Stone Circles and Henges ?

[itsme]

I don't know much about stone circles, but what I saw and read is very impresssive. What motivation did those people have to displace rocks and drag them intangibly distances?!
I think it is a question we will always ask and discuss about different proof's and assumptions, but if we are honest - we will never know for sure and this is good, because that makes history so special, its secrets!

When I stand infront of a building (let's take Edinburgh Castle, for example), it's that you see it there like a solid monument - not only of history, a monument for what human beings have been able to create, to build with bare hands. That's impressing and facinating.

I mean historical buildings from Pyramides to Churches - wasn't it always belief which gave the motivation, the strength and the persistency power?
And that's the most interesting fact to me; what humans are able to do (therefore we get one proof after another if we walk through the world with open eyes), to build and destroy - if faith moves mountains. Impessing and scary in one.

[hiorta]

I knew a Greek Cypriot who showed me the line-up of Greek Churches there. He also mentioned that early Christian Churches all used the same method, which they believed had strong psychic influences.
Some older churches here are built upon the same configuration - or close to it - although it seems that the actual alignment has been lost.
I don't know if there was 'anything in it', though.

[wullie m]

Guys, one of the Glenelg brochs has the entrance surmounted by a large triangular stone taking the weight, which might otherwise break a lintel. I notice the entrance gate to Knossos on Crete has the same arrangement, has this just been the masons finding the same solution to a problem in different places, or could there be some connection?
wullie m

[Auld Chiel]

While the stone circles known as "cromlechs" may well have been used as a type of astral calendar to calculate the approach of the seasons, those structures known as "dolmens" were constructed as tombs or rather artificial caves, since neolithic peoples considered caves to be sacred, being symbolic as the womb of the Earth Mother which gave life to all living things and to which the dead were returned in the hope of being reborn anew.

[Lianachan]

Originally Posted by wullie m

Guys, one of the Glenelg brochs has the entrance surmounted by a large triangular stone taking the weight, which might otherwise break a lintel. I notice the entrance gate to Knossos on Crete has the same arrangement, has this just been the masons finding the same solution to a problem in different places, or could there be some connection?
wullie m

There are considerable variations in construction and style between the regions where brochs are found. Triangular lintels are not unusual, particularly in Caithness and Sutherland. There is no connection to Crete.

[Lianachan]

Regarding stone circles - it's not the case that wooden circles were erected in advance of stone ones, although this may have happened some times as part of construction. Many henges contain actual wooden circles, or arrangements of wooden posts, and were built to be precisely that. There are likely to be significant ritual differences, to do with life and death and the procession to the after-life, between wooden and stone henges. Anybody interested in that aspect could do much worse than read the work by Mike Parker-Pearson on the matter.

A large number of henges, of course, are actually empty - with no stones or wooden posts at all.

[wullie m]

They've just discovered the postholes of a large timber circle close to Stonehenge. wullie m