Best part of that bit:
“Stonehenge even looks like a dinosaur.
[Superimpose large dinosaur outline on a picture of Stonehenge]
…sort of.
In the end they conclude that with dinosaurs disappearing 60+ million years ago and Stonehenge being built less than 6000 years ago the dinosaurs did in fact NOT build the thing.
I want to thank you for the article on Stonehenge, it was one of the most enlightening and informative articles I have read. Jerry Russo:smack: :smack:
I assume you used a smackhead smilie to indicate that you should have posted this to Comments on Staff Reports. A common mistake. Cecil didn’t write this one, Antiquarian did.
And the other smilie was to indicate that you forgot to include a link to the column What’s the real story on Stonehenge? This allows others to read the column and follow along. It cuts down on the hamsters workload of dealing with too many searches.
Just having fun with you. It’s hard to learn all of it at once.
Yep, it’s a subtle difference, but Stonehenge report was written by guest contributor Antiquarian and will appear this coming Tuesday (Aug 12) as a Staff Report. I have therefore moved it to the appropriate forum.
jerry, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards! Glad to have you with us.
And congrats, Antiquarian, on a job very well done.
Thanks for the welcome Ck, hope to enjoy many more articles of this caliber. Please add my congrats to Antiquarium I look foward to more interesting articles.
Welcome Jerry and thank you for the pat on the back. I have a special interest in Stonehenge. I am formally schooled in the United States, but all of my advanced study was done in the UK at Exeter. I was very fortunate to be able to attend and the professionals I met along the way have become wonderful collegues. My area of interest in the Stonehenge does extend to other large sites around the world as well. Many in Britain. I look forward to my next article hopefully coming soon.
Thanks for the welcome Antiquarian. I was astonished to learn that indeed it was not the Druids who built Stonehenge.
I hope to see more articles by you, hope I don’t miss them.
A generally fair and accurate report - thanks! However, two small points:
(1) Stonehenge was not unique (or rather was unique only in its use of megalithic sarsens). Other similar arrangements have been found but these used timbers exclusively and so are not as well archeologically preserved.
(2) radiocarbon dating can not be used to date material to 650,000 years ago, as was stated in the article. It’s half life will not permit this. Perhaps another dating method was used to date the lithic material.
I saw Did Dinosaurs Build Stonehenge as a Saturday Night Live film sketch that was absolutely hilarious. Eric Idle (of Monty Python) did the film. Apparently it was originally aired on “Steve Martin’s Best Show Ever”.
When I read the part in Antiquarian’s Staff Report on floating the blue rocks up the river, I kept envisioning the Whales swimming the rocks up to Stonehenge as in the film.
Lakota Smith brings up a point that I’ve often wondered about as well: Given the difficulty in communicating across great distances at the time, why would a relatively small number of people (the inhabitants of the immediate area) need a huge, stone, pocket-watch to reckon celestial events. It seems like a bit of overkill. By the time the Watch-Reader In Chief (for lack of a better term) determined the auspicious date, it would take several more days (weeks?) to transmit this information to other folks in Britain. Did Stonehenge have a more “localized” significance or was it truely something that was known about all over the country (sort of like “Stonehenge Standard Time”)?
A good report on Stonehenge, very thorough. As I read it though, a couple of questions occured to me:
As Antiquarian pointed out, Stonehenge was built over a period of almost 2000 years during a period of time when people groups and centers of civilization (at least in this part of the world) were usually much smaller and more transitory than we are. I am also under the impression (if I’m wrong here, please correct me) that record keeping of this period (3000 - 1000 B.C.) was not as thorough or as enduring as in later time periods.
Here’s my main question (sorry it took so long to get to it): Is it possible that the different phases of construction, as explained in Antiquarian’s article, could reflect different people groups using the site for different purposes? Or is it rational to presume that each successive people group would be able to determine the previous use of the site and add to it using their own understanding of astronomy and such?
I look forward to any responses, especially from Antiquarian as he has obviously devoted much study to this phenomenon. Thanks All!
First of all thank you for the congrats, I had a great time writing the report and hope to write more in the not to distant future.
There are some things that have been mentioned in some of the comments that I would like to delve into. The field and science of Archaeology is not as finite a discipline as say metallurgy or physics. With modern day dating techniques still in the processes of being refined, dates and times all carry with them a degree of confidence within a sample.
Lakota Smith said
Understanding Radiocarbon dating is a complcated matter. In order to see what a radiocarbon determination means in terms of a true age we need to know how the atmospheric concentration has changed with time. The variations over time are only recently (past 40 yrs) been able to be measured and qualified. We’ve always known they have existed but measuring and accurately presenting them is a whole other story.
Without getting too far off the subject, when an animal dies the carbon that makes up the cells in it’s body is no longer being replaced. Because the radiocarbon is radioactive, it will begin to decay ever so slowly. Obviously there will usually be a loss of stable carbon too but the proportion of radiocarbon to stable carbon will reduce according to the exponential decay law: R = A exp(-T/8033) where R is 14C/12C ratio in the sample, A is the original 14C/12C ratio of the living organism and T is the amount of time that has passed since the death of the organism.
By measuring the ratio, R, in a sample we can calculate the age of the sample: T = -8033 ln(R/A).
