The Stonehenge Enigma (Prehistoric Britain Book 1)

by Langdon, Robert John

  So we left with a clear understanding that Atlantis was in the Atlantic Ocean, but then come the next problem with this description “the island was bigger than Libya and Asia together” this is where most Atlantis claims fall flat. Libya was well known in Plato’s time as a big country as it bordered the Mediterranean, but the reference to Asia cannot be the Asia we know as it was unknown to the old world and the Greeks, therefore the Asia that Plato was referring to, is now called Asia Minor.

  ‘Asia Minor (from Greek: Μικρὰ Ἀσία, Mikrá Asía, small Asia) is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. It is a peninsula bounded by the Black Sea to the north, Georgia to the north-east, the Armenian Highland to the east, Mesopotamia to the south-east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west.’

  Plato's Atlantis - the North European Peninsula (NEP)

  The size of this ‘island’ is consequently a major problem for historians to date, as the only two island possibilities is the Caribbean in America or a continent that was once in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that has disappeared without trace. Well the islands of the Caribbean are far too small and the trek across the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without landmass to guide the ships eleven thousand years ago quite daunting to be truly feasible with ‘Bronze Age technology’ as Plato suggests.

  This is why the search has failed, to date, and all various ‘silly’ hypotheses based on the Mediterranean make news headlines. If we look again at this passage and the exact wording of Atlantis we find something most researchers have overlooked in the translation and it’s the word ‘island’, the original Greek word is ‘nesos’ which can mean either island or peninsula.

  If we are looking for a ‘Peninsula’ (which is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland.) that is outside the Mediterranean, then there is only two possibilities - Africa or Europe. These are both outside the Pillars of Hercules and can be easily navigated by sticking to the shorelines. The African continent as shown no signs of any peninsula on its Atlantic side, that has disappeared in the past 10,000 years - but Europe has!

  If we look at a map of Europe at the end of the Ice Age, we notice that the water levels were about 160m lower than today, so much lower that extra coastlines are added to both Spain and France. But when we look at the British Isles we notice Britain has completely vanished. The Britain Isles has been replace a massive new land mass protruding into the Atlantic Ocean, for the English Channel, Irish Sea and the North Sea as we know it today has been replaced by a single land mass. Moreover, the waters to the west of Ireland and North West from Scotland have also been reclaimed from the sea.

  This peninsula which includes to the North East Norway, Sweden and Finland, to the east Denmark and the Baltic Sea, creates a continent about the same size of Libya and Asia Minor, which correlates to Plato’s writings.

  Atlantis (NEP) - showing known major Mesolithic sites

  We know from our history that the rising of sea waters over the last 10,000 years the caused flooding that created the island nation we know today. But, do the writings contain any other information which will allow us to confirm this peninsula is the land mass Critias is talking about?

  Plato adds “yonder (beyond the pillars of Hercules) is a real Ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent” in this sentence the ‘island’ is turned into a ‘continent’ so this proves that the translation of ‘nesos’ is peninsula not island and in today’s terms we are looking at a land mass that incorporates British Isles, Scandinavia and the Northern European countries of France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Netherlands, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Baltic, North and Irish seas, that were at time land masses, which I call the North European Peninsula (NEP).

  Therefore, do the other descriptions of Plato’s Atlantis match this new continent?

  Were he does give us an indication of some other identification features for this lost continent, “and it is possible for the travellers of that time to cross from it to the other islands and from the islands to the whole of the continent” if NEP is correct, this could mean either one of two different continents. For about 2,000 years (between 10,000 BCE and 8,000 BCE) you could travel from the North West end of the NEP to the Faroe islands which was about five times larger than the islands we know today (due to the drop in sea levels) and then a short hop west to Iceland, which again, for the same reasons, was twice as wide than today, finally, over the short distance to Greenland and then America.

  The coastal route would then allow you access to the ‘New World’ down the entire east side of America. The most interesting and controversial aspect, is that the Atlanteans would have discovered America 11,000 years before Columbus, which may seem farfetched but it will answer an evolutional mystery that has confused geneticists and anthropologists for many years. This mystery involves the spread of the A- blood group in Northern American Indians and ancient skeletons that have European features and stone tool kits.

  Other illustrations of Atlantis, in Plato’s writings, can now be compared for further comparison such as the famous plain of Atlantis. For “The whole country was said by him to be very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains which descended towards the sea; it was smooth and even, and of an oblong shape, extending in one direction three thousand stadia, but across the centre inland it was two thousand stadia.”

