxious, unsocialized nerds: telling other people what you think they should and should not be offended by.
I'm flattered that you think that my point of view is SO important that people will feel that they should be agreeing with it. I realise that English may not be your first language but there is a difference between expressing a point of view (as I did) and issuing an instruction (as you think I did). It might also be worth pointing out that expressing points of view (without the implication that everyone MUST agree) is generally how enlightened discussion progresses in places like Europe, Australia and Canada although I know that some other countries have trouble with this concept.