I just visited a site called “Mystery Hill”-it’s in Southern NH-about an hour north of Boston. It consists of a stone circle (similar but smaller than Stonehenge in England), with some structures made from large stone slabs. I must admit that I have never seen anything like it-there are huge stones around the periphery that mark the sunrise on the summer and winter solstices, as well as the points of sunset at the equinoxes. All in all, it is quite interesting-with what look to be celtic carvings on several stone slabs.
The academic community has paid very little attention to this site-most archaeologists say that the ruins are colonial-era root cellars! But to me, the site seems to be far away from any towns, and is just plain weird looking.
Does anybody know if any new research has been done at this site? And, is there any evidence that europeans (celts, vikings, etc.) visited the NH area long before Columbus?
I know a bit about the site, though I’ve never been there before.
From what I’ve read there is no evidence that “America’s Stonehenge” is very old. Most of the evidence has shown that it is only a few hundred years old. The problem is that one of the original owners took it upon himself to do his own archaeological research and distroyed the site. He also would not let anyone else do research on the area. I think the current owners are the same way.
As for the writting and other marks there have been some cases of fraud and I believe this is supposed to be one of the cases. The best book that I have read on the subject is “Myths, Lies and Frauds”. At least I think that’s the title. I own the book but I have problems remembering names. It wasn’t a very thick book but it was very good, if I remember I’ll look it up. (The actual name of the book can be found in GD if you search for my name and Shroud of Turin.)
bibliophage just did a article on the Viking thing in the last couple of weeks. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mleifinma.html
So maybe you can help me out. I’ll be in the area in two weeks, what was the place like, how much did it cost to get in, how long was the tour etc. It’ll give me something intersting to do.
There’s a lot of literature on Mystery Hill – and a lot of it is on sale in the Gift Shop there. I’m surprised you didn’t see it.
I’m ambivalent about the site. It’s hard to believe that this is all the eccentric work of early settler Pattee and his sons, but on the other hand, the guy who excavated it in the 1920s (Godwin?) apparently felt no qualms about “restoring” things the way they ought to be. I understand that the site owners have been searching for pre-“preservation” photos of the site.
I’m unimpressed with the “Stonehenge” aspect of it all (despite the immense labor the site owners have done to cut “avenues” through the trees so you can watch the sunrise and sunset). Part of this is because there really isn’t a well-defined “center” to it.
There’s an interesting book called They All Discovered America, which seems to hold just about everyone responsible for the site – Phoenicians, Irish monks, Vikings, etc. Everyone except the native Indians. They seem to me the most likely builders – they were there, after all.
The orthodox view is that these were colonial constructions, and that the “sacrificial altar” was a lye-leaching stone. You can find articles about this in back issues of The Skeptical Inquirer.
One intriguing aspect is that Mystery Hill may have influenced H.P. Lovecraft’s writing, especially The Dunwich Horror. There are entire articles on sale at Mystery Hill aboiut this. You can also find a bit on it in L. Sprague de Camp’s bio of Lovecraft. But for some reason, Lovecraft annotater S.T. Joshi doesn’t believe this.
Also, there’s a book called “Stonehenge Decoded” by Gerald Hawkins, I read it a LONG time ago but at the time (I was in junior high) I thought it was pretty good. It talked about strange stones, etc. that people would occasionally find, mostly in New England. I don’t remember if it specifically talked about “America’s Stonehenge” but it did say that farmers would tend to pick up unusual-looking rocks (i.e. with carvings) and incorporate them into their stone walls, and he gave examples of where these could be found.
Oops, sorry, I’m confused about my books. Actually I was thinking of “Beyond Stonehenge,” but I just flipped through it, and although it’s on a similar topic, it’s not the book I was thinking of. I wonder if I still have it somewhere (whatever it was?)…
Years ago I read an interesting book entitled The H.P. Lovecraft Companion. Mystery Hill is addressed briefly in the book. There was a photo- graph of a stone slab at Mystery Hill which tourists are told is an altar on which sacrifices were thought to have been performed; there was a gutter carved into its surface, apparently to carry away blood. The author noted that slabs exactly like this one could be found at Colonial sites–where they would be correctly identified as the bottom halves of wine presses.