  So level oblong shaped plain that was surrounded by mountains which were by the sea and the plain measured about 250 miles by 350 miles. The current North Sea (Doggerland) would comfortably incorporate a flat plain of that size and hence it sinking below the rising sea levels, for it measures 450 miles by 1200 miles. There are mountains in the North in both Scotland and Norway which ‘descended towards the sea’ not even taking into account the mountains of Doggerland in the north which is now the ‘Viking’ and ‘Berger’ sand banks, between Shetland and Norway.

  Another indication that we are talking about a peninsula or part of a continent is the line ’lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea’ if this was an island would not ALL sides be on the side of the sea? Our newly discovered Atlantis has one side by the sea where the city and plain lays and that is in the north, the area we know now as Scotland, Shetland, Orkney across to Norway, where it always rains.

  City of concentric circles - as found at Avebury

  He continues; “This part of the peninsula looked towards the south, and was sheltered from the north. The surrounding mountains were celebrated for their number and size and beauty, far beyond any which still exist, having in them also many wealthy villages of country folk, and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild or tame, and much wood of various sorts, abundant for each and every kind of work.” Modern sonar readings of the North Sea floor has shown this land of ‘rivers and lakes and meadows’ and with the mountains in the north the great plain would naturally face south.

  Even when we search the description for the most obscure references to test this hypothesis we find correlation; “There was an abundance of wood for carpenter’s work, and sufficient maintenance for tame and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island; for as there was provision for all other sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains, so there was for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of all.” Plato is clearly referring to tropical animals such as Elephants and Lions and anyone living in Britain today would find this unlikely and therefore rule out this continent, but again, we found in the catches of North Sea trailer men bones of Elephants, Mammoths, Lions and Tigers have been found in the last 100 years in Doggerland making this sc
enario ‘quite probable’ and it would not take much of a stretch of the imagination to classify ‘the largest and most voracious of all’ as the ferocious Sabre-Toothed Tiger, which coincidently went extinct during the ‘Atlantean period’ 14,000 BCE – 4,000BCE.

  So we are looking at the a civilisation of megalithic builders that once lost their ‘homeland’ and no doubt a great number of friends family and loved ones in the deluge. This being the case - how would we expect a civilisation to mark such a momentous occasion?

  We are a civilisation that has had great losses through war and tragedy in the past, 9/11 in America we commemorated by a memorial gardens and here in Britain the war loses are remembered by the cenotaph in London, were we come annually to remember the dead with a minutes silence.

  How would future archaeologists view the cenotaph, if all written records are lost 10,000 years in the future - when the wind and rain had wiped the stone monument bear, but still resembling the stone pillar it once was?

  We now know from previous chapters that Stonehenge was built about 8500 BCE as a place for the sick and dead, we also know that the site was remodelled some four to five thousand years later roughly at the time that Atlantis finally ‘disappeared’. What I am suggesting is that the new monument continued its commemoration to the dead, but not to individual dead but the death of Atlantis, which would explain how and why this historically massive construction was erected.

  Furthermore, it will explain some of the features of Stonehenge we have not mentioned to date in this book. The popular view of Stonehenge is of a completely round monument with lintel stones completing the circle - but there is a massive problem, for not all the stones or the stone post holes are present. Some people have suggested that the monument is incomplete, but those individuals do not understand the monument and the reason for its construction.

  A monument to the dead does not face the Summer Solstice Sunrise it faces the Winter Solstice Sunset or Sunrise to mark the shortest day - when light overcomes the darkness the symbolism of life after death. That being the case, a monument to the dead should face either Winter Sunrise of Winter Sunset and Stonehenge faces the latter. Another reason to ignore the reference to the Sun is that the Sun is usually a representation of life and a completed circle, were as the Moon represents the dead and a crescent. So, the monument would be crescent shaped and hence the reason for the lack of two stones in the South West Quadrant.

  So why the horseshoe crescent in the centre of the monument?

  How the Stonehenge monument used to look - cresent moon shaped

  The crescent within the crescent faces the Summer Sunrise, this is very symbolic as it represents reborn or reincarnation, it’s a poignant message through the ages to us decedents of the Atlanteans, tell are telling us that their homeland maybe dead, but the survivors are still alive and will begin again. So the ‘open’ end of the horseshoe points to the Solstice Sunrise, but the ‘main’ direction of the symbol points in the opposite direction – the winter solstice sunset.

