The Stonehenge Enigma (Prehistoric Britain Book 1)

by Langdon, Robert John

  Introduction

  This book has been written to explain and prove a hypothesis that I have been working on over the last 30 years.

  In publishing this work I understand that it represents a fundamental change to not only British history, but to the history or the world. Consequently, I have not undertaken this lightly, but there are moments in the evolution of any science – and yes, archaeology is a science - when a new theory will challenge the fundamental beliefs of that science’s existing structure and that is the objective of this book.

  These progressive challenges should in no way be viewed as criticism of the current theories, but a logical succession, creating a more coherent set of beliefs that moves the science forward and helps everyone involved to develop a greater understanding of the subject.

  It allows experts to re-examine the subject matter in a new light and extract the truth from the myth - that has sometimes been responsible for creating false realities.

  In my view, Archaeology (and in some respects Geology) has not been challenged enough over the years especially to the same extent as we have seen in other better funded sciences such as Physics or Biology. If this unchallenged acceptance was extended to these and other sciences, we would probably still be living in a world without Quantum Mechanics or Darwin’s theory of evolution.

  What you will see unfolding in this book is a newer form of archaeology, which I refer to as ‘Landscape Dating’. It allows us to date sites, not only from the findings on the site but critically, from their location in the prehistoric landscape. This science will bring a new interpretation and understanding of the structural complexities and the philosophies of our ancestors.

  I believe that through ‘Landscape Dating’ and through the evidence presented in this book, history will no longer paint a tainted portrait of fur- covered hairy men, running half naked, chasing deer and mammoths over Salisbury plain. This image will be replaced by the vision of an idyllic landscape of water and tree lined islands as we currently see in certain locations in Russia and Northern Canada, within which an intelligent and sophisticated civilisation existed - a society with advanced engineering skills, living a pleasant serene Mediterranean sailing existence, in perfect harmony with their fellow man and nature.

  Furthermore, this unique civilisation went on to travel the world trading, teaching and living with the local populations ultimately sharing their engineering and philosophical knowledge with the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians, amongst others.

  I consider myself a prehistorian and philosopher with a flair for ‘Landscape Dating’. For I must confess that I was never one for getting down and dirty or sifting through thousands of fragments trying to find a decent piece of pottery with which to identify or date a site. Although this form of ‘treasure hunting’ does give its participants the thrill of discovery, for me, the larger picture of trading, politics and alliances made these discoveries interesting.

  History of any site can best be seen within the landscape and at the location of the magnificent monuments. When you see henges or stone circles on the edge of cliffs or peninsulas, the power and awe of these ancient monuments is absolutely breathtaking. So when the final pieces of this ancient mystery eventually fell together I felt I had no option but to place my life on hold and write this book.

  But in the process of collating my findings and thoughts, the overriding evidence became so massive that our single book became a complete trilogy that eventually traced the roots of the Stonehenge builders.

  As I have examined these ancient monuments in depth, I have considered them from the perspective of the engineer and social philosopher within me rather than as an archaeologist and that attitude and style is represented in the context this book. I have tried to lay out my hypothesis in a jargon free, logical and sensible way with evidence that I hope you will consider being sufficient proof to enable you to reconsider what you currently believe to be accepted history. In some instances, I will turn accepted theories on their head, as the evidence can be interpreted in a completely different way to the current accepted theories.

  Other Archaeology books I have read in the past have frustrated and confused me. They either ramble on about the author’s friends and lunches they have had while researching the book or focus on irrelevant issues. I will do neither in this book – I will simply try to present ‘the facts’ and my views based on these facts in ‘layman’s terms’ and an informative, interesting manner. It’s only by engaging in the evidence that future debates can be progressed and by so doing, our understanding enhanced.

  What we must bear in mind is that the evidence is ‘absolute’ but the interpretation of this evidence is open to scrutiny and debate. Therefore, to assist clarity, I have laid out my hypothesis (in full) in a clear and concisely manner - this is what the next chapter is dedicated to. This will allow you to understand what I am trying to prove.

  I will then go through the evidence to date, based on the four major sites that surround and include Stonehenge – Woodhenge (Durrington Walls), Avebury and Old Sarum. This will allow you the reader to make your own mind up on what is the truth and what is not possible.

  I have always admired writers and, during my recent university courses, presenters who can take complex subjects and turn them into simple analogies which allow anyone to understand the concepts without reverting to jargon or technical references. If you have studied Quantum Mechanics and Philosophy as I have, you quickly realise which lecturers really do understand their subject and which are just treading water.

