Megalithic Britain

[catfish]

part 2 of the scotland doc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh36g7s21Ns

[Hughie Green]

^ ''Lochan agus lochan '' ,good ring to a term for glacial lakes and hills . Glad I watched that ,thanks for posting .

I found a clam once ,a fossil rather ,but perfect clam shape .T'was in a bog about 80 km inland !

I pass queen Scotias grave sometimes ,you'd never know only there's a little sign there on a boirín road . Shame though like Hughie says when industry bulldoze extremely important places ,untounched for thousands of years . An awful shame though that folks can't see the culture around them ,It's no use writing ''Ceud/Céad Míle Fáilte'' on a village sign ,with ''Welcome''written in bold .

It's "Cnocan agus lochan" mate " small hills and small lochs", does ring well in Gaelic, that's what I love about the language especially

place names as they often describe the landscape and vegetation, for example Gaelic for yellow is buidhe so Cnoc buidhe "yellow hill" can be traced back to the fact it had a lot of Gorse on it.

Too much of that history was destroyed by over zealous priests and people with no respect knocking stuff down for building materials,

given the amount of stuff that's left it makes you wonder what our landscape would be like if all megalithic structures had been left alone

and respected?.

[Michael Luchóg]

It's "Cnocan agus lochan" mate " small hills and small lochs", does ring well in Gaelic, that's what I love about the language especially

place names as they often describe the landscape and vegetation, for example Gaelic for yellow is buidhe so Cnoc buidhe "yellow hill" can be traced back to the fact it had a lot of Gorse on it.

Too much of that history was destroyed by over zealous priests and people with no respect knocking stuff down for building materials,

given the amount of stuff that's left it makes you wonder what our landscape would be like if all megalithic structures had been left alone

and respected?.

Sorry Hugh ,yep ''Knock '' or Cnocán , I knew that used same word twice ! I imagine most of the lands were predominantly oak for a fierce long time with few clearings ,also easy to survey and mapped by ring forts,rivers and mountains .

The language is very similar . ''Buí'' is the word for yellow in Ireland but the British changed it to ''boy'' and ''bee'' like everywhere else ,now some parts of Ireland folks don;t want to know where they live because it doesn't suit a bastardised and new culture . I'd bet the Irish that call themselves Scottish would be delighted to watch that video and maybe get familiar with their gaelic/celtic heritage!

[-=DrGreenThumb=-]

i like this bloke britain had roads good roads too before the romans came

I loved watching this, thanks for posting to the thread, will see if I can find the rest of the episodes. I watched a recent documentary on Stone Hedge on the telly last night, this married up lovely with that information.

This history really should be on the national curriculum if we are learning about Romans and stuff. It's fascinating to see what was happening in this country 7 thousand years ago, a developed culture that had been here 1000's of years before the Romans.

To think as well that their are sites in Turkey like Gobekli Tepe that are dated to around 9000BC and to think that it was completely buried with sand before it was discovered. Just amazing how old and hidden some of these sites are from ancient history.

Edited November 5, 2014 by -=DrGreenThumb=-

[catfish]

not sure if i should post this here but here goes .

the beta band farting about on some ancient site .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4HQ_HFu0cU&list=ALBTKoXRg38BC8bMghfvNjb5oXu3oF4H3f

not sure about the climbing on the stones

[Hiphip]

Feel a book purchase is in order.

Cheers

Currently indulging in the Modern Antiquarian Julian's opinion on Stonehenge being the end of the great period maybe should be noted by the BBC who are putting out a Horizon tonight.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33963372

Early Britons: Have we underestimated our ancestors?

Have we underestimated the first people to resettle Britain after the last Ice Age? Evidence from a variety of sources suggests that early Britons were more sophisticated than we could have imagined.

Archaeologists once thought that the story of the early hunter-gatherer Britons was lost to the mists of time.

The hunter-gatherers left almost no trace of their nomadic existence behind.