Due to radiocarbon levels in the atmosphere not being constant over the millennia - it’s actually changed quite a bit - radiocarbon dating does not give true ages. However, we can increase confidence in samples by calibrating radiocarbon dates against material of known age. This is what was done at Stonehenge. I hope that answer’s your assertion Lakota.
Plnnr said:
Because of the huge gap in time between the various phases, it is hard to answer this, however the driving force was may have been the ability - for the first time - to more accurately predict harvest times, crop rotation, planting schemes. And those tribes/communes who fared the best survived the longest. I know I’d appreciate a tool that told me when to plant my wheat as opposed to guessing…such a tool back then would have taken a long time to construct. And during a fledgling agricultural time, this was quite a feat.
Marko SAID:
I’ll refer you to my answer to Plnnr with this addendum. The people who built the Henge, if they were so vastly different I do not believe the construction would be as consistent over time. I don’t think the idea of stonehenge started as something different than what it ended as I’d say whoever was working on the third phase knew pretty well where to go with it. I do not like broad generalization so I will stay as close to the facts as possible. It appears whoever insighted the first laying of stone instead of timber did it for a very important reason. TIME. It would last much longer than the trees used at other famed sights around Britain. Could it have been widely well know to peoples in other parts of the land…Yes, simply because of the time line needed to complete it. Was it as well known. I simply don’t have the data to say. My personal view. Yes it was. Too many similarities between other sights. Maybe Stonehenge itself wasn’t iconically known, but the idea of what utility the design had could be passed on through word of mouth.
I thoroughly enjoyed this report. It was informative and it debunked some myth surrounding this site, without being insulting to those who may think otherwise. When I was about five years old I wanted more than anything to be an archaeologist. This is why…other than some vague notion about riding on dinosaurs, that is.
I do not mean to detract from your excellent article, but I fear you may be mistaken regarding the limitations of radiocarbon dating. Your post is correct insofar as it goes, but does not address the issue of the 14 C half life.
“The maximum range of radiocarbon dating appears to be about 50,000 years, after which the amount of 14C is too low to be distiguished from background radiation” (see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating; other online sources may be readily found)
In practice, this 50,000 year limit has been pushed back, but not past 100,000 years, so far as I am aware.
Using the half life of 14C (Cambridge value = 5730 years), after the 650,000 years cited in your article, the amount of 14C remaining would not be measureable (~ 4.8 E-35 !) I suspect that the material (non-organic to start with) was dated using the Potassium-Argon or Uranium-Thorium radiometric methods.
Actually, while a nice quick write up on RC dating, you missed the part about how far back RC dating can go. I thought as well that it could only go back to 50,000 years or so, and not the 650,000 years Lakota Smith asked about.
But, what good does knowing the date the sun comes up on one day for growing wheat? I had to look it up, but wheat seems to grow in about four months. Being off by a week even would not be that bad. You don’t need to know that date to harvest wheat since you visually look at the plant to know the right time.
What other similarites are there? Besides the fact that it is built out of stone and is in a circle? Generally the stones are much bigger then other stones, nor have I seen many others, though I admit I haven’t read about many, that have the same astronomical alignment.
I have a few other questions as well. What is the significance of the summer/winter solstice? I can not see anything except for it being the longest/shortest day of the year. You don’t plant anything that I know of at that time. Nor is it in the middle of the growing season. There seems to be no real reason to celebrate nor mark it except for my birthday!
Also how much has been found around Stonehenge in reguards to any kind of villiage or other settlements? I know there are a couple of mounds in the area but have there been any settlements found within a mile or so? Seems kind of silly to build something that big and not be near it.
On some reasearch it seems that the solstice is the middle of the growing season for Europe. Is this correct? Seems that it should be the same generally for the same latitudes.
Perhaps Antiquarian meant to substitute another isotope besides carbon here. Several reliable sources I have show carbon 14 only accurate to 40,000 years, with the 50,000 year figure you used probably the upper limit for its accuracy. I doubt it would have been the Potassium to Argon isotope either since it is used on rocks as young as one million years and up. For rocks younger than this though, thorium-230, decays with a half-life of 75,000 years. This particular isotope is often used on dating deep-sea sediments that are several hundred thousand years old.
An addendum on what was previously said. The onsight organic data that has been found in the past 200 years was reassessed in the early 90’s. At the time they used Liquid Scintillation Counting or Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. And that was in the early 90’s. I’ve worked on recent sites where thermoluminescence was used to corroborate radiocarbon results. You are correct that I did not get into the 14C half life as the site is not old enough to think it was worth mentioning. I’m extremely anal when it comes to data and facts, trust me I don’t want to mislead anyone. But this was a discussion on Stonehenge only. “Accurate” chronology was found to an acceptable degree. As you may know or guess credible results after a calibration are always up to debate. That is why the dates in the report reflect cal BC dates.
These were not employed as we were using mainly organic materials found at the site, antler and hooves on my study. There were no sherrds established as credible for older dates - phase I.
It is often accepted that during the second phase of the construction the established dates were set for sowing different crops. We’re not talking about one day. It may have started with a series of days but this was a 364/5 day a year committment. I’ll come back to the rest of your Q’s in a bit. I’ve got to meet my fiance for our illustrious commute!
It’s nice to find a borad with professional chaps about!
This allows others to read the column and follow along. It cuts down on the hamsters workload of dealing with too many searches.