  Indeed, one of my favourite film scenes is from ‘Philadelphia’ when Denzel Washington turns to Tom Hanks, who is in the process of explaining a complex legal problem and asks him to “tell it to me as if I was a six year old”. A sure way of saying, give it to me straight and simple! Well, I hope this book doesn’t quite talk to you as if you’re a six year old, but I will explain some of the complexities and mysteries of Archaeology in a down to earth, clear and precise manner, using similar analogies when necessary.

  "tell it to me as if I was a six year old"

  Once we have exhausted the topic or subject manner, I will appear to conclude the debate and clarify what I term as ‘proof of my hypotheses’. They will be forty or so proofs which are the basis of the evidence in the formulation of this book; a complete list will be shown in Appendix A with reference to the pages where the evidence is gathered. This enables me to claim that my book is not just a handful of ‘ideas’ like most hypothesis, but a collection of evidence that proves the hypothesis beyond doubt – even if I do get one or two wrong. This is quite possible as we are flying at the edge of understanding and it is therefore possible that we will interpret evidence incorrectly due to either bad reporting or fieldwork which is beyond my control.

  A large part of this book is my landscape surveys of Mesolithic and Neolithic Sites in the Stonehenge area. This and other ‘case studies’ are central to the book as I see them as the ‘best evidence’ for my hypothesis. Too many good ideas look feasible on paper but when they are studied in detail they are shown to be ‘just ideas’ without true substance or methodology.

  I could have chosen any area in Britain to prove my theory, but Stonehenge provided me with more archaeological evidence than any other as it has been the centre of prehistoric interest since the Roman invasion 2,000 years ago. It also has the most detailed analysis of any site in Britain as money has in this location has been well spent unlike most other sites - and that is still not enough.

  What we have found in Stonehenge is a direct connection to at least three other main sites in the same area, which makes it the centre or hub of Prehistoric Britain, a little like London today. Later books will explain in detail why this is an ancient centre of activity, but the book contains sufficient information to prove that Stonehenge is not what it seems and it was built at a time unknown to present archaeologists.

  It has always been recognised that post-glacial landscape is still a mystery to both geolo
gists and archaeologist alike, as quoted in the book ‘Stonehenge in the Landscape’ by Michael Allen “In short, we are dealing with a period from the upper Palaeolithic to the Late Neolithic covering nearly five millennia for which, realistically, we know little from the environment except by assumption and inference from the adjacent area way from the chalk”

  To give you a flavour of how the other books of this trilogy will unfold, the final chapter unites the evidence of the former chapters creating an unique insight and vision into what kind of great civilisation must have existed in prehistoric times that could organise and build such colossal ancient monuments that have lasted over ten thousand years. For archaeologists have always sadly failed to understand the type of culture that was required to socially organise and manage large numbers to create these types of structures.

  This ‘lost civilisation’ has enormous consequences for the history of not only Britain but also Europe and the World. We will show you that this civilisation clearly uses (for its time) engineering skills and mathematics way beyond what archaeologists and historians to date given credit for their abilities.

  Enjoy the book and I hope it will encourage you to go out and re-explore these ancient sites armed with a new vision and knowledge of how our landscape really used to look some 10,000 years ago. For each unexplored prehistoric site still holds great secrets of our ‘lost civilisation’ past just waiting to be rediscovered. Those who dare to venture forth ‘with an open mind’ could be actively participating in solving the disentanglement of the greatest historical mystery of all time.

  The Hypothesis - Post Glacial Flooding

  12,000 years ago the last Ice Age finally melted, revealing the Britain we know today – or did it? Britain had been underneath two miles of ice and the surrounding seas had frozen solid. What was left was a huge icy mass of enormous weight, pushing down on this tiny island. This mass had compressed the earth so much that the land surface lay at least a half a mile below the sea bed as we know it today.

  So what exactly happened after the great ice age melted?

  This huge mass of watery ice that covered Britain raised the groundwater tables and left the land totally saturated. In fact, the volume of water was so great that it eventually created the English Channel and the North & Irish Seas. Very slowly, the land then started to rebound, so slowly in fact that even now, parts of Britain are still rising about one cm per year. This melting ice combined with the lowering of the land levels created not the single island called Britain we know today, but a series of smaller islands and waterways - totally unrecognisable to the landscape that is so familiar to us now.

  Moreover, the land became a sub-tropical forest as the warmer climate that first melted the polar ice caps encouraged the growth of abundant foliage. This would very probably have caused the islands to experience what we would consider today to be monsoon seasons. Which in turn then kept groundwater tables abnormally high for another 4,000 years? The foliage, groundwater and warm climate would have left the islands resembling the Amazon’s rain forests, rather than the grassy hills of Britain we see today.

