Express does a puff for Robert's Great Mesolithic Inundation

It's interesting that the Express refused to do a review of "The Bluestone Enigma," presumably on the grounds that it was not wacky enough.  Now they have gone to town with an extended puff for RL's book about the mighty inundation that supposedly allowed stone-laden boats to deliver their valuable cargoes directly to Stonehenge.  They have even gone to the trouble of stocking it in the Express's on-line bookshop.  Best of luck to Robert -- he is just trying to make a living, just like the rest of us.  But what does this tell us about the quality of British journalism?  Answers on a postcard please...........

SECRETS OF THE STONES
Stonehenge exerts an extraordinary power over the people of Britain.

Sunday Express,  May 29,2011

By Graham Ball

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/249439/Secrets-of-the-stones
As the summer solstice will soon see thousands gather at Stonehenge, an archaeologist discusses his belief that the Wiltshire monument is evidence of a great civilisation which once thrived there

IN three weeks’ time, thousands of devotees will gather in the dark in a field in Wiltshire. They do this every year and each time their number grows.

They are there to celebrate the midsummer Solstice, the longest day of the year, and will wait until daybreak when the sun sends a piercing ray of light through Stonehenge, the ancient ruin they have come to venerate.

This primordial circle of stones, eight miles north of Salisbury in Wiltshire, exerts an extraordinary power over the people of Britain.

Some, like the Druids, claim it is the source of a mystical power while others, curious but sceptical, believe it to be the site of an ancient monument that has no relevance to the way we live today.

Whatever their conviction they are all missing the point according to one man who has studied the location for 30 years and believes he knows the real reason why Stonehenge is so special.

“Stonehenge is unique; it is already recognised as a World Heritage Site but it’s more than just an ancient curiosity, it is the place where civilisation began,” says writer and archaeologist Robert John Langdon.

“It’s simply the most amazing place in the world and we should all be celebrating the meaning of this incredible place.”

Robert fell under the spell of Stonehenge as a boy. He explored the massive stone monoliths and was intrigued by the official explanation of their origin. As the years passed and he learned more he was puzzled by contradictions in official explanation of its origins.

“The carbon dating of the stones is not consistent. I have discovered that stone post holes in what is now the car park for the site predate the accepted date for Stonehenge by 5,000 years. If this evidence is accepted, and it has been denied for years, it turns the conventional history of Stonehenge, and the rest of the world for that matter, on its head.”

If Robert is right, and he says he has the scientific evidence to prove he is, Stonehenