I have now prepared a draft paper which will be submitted to a journal for publication. It is uploaded to Researchgate where most people will be able to access it.
I emphasise that this is an interim report based on a very rapid examination of the boulder, and some of my observations will inevitably be found to be unreliable. I have done my best! But I stress that what we now need is a full autopsy by forensic scientists who are familiar with geological processes, petrology and provenencing, volcanic rocks, weathering processes, and glacial entrainment and transport. And the boulder needs to have its surfaces dated too!
I am sure that Salisbury Museum will be happy to cooperate in this enterprise.
This little boulder could prove to be a goldmine with regard to the information that it will yield.......
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361939331_A_glacially-transported_clast_at_Stonehenge
Salisbury Museum's willingness to cooperate with the ongoing researches will indeed be greatly appreciated.
ReplyDeleteOur old friend Tim Daw has stuck a "review" of this short article on his blog. I tried to respond to it, but his blog is not very smart at accepting comments. Anyway, he is all screwed up. He claims that the Newall Boulder could well have been carried by our heroic ancestors because all the other stones at Stonehenge were. That, I venture to suggest, is a matter of opinion. Tim talks about Occam's Razor, but fails to mention that the "human transport hypothesis" is far and away more complex and convoluted than the glacial transport hypothesis, as well as being unsupported by any hard evidence. The fact that the provenance of some stones is known (approximately) does not mean that human beings carted them from A to B. On the matter of glacial transport evidence, Tim has completely missed the point. He seems to think that the interpretation of the slickenside features as fault-induced destroys the glacial striations idea and removes the evidence for glacial transport. Let me remind him. The faint striae are on other faces, not the face with the quartz veneer. And the 11 eminent professors who looked at the images of the boulder judged that it is a glacially transported clast on the basis of its shape and other surface characteristics. None of them even knew that striae have been recorded on it. There is more to glaciation than striations.......
ReplyDeleteTim had earlier said that there are no signs on Salisbury Plain of glacial features such as moraines, drumlins or eskers, therefore there can have been no glaciation. I did try to encourage him and others to look at your Blog, Brian, and use the Search Engine in order to answer all questions. He also knows very well there are copies of your " The Stonehenge Bluestones " 2018, but, it seems, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
ReplyDeleteAll of those who subscribe to the Great Orthodoxy say the same thing: "No supporting evidence.". Then they go on to say: "It's the people what done it" on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. Actually there is quite a lot of evidence on Salisbury Plain of "inconvenient" stones and debris, as pointed out by all sorts of people over more than 120 years. When you are talking about a glaciation that occurred over half a million years ago, you do not exactly expect to see eskers and drumlins littering the landscape...... but that point seems to be lost on the defenders of the faith......
ReplyDelete"there is quite a lot of evidence on Salisbury Plain of "inconvenient" stones and debris, as pointed out by all sorts of people over more than 120 years."
ReplyDeleteGo on then give the details of a single glacial stone that is in its natural placement, or reliably recorded before being humanly moved, on Salisbury Plain. A bet: I'll give £100 to your favourite charity if you can and £100 to mine if you can't, from you.
Tim, I am not going to start playing silly games with you or anybody else. There are plenty of records in the papers by Richard Thorpe and others, and of course many of the bits and pieces might have been "humanly moved.". So what? if a stone has been "humanly moved" that does not mean it is not a glacial erratic. The question is "How far has it been moved?" It is perfectly reasonable to say that the rough boulders and slabs that make up the bulk of the bluestone assemblage have probably been used more or less where found. It is far more outrageous to suggest that they have been carted all the way from West Wales by Neolithic tribesmen, when there is not a shred of evidence in support of that.
ReplyDeleteThe other question relates to your term "reliably recorded" -- who gets to decide what is reliable and what is not? If we were to argue that out for a hundred quid stake I suspect we would end up just going round in circles, since you know perfectly well that much of the "evidence" that you think is perfectly reliable is viewed by me as thoroughly dodgy.......
Are the findings from Rhosyfelin and Waun Mawn "reliably recorded? Don't make me laugh.......
Rumour has it that our old friend Tim, defender of the faith, is flashing £20 notes around, over on his sarsen blog. He must be doing very well with his dead people storage depot. So best of luck to him. Anyway, apparently he is offering £100 for every stone at Stonehenge that cannot be reliably proved to have been transported by human beings from sources far away. Let's say there are 82 monoliths (we'll forget about the others). That means he owes me £8,200, and I look forward to receiving his cheque in the post. In keeping with the spiri of the times, I will of course donate every penny of the proceeds to the Homeless Rolling Stones charity.
ReplyDelete