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Stonehenge As a Royal Family's Burial Site
mikesd81 sends in a report from Newsday about radiocarbon dating of cremated bones excavated from Britain's Stonehenge that, an archeologist said, has solved part of the ancient mystery surrounding the 5,000-year-old site: It was a burial ground for what may have been the country's first royal dynasty. No word on how this work relates to the "Neolithic Lourdes" theory we discussed earlier. "The new dates indicate burials began at least 500 years before the first massive stones were erected at the site and continued after it was completed... The pattern and relatively small number of the graves suggest all were members of a single family. The findings provide the first substantive evidence that a line of kings ruled at least a portion of southern England during this early period. They exerted enough power to mobilize manpower necessary to move the massive stones from as far as 150 miles away and [maintained] that power for at least five centuries, said archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, leader of current excavations at the site... His findings will also appear in the June issue of National Geographic and in the television special "Stonehenge Decoded," to be shown Sunday."
Its always baffled me why Stonehenge gets all the attention, when there's a much more impressive stone circle and causeway monument four times the size only 20 miles away at Avebury - and its hardly been investigated!
So maybe I've read too much Dostoevsky over the years... but I never buy the explanations for what people think these things were.
Visiting some dolmens in France a few years ago the archaeologist explained that it was believed these were religious sites, since visitors had to bow low to enter a womb-like chamber. Sure... or... how about the small entrance is easier to heat, easy to keep dry, easier to defend, and easier to keep out animals like rats etc away from food stores. For all we know the dolmen was the first equivalent of Walmart.
Homo Sapiens is, for the most part, a selfish, greedy species. To ascribe our ancestors with cuddly, noble airs of spirituality, science and mysticism is the stuff of fairy tales, not science. Take a look at your neighborhood; minus the styles, the cars, and the pointless obsession with worthless things like social networking sites, the species is today just and evolved and spiritual as it has ever been. If anything, we've progressed (slightly) in terms of abolishing slavery, women's right etc.
Seriously, the first Walmart is more likely than some solar temple. I'll buy a royal burial site admittedly, that's just naked greed. That's pretty much what we humans are good at, especially the ones at the top of the social order.
Oh well, another year, another theory about something that's become a dull-looking tourist trap jammed next to a busy main road. Another "explanation" is bound to be along in 2009. Stonehenge is really just a prism for the subconscious preoccupations of the day. One deduces from the latest idea that the UK is now worried about how long its current royal family will last. Surprising really that the archaeologists haven't uncovered "evidence" that the site was constructed under the supervision of a Stone Age health and safety executive. Perhaps next year they'll uncover the remains of a tree stump and declare that a hollow indentation in it is proof positive of the world's first on-site hard hat.
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That's a quite good argument. Reattributing something you conquer or inherit as your own creation has been a quite common tool in ancient times for kings to justify their claim of the throne. Ramses II was notorious for it.
PR isn't an invention of today's marketing goons. It's been here long before the advent of the ability to write, but that only made it worse. It is incredible how many documents of Charles the Great exist, the overwhelming majority of which are forgeries. Kings and rulers have been forging and lying to legitimate their claim to power for as long as we have written proof, and it is doubtful that this tradition started only when we learned to write. Without written documents, it's actually easier. Kill everyone who knows otherwise and your word is the only truth.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think you're nit-picking way too much. "Country" in this case refers to the actual current borders of the UK, and this may be the burial ground within those borders of earliest origin yet discovered. In this case "first" means "earliest discovered", which is after all the best gauge we have for these things. How could we ever determine for sure which was the first, as the first may have been lost forever? As for "royal dynasty", though it may not have been made for a king or queen as we think of them today, in describing the hypothesis that the burial ground may have been for especially important persons isn't unreasonable.
I just think that for the purposes of communication with modern people it's okay to use modern terms, even if you're talking about something ancient for which there may not be an exact analogue today.
In any case the things you're complaining about are not one of those cases where someone's blatantly distorted the facts to hype up a story for the general public (see also: any popular media article having anything whatsoever to do with any physics developments past elementary mechanics).
Yet, that hasn't stopped you from making bold and unsubstantiated claims about these very societies.
Become the change you wish to see.