[Northkeep] Stonehenge Once a Healing Sanctuary?

Marc Carlson marccarlson20 at hotmail.com
Sun Dec 3 09:21:56 PST 2006


>From: "Amadeo Estevão" <RockMeAmadeo at gmail.com>
>A discovery.com article from November 30th on Stonehenge as a healing
>center.
>http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/11/30/stonehenge_arc.html?category=archaeology&guid=20061130103030

FYI: "an interesting idea, which cannot be ruled out as a possibility" 
translates from British Academic Speak as "I think it's BS, but since nobody 
really knows, just outright saying it's *wrong* in print could hurt my 
credibility."

Personally, I hope that Professor Darvill has tenure, since if I were his 
supervisor, I'd really have some questions about what he's teaching his 
students.

Stonehenge was built between 4300, and 5100 years ago, over a space of 3 
major cultural changes in the region, none of whom left any records.  The 
blue stones were added during the 150 year period between 2150 and 2000 BCE, 
when the ancestors of the western Indo-European language speakers were only 
first moving into eastern Europe (and therefore nowhere near Briton), 
including the ancestors of the Welsh people who may or may not have actually 
believe that the blue stones have healing properties.

For the record, this is what is known as the Early Helladic Period, during 
which Greece was inhabited by the Myceneans.   Delphi itself wasn't occupied 
until around 1400 BCE, and the temple of Apollo wasn't built until around 
650 BCE.  And I'm not sure was at any time a healing center.  To say then 
that this Stonehenge was a healing center because a) modern people, who may 
or may not be totally unrelated to the people who lived there then managed 
to maintain an otherwise unrecorded oral tradition for over 4000 years and 
b) that it's somehow related to healing site that may or may not have 
actually been a healing site established 1400 years later is somewhat 
sloppy.  What this means is that taking this piece of ancient history, and 
that piece of ancient history and slapping them together with the glue of 
your doctorate is sometimes a bad idea.  Typical of the sorts of crap that 
appears in the media, mind you.

Thank you Amadeao, that was fun :)

Marc/Diarmaid

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