As a result, the stone-age settlers of ancient Britain were thought of as simple folk, living a brutal hand-to-mouth existence.

But now, evidence is emerging that turns those assumptions upside down. Archaeological sites all over the UK and northern Europe are producing evidence that paints these people in a very different light.

Thanks to this cutting-edge science, we now have an increasingly clear picture of prehistory, and the adaptable, culturally rich, and sophisticated people who inhabited these islands.

A BBC Horizon documentary, to screen on Wednesday, tells the story of this quest to understand the first Britons.

Some of these Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, people lived at Blick Mead, Wiltshire - a few miles away from the future site of Stonehenge.

Here, groups seem to have managed and cleared rich forests, built structures and returned to the same place for over 3,000 years, according to a radio carbon date range that has yielded a uniquely long sequence for any Mesolithic site in Britain and Europe - 7,596-4,246 BC.

The springs at Blick Mead may have been the initial and practical reason why people lived there long before Stonehenge was built.

They have also preserved the remains of the animals they killed, tools they made and used, and possibly a structure they lived in.

The quantities of flint tools and animal bones, especially from extinct wild cattle known as aurochs, point to people living here for long periods of time and there being long-term special memories and associations with the place.

The types and variety of flint seem to reflect the movements of people who followed game with the seasons, and chose to stay in different areas according to the changing availability of plants for food and materials, and the needs for shelter.

Taken together, the flint and other stone tool evidence suggest that Blick Mead was a feasting and gathering place for thousands of years that people travelled large distances to reach. Far from it being a place nomads dropped into once in a while, time would have been spent there, ideas exchanged and new technologies discussed and adapted.

Hunter-gatherers prospered in Britain, but then, 6,000 years ago there was a dramatic and permanent change in the way our ancestors lived their lives. So dramatic in fact that it's been given a different historical name. This was the start of the new Stone Age in Britain - the Neolithic.

It was during the Neolithic that pottery emerged, the time when people built monuments like Stonehenge - but above all else, it's the point at which people became farmers.

Scientists and archaeologists have begun to uncover evidence that local hunter-gatherer ways survived the arrival of farming rather than being extinguished, as is often depicted.

And at Blick Mead, where rare evidence of hunter-gatherer life is so well preserved, finds include bones of mice, toads and fish - we can also discover more about the origins of Stonehenge.

Excavations at the site are showing that people were living in the area from the time of the first monuments to be built at Stonehenge.

We have always thought of Mesolithic people, the first Britons, as hunter-gatherers, living a nomadic life, primitive and precarious. But what has been recently revealed at Blick Mead, and elsewhere, is the existence of a much more complex, dynamic society.

The dramatic discoveries at Blick Mead are only partly important because they provide the back story to the Stonehenge story; they are also important because they reflect the growing importance of these peoples to British history generally.

And these earliest British stories are showing that the Mesolithic was a defining period in the history of these isles.

HORIZON - First Britons is on BBC Two at 20:00 on Wednesday 19 August.

Cheers

[catfish]

my daughter and i went on a tour of wiltshire/oxford/and sommerset we saw the huffington horse a bronze age? chalk horse

britians biggest also saw the hillfort there ,we both agreed that we felt like we were on top of the world,as we watched the weather

close in . didnt get time to see waylands smithery .

we saw avebury and i must say we were both thourghly impressed by it ,we walked along the avenue and saw a dig in process .

silbury hill is 10 min drive away its massive ,fucking huge the work that went into it is amazing . west kennet long barrow is quailty too .

watch out for the swallows/swifts nesting in the barrow . you can enter this barrow and have a look about .

we also did stone henge and the circus and walked to 4 of the mounds .

avebury is a must though

,

[catfish]

silbury hill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M7kQBB49cc

[Victor Kruger]

interesting thread

[Hiphip]

Proper BUMPAGE

 

Oxford Uni has just launched a new "Hill Fort Atlas". Still in its early stages but give it a bash

 

Oxford University Link

 

Cheers

[catfish]

niceone @hiphip