  The only way our Mesolithic ancestors of Britain could have had to adjust to this new environment would have been to develop and use their boat and seamanship skills. Consequently, adapting to living and trade by these shorelines travelling via the vast waterways and lakes rather than through the forests, which would have been riddled with dangers such as brown bears, packs of wolves and wild boar all roaming freely. Therefore, the shorelines became critical – our Mesolithic ancestors would have lived, worked and gathered by these ‘super-waterways’ and would have created social monuments and beacons on their beaches and peninsulas.

  My hypothesis proposes that our greatest prehistoric monuments, such as Stonehenge, were built on these watery peninsulas. I also propose that the ditches surrounding henges were NOT dry ditches, as archaeologists currently believe, but were, in fact, constructed to be watery moats and canals, which turned these sites into very special islands. The most astonishing aspect of this hypothesis is that even today, thousands of years after the groundwater have subsided, we can re-visit these sites and identify the ports and channels of this bygone age and by using the landscape, we can date, more accurately than ever before, when the sites were initially constructed.

  Another key component of my hypothesis is the discovery of navigational signposts, built within the landscape, on the banks of these waterways. Traditionally, archaeologists have believed that these had religious or ceremonial use, whereas my evidence shows that they had a more functional engineering purpose, helping our ancestors to navigate around these islands.

  In fact, the book will show for the first time, that these signposts guided our ancestors when they transported enormous stones from the Preseli Mountains in Wales to the site at Stonehenge – by boat. These very stones were used to build the first phase of this magnificent monument. Even more importantly, I can show the exact location of where these vast stones were unloaded from the boats and how the mechanism by which this precious cargo was lifted onto the shore.

  This discovery of this landing site has led us to accurately date for the first time the original construction date of Stonehenge - 7500BCE to 8000BCE. This is 5,000 years earlier than current archaeological estimations, making Stonehenge the oldest Monument in the world.

  Section One – The GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

  In this section, we will look at the sequence of events that occurred directly after the last Ice Age and the consequences it had on the environment and landscape of Britain. If my hypothesis is correct, it will prove that these events increased the groundwater tables, not only in the South of Britain, but more importantly, at the case study site, Stonehenge.

  If you study any British Geological Society (BGS) map of Britain you will notice it shows a series of bedrock, sedimentary and superficial deposits. At a scale of 1:50,000 km and below these deposits start to form a labyrinth of material that look like canals and gigantic waterways which lay under the surface on top of the bed rock. This lays testament to how the landscape must have looked at some stage of our natural history and this is particularly prevalent in the Stonehenge area as well as other chalk bedrock outcrops.

  These superficial deposits that resemble ancient rivers can clearly be seen on the surface and are known to the archaeologists, geologists and the general public as ‘Dry River Valleys’ - because the river valleys are currently dry.

  But this was not always the case!

  Until recently geologists believed that the contours of these chalk hills and valleys were cut during a ‘Periglacial Phase’ of the ‘Quaternary Period’, which is the current geological period that started about 2.6 million years ago - although there is no real evidence of the exact date of their formation. Recent theories (and in Geology these new ideas are occurring on a regular basis) suggest that these dry river valleys are the result of water flooding, washing away the top soils and rounding the chalk sub-soil, during the melting period after an Ice Age.

  The problem for archaeologists and geologists is - which one? - For there were several during the quaternary period.

  Geologists seem content to give rough estimations on the construction date of geological objects such as dry river valleys, which for the archaeologist can become misleading. For the origin of these objects is of some interest, the actual dates when they could have been used by man is even more important if we are to understand the anthropological implications and, through this process, any archaeological findings in relation to their locations.

  So we must best try to understand not WHEN the dry river valleys were formed, but when LAST did they have water running within them?

  BGS superficial deposits around Stonehenge

  Geological maps clearly indicate that great rivers once flowed through Britain and we know that the greatest deluge of water that has ever affected the landscape is at the end of an ice age, when the gigantic ice caps finally melt, at the end of the last ice a
ge some 17,000 years ago, geologists have estimated that the ice was over two miles thick in some places. This substantial level of ice MUST have created huge flooding all over the Mesolithic landscape including the Valleys of the South Downs, even thought they were over 100 miles away from the main ice sheet.

  Modern geologists now accept that the dry river valleys are the product of water (not ice as previously believed) and looking at some extreme examples of the soil erosion and valleys cut, we are not talking about just frozen tundra slowly melting in the summer seasons - but millions of gallons of fast flowing water cutting away at the top-soil and sedimentary deposits, all the way down to the bedrock in some instances.