Those eminent people......

Here is another choice extract from the Darvill / Wainwright chapter in the new Pembrokeshire County History, Vol 1:

Re the bluestones transport mechanism:  "In 1971, Kellaway revived an earlier suggestion that they were carried on glaciers which spread south before they melted and neatly deposited their bluestone burden on Salisbury Plain (Kellaway 1971)."  Kellaway did not say the stones were carried "on" glaciers -- he said they were probably carried in the body of the Irish Sea Glacier which was already known to have crossed Preseli and to have flowed up the Bristol Channel at least as far as the Somerset coast and probably some way inland from there.  The addition of the word "neatly" is a nice cynical touch, but we'll let that pass........ but Kellaway was not just dreaming up some mad idea, as is implied, but was making a statement well supported by a great deal of hard evidence on the ground.

To continue:  "Superficially attractive, the glacial theory flounders because of the lack of any evidence for glacial activity on Salisbury Plain, and no suitable blocks of bluestone have yet been found along the route they would have taken across south-east Wales."   Agreed that there is no unequivocal evidence of glaciation on Salisbury Plain, unless we count the presence of a great deal of debitage from a great range of sources, and a large assortment of bluestone boulders that are clearly not pillars and clearly not quarried.  But why would we expect to find suitable blocks of bluestone scattered  along some unknown route across south-east Wales?  Even if there really was a route (which there wasn't), and even if we know it (which we don't), why would we expect to find suitable lumps of bluestone along it?  Suitable for what?  I really don't know what the authors are talking about. I should have thought that a lack of dropped blocks along some hypothetical route would militate against a human transport hypothesis, and be completely irrelevant as far as the glacial transport hypothesis is concerned.

To continue:  "Although it still has vocal supporters, eminent geologists and glaciologists have dismissed the glacial theory (Bowen 2005; Green 1997; Scourse 1997) and concur with Thomas's original suggestion that the stones "were transported by human agency, in all probability by an overland route (Thomas, 1923, 259)."  So who are these eminent geologists and glaciologists?  David Bowen, Chris Green and James Scourse are not geologists and they are not glaciologists; they are geomorphologists, no more brilliant or eminent than those of us who believe that the glacial transport hypothesis is eminently reasonable.  I don't actually care very much about Messrs Bowen, Green and Scourse concurring with HH Thomas -- and I have argued many times on this blog that their arguments are deeply flawed.  I place much greater value on other papers (written by assorted specialists including real glaciologists) who have argued that the glacial transport hypothesis is a perfectly reasonable one.

It would have been helpful if Darvill and Wainwright had done some more careful research on this issue before going into print here and repeating the same points they have made many times before.......

If "lack of evidence" is the sticking point with respect to the glacial transport thesis, would somebody please present to me the evidence thus far accumulated which shows that human transport of the bluestones might have happened?  I wait breathlessly for a flood of responses.