I love “America’s Stonehenge.” It’s a fun place to go on a Sunday afternoon. You can climb into the oracle chamber and spook your friends as they pass by outside.
I saw a documentary recently on the History channel that mentioned a researcher from Harvard who believed the carvings found there were Phoenecian. As others have said, you can find plenty of books on the site right there in the gift shop. You don’t even have to pay the entrance fee again.
IMHO the most interesting thing about the site is the standing stones on the perimeter. There are other stones in Massachusetts (I believe there are some in Winchester) that have the same general alignment. My money’s on the Native Americans having set them up.
I did some more reading about MH-and it seems that some charcoal foan at the base of one of the stones, was carbon-dated. This revealed the stunning date of ca 12,000 BC! I wasn’t aware that humans were even IN NE at that early date? So, there might be something to it. The celtic -style carvings are intriquing, but obviously, there is no way to determine if these were fakes or not. What I find interesting is that these stone circles resmble the structures found in England, Wales, Scotland, and Brittany-could there be some connection?
Carbon dating? Couldn’t I build something today out of a 14000-year-old rock? That’s no real proof of age in this case.
I can’t say whether the date of 12,000 B.C. is accurate or not. However, ralph124c is not talking about the rock. Granite is billions, not 14,000 years old. The presense of a contained fire that dates to 12,000 B.C. would indicate that something strange and interesting was going on at the site if it was indeed accurate. At the very least, it would mean that Native Americans with masonry knowledge were in the area at the time. That, in itself would be a big discovery.
For the benefit of those who haven’t seen the site, I should point out that the “stonehenge” aspect comes from a “stone circle” that has alignments (it’s claimed) with strategic sunrises and sunsets, like the famous midsummer sunrise over the heelstone at Stonehenge, and other alignments that Hawkins and others have found.
But at Mystery Hill, the stone circle:
a.) isn’t really a circle. It’s a meandering closed curve
b.) is made of really low stones, not megaliths like the real Stonehenge. You can easily step over most of these rocks
c.) is nearly a complete and unbroken one of small standing stones. No trilithons or capstones.
In addition, there are lots of other odd stone structures (The Altar, the Sacrificial Stone, the Oracle Chamber, etc.) that aren’t directly concerned with alignments. They aren’t as large as the names imply, but they are big enough to hold people, and they don’t really look like anything else I’ve seen – traditional New England Stone Basements these are not. One of the stones in the Oracle Chamber has what is claimed to be an incised running deer on it. It does look like that. Again, it certainly doesn’t look like your traditional New England art.
And, again, it’s not clear how much of this was the work of “restorers”. But it’s still pretty remarkable.
slipster – I’ve usually heard the “sacrificial stone” being identified as a Colonial Lye Leaching Stone, not a wine press. It doesn’t look convincing for a wine press, but I could see people piling ashes on the slab and then pouring water over them, to collect in the troughs and run off. (The non-orthodox call this a Sacrificial Stone because they figure the liquid being collected in those troughs is not water and lye, but blood. It must be admitted that the area surrounded by the trough is a rectangle just big enough to hold a person lying down. )
Finding “some charcoal” could just mean there was a forest fire.
Or even if the fire was set by humans, it could have been old peat, say, which was burned. Carbon dating just tells you when the thing stopped living.
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WOW!..WOW again!
I’m FROM Salem, NH and I am aghast that my hometown is “up in lights” on the SDMB. Salem, MA ALWAYS gets the world’s attention; Salem, NH just gets all the MA shoppers (no sales tax in NH, and Salem is the first town over the MA border on major highway 93). Imagine my :eek: when I saw the thread title. “Does that say Salem, NEW HAMPSHIRE!”
Crazy, but I’ve lived in Salem most of my life, but I’ve never once visited America’s Stonehenge which is about 2 miles away from my front door. Typical. One never takes advantage of the local attractions. One is meant to think that interesting things are only located “in a galaxy far, far away”.
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