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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."
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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!
That's what they want you to think. But then when it starts taking down satellites with an ion beam then we'll see what it was built for. Aliens I tell you!
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Anything to discount the alien theory
Henge
Stonehenge is type of henge. There are many, many henges, and not all of them are in Britain. There are even henges in America, one of the more famous ones being at Cahokia Mounds and is called 'Woodhenge'.
So, to answer your question, yes, there is more than one.
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"first" - nope - there were thousands of years of these patchy clans and communities going back far before 5,000 BP - the Stonehenge neolithic communities and any political, cultural or religious "leaders" there weren't the "first" anything.
"royal dynasty" - Firstly it wasn't royal - that is a modern definition, and can only be used when it means what it says, I see the FA uses it as well, and it should be rightly criticised for inaccurate reporting. We know little concrete about how stone age societies functioned - far too little to use the word "royal". Secondly there is no evidence that it is a "dynasty" of anything.
Historical accuracy seems to becoming abandoned these days. The media seem to becoming more and more able to get away with just making up anything they want to fit the "angle", particularly with scientific pieces.
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.
this 'burial' theory just ignores the fact that rulers, ruling families, especially the first family of any new kingdom/dynasty etc, had the habit of claiming long standing monuments, legends, traditions as their own, and claiming they were the first, and even order distortion of existing records (if there is any) to that extent.
this can happen and take unbelievable forms even in civilizations that had long standing history, like egypt. it is too common for pharaohs to deface all mentions of previous pharaohs from even temple hieroglyphs, have scribes rewrite the records.
one of the most curious examples is the great pyramid. despite it is supposedly the 3rd true pyramid that is built, and it should have all kinds of glyphs, wall art, statues and carvings to nail the legacy of Khufu at every step inside the pyramid, there are NO mentions of khufu's name everywhere but on a small wall glyph (that contains only his name) over where his casket is placed. the king chamber is also curious, it has no kind of wall art, carvings or anything of the sort. this creates a contrast to long standing egypt tradition (even at that date) of adorning every bit of the burial site with all kinds of art and wall carvings and glyphs.
no sir. experience of mankind through history states that this new find didnt solve any mystery in regard to past of stonehenge.
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I, for one, welcome our Neolithic Lourdes.
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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They're Germans, from the house Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (the English branch of which being renamed to Windsor when having German sounding names didn't make you popular), and before that, house Hanover (since the early 18th century).
And even before that it was far more complicated than simply being descendants of William I
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Personally I doubt it, because coal wasn't even important in Britain (or almost anywhere else) before the 1600's-1700's or so.
Even in the iron age, the preferred fuel originally was charcoal. It's only when wood was more important for building whole ship armadas, that coal became the fuel of choice.
In the bronze age, you didn't even need coal at all, as tin and copper can be smelted with wood just as well. They have a lower melting point than iron. Copper: 1084.62 C, Tin: 231.93C, vs Iron: 1538 C. So with a good forge you just need wood to generate the temperatures needed for copper or bronze.
The first stage of Stonehenge dates from 3100 BC, although the stones you see now are from 2200 BC. In 3100 BC Britain wasn't just waay before Iron Age at that point, but was probably before Bronze Age too, if I remember the general timeline right. They were decidedly chalcolithic, i.e., a mixture of copper for weapons and some tools, and still a lot of stuff made of stone or bone.
I.e., the economic demand for coal was somewhere between "not at all" and "buggerall". Assuming that anyone went feverishly poking holes all over the place to find coal, is just... the wrong age for that.
Additionally, Stonehenge 1 from 3100 BC already had a big ditch dug in the middle. So they'd already know if there was any ore or (still worthless) coal underneath. Assuming that they still went and poked the same place with square holes around it for another 1000 years, is kinda silly. There was no further point in probing the same damned place as opposed to going looking somewhere else.
And even if they just buried some poor workers in such holes, noone would drag holes from 300km away from Wales to use as headstones for poor miner families. The poor guys would just get a wooden marker for their grave, not hundreds of people dragging and lifting stones for their grave. Their families wouldn't have been able to pay those.
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