  Furthermore, there in the centre of the Circle lays a very special stone - the altar stone, the reason its special is two-fold. Firstly, it’s made of a material unlike the other Sarsen standing stones, it called mica. “Hawkins makes note that while all the other stones were either bluestone or sarsen, the so called altar-stone is ‚of fine-grained pale green sandstone, containing so many flakes of mica that its surface, wherever freshly exposed, shows the typical mica glitter’. Currently, geologists are trying to locate the source of this sandstone in Wales. Sadly, they are looking in the wrong direction as I would imagine it’s from their homeland and currently less than 30m of water in Doggerland.

  But this is not the only piece of Sarsen that is made of ‘mica-sandstone’. The most important piece of this special mica-sandstone lays by the moat of the monument to the north east and is called the ‘Slaughter Stone’ I will not delve into the reason that this stone is called the slaughter stone, but it is interesting that even the druids some 4000 years after the stone was laid into the ground still associated it with death.

  Most archaeologists believe that the slaughter stone was once a standing stone at the entrance of the monument, this flawed ideas is the result of a hypothetical drawing by Inigo Jones in 1655, this drawing shows Stonehenge as a perfect circle with hexagon trilithon interior and three entrances into the site with six erect standing stones as access points, which the slaughter stone was one. This idea was incorporated in John Aubrey’s drawing in 1666, which was more accurate, but again had the tendency to place all the fallen stones in upright positions.

  This false assumption was further compounded by William Cunning in 1880, when (it was reported) that he suggested his grandfather “saw” the upright slaughter stone in the 17th Century). This mistake was latter corrected yet the myths amongst archaeologists still remain (Stones of Slaughter, E Herbert Stone, 1924 pp120).

  The reality is that the slaughter stone was always (like the Altar Stone) a deliberate recumbent as the excavations of this stone by Hawley and Newall in the 1920’s clearly show. As the chalk subsoil was also deliberately flattened before it was place in its current position. Hawley presumed that the Slaughter Stone was once ‘buried’, this idea is understandable as the stone does lay below ground level, but what Hawley never understood is that the reason the stone was in this position was for the same reason the ditch was built around Stonehenge, as it was made to be full of water.

  This can be observed by the size of the stone hole called ‘E’ (WA1165) which lays two metres north west of the Slaughter stone, but still within the ‘hollow’ that also contains the stone. Most stone holes at Stonehenge are quite shallow – less than a metre in depth, but stone hole ‘E’ is twice as deep, over 2m. If the Slaughter stone was place in it (as some have suggested) it would only be 3m high on the surface, compared to 4.57m for the Heel Stone a few yards away. The only other places in Stonehenge with these large holes is found in the Ditch surround the site, which are deep as we have shown to reach the ground water level at construction.

  Slaughter Stone Cross section - showing it was cut into the chalk bed

  In the past when the Slaughter stone was placed in this ditch, like the moat, water would have surround the stone like and island - for what we see today at Stonehenge is a 6,000 year old model of the land we call Atlantis that lay in the current North Sea.

  Not only did they place a piece of special mica-sandstone in a watery ditch surrounded by water, but they also carved out the contours of the island, showing high and low ground like a contour release. Archaeologist have always believed these features were ‘weather worn’ by age (although the other recumbent stones have not weather in the same fashion) but recent laser technology has confirmed our belief that this stone was carved as the markings from the tools used can still be seen at microscopic levels.

  How the Slaughter Stone would have looked when water is in the ditch - a lost island!

  Finally, and more importantly, the stone has been placed in a very strange position, almost in the way of The Avenue. This shows that this stone and the Avenue has a connection, this type of connection we see in association with Egyptian Pyramids when ‘slight line’ are cut into the sides of the burial chambers to important star constellations to show their associations with the gods. At Stonehenge, the Slaughter Stone and the Avenue are important as they link rebirth with the death of this Great Civilisation, for if we look from the Major Sightline stone the Altar Stone and look towards the Slaughter Stone, it is quite remarkably a direct line POINTING TO the location of Atlantis in the North Sea, a place we now call Doggerland.

  Yet, when you read the two detailed accounts of Plato’s work in ‘The Timaeus’ and ‘Citias’ were some of the narrative is repeated, but you get a sense that Plato is talking about two different times of Atlantis’ history, firstly the original landscape and people, as we have seen his dialogue are not fixed “and it was possible for travellers OF THAT TIME to cross from it to the other i
slands”, “Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years, for that is the number of years WHICH HAVE ELAPSED since the time of which I am speaking”. So are we hearing about the original Atlanteans of 9000 years ago who lived in this green and pleasant land or are we being told of a land that was once great during that time then sunk overnight leaving nothing?