Stonehenge

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 10:41 am

Hey, Ish.

What do you think of seeker over at JNE? He's good. He's really into the minimalist school!

Ishtar · Post by **Ishtar** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 12:01 pm

For me, Seeker's excellent because he's got the whole Persian thing nailed....so I can feed my whole Indian thing into it. That's rare for me, to meet someone with that kind of knowledge, who can understand where I'm coming from. His expertise is only comparable to your own. I really enjoy our discussions ... even when I don't say much, I'm reading.

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 12:08 pm

I'm going to send him a PM with an invitation to drop by over here.

Ishtar · Post by **Ishtar** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 12:15 pm

Great news .... I hope he comes!

Post by **MichelleH** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 12:26 pm

Minimalist wrote:I'm going to send him a PM with an invitation to drop by over here.

Min,

Let me know the user name so he doesn't get thrown out with the rest of the trash.

Now we return you to regular programming on Stonehenge.....

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 12:42 pm

At JNE he goes by the name "seeker" but I'll ask him to let me know if a) he's interested and b) if he wants to use another name.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Mon May 26, 2008 8:17 pm

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/th ... 34313.html

Stone Age Britons had a sophisticated knowledge of geometry to rival Pythagoras – 2,000 years before the Greek "father of numbers" was born, according to a new study of Stonehenge.

Five years of detailed research, carried out by the Oxford University landscape archaeologist Anthony Johnson, claims that Stonehenge was designed and built using advanced geometry.

This is a bit of a different twist on Stonehenge. What do you think Digit?

dannan14 · Post by **dannan14** » Mon May 26, 2008 11:07 pm

i was drooling over the beginning of this article because it made so much sense to me, but then i read:

Johnson's research, published as a book this week, shows that Stonehenge derived its design from geometrical knowledge and features no less than six concentric polygons – a 56-sided outer one built around 2950BC; a regular octagon built around 2500BC) inside that; two concentric (though partly inaccurate) 30-sided polygons built around 1650BC, which were based on a series of hexagons; a 30-sided inner polygon (the sarsen stone ring which was built around 2500BC) also based on hexagonal geometry; and two probable 40-sided concentric polygons (probable former blue stone positions built around 2600BC) that were later modified to 30-sided ones. They also created the famous central stone "horseshoe" utilising the survey markers used to create the thirty-sided sarsen polygon.

My bolding of course. My elation dropped at each of these parts. The first because now it sounds like a really cool book that i would love to read but never have the time to do fact checking. And the other two concern me because many science themed books that i really enjoy seem to force the facts to fit the hypothesis. i hope this book is above all that.

Post by **Minimalist** » Mon May 26, 2008 11:10 pm

There's a special coming up on Stonehenge next weekend. From the promos it seems as if they think they have found the "city" where the henge builders lived.

It will be interesting to see how they do this because the standard line is that there was no 'civilization in Britain at the time.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Tue May 27, 2008 2:06 am

Morning Beag. Well it's pretty obvious that a certain level of geometry was know and used but one of the points that has always puzzled me is the suggested stages of contruction.
Any fool can put a peg in the gound and mark out a circle with a cord, but if the outer ring of stones was constructed after the inner works, as is usually stated, it becomes very much more difficult.
If you have seen the programme about the henge's modern reconstruction it soon becomes very obvious that there were very few straight lines between the inner stones that would have allowed for striking an accurate arc of any length ouside of them.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Tue May 27, 2008 7:47 am

Thanks Digit. I didn't know if this sounded like a "theory de jour" or if you thought it had substance. I know you keep up with Stonehenge pretty well.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Tue May 27, 2008 8:44 am

Beag, for many years my only interest in SH was how the hell they built it, this comes from having an engineering back ground. It's only recently that I have found an interest in the 'why?'.
Being an engineer has caused me to laugh at some of the ideas for the construction of SH and also I have to admit, the Pyramids.
When you hear learned academics proposing using rollers for transport of heavy loads on uneven ground you begin to have serious doubts about their other ideas.
Building SH as a complete plan to finish as it ended up is a simple enough task geometrically, but modifying it is a bit different.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Tue May 27, 2008 9:21 am

It's only recently that I have found an interest in the 'why?'.

If you ever find the answer Dig, please enlighten the rest of us.

kbs2244 · Post by **kbs2244** » Tue May 27, 2008 10:33 am

I am afraid I have to agree with dannan on this one.
While geometry may have played a part, there are just too many Sun, Moon and star alignments to ignore.
How well do the “partly inaccurate” geometry points line up with the historically observed observatory position points?

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Tue May 27, 2008 12:02 pm

How well do the “partly inaccurate” geometry points line up with the historically observed observatory position points?

Depends where you stand. The most likely seems to be the the mid summer and mid winter lines. Some seem only to exisit in the minds of those who claim to have identified them.
Of late the percieved wisdom has swung more to believing that the mid winter line is THE important one.
For purely structural reasons I personally believe the mid winter one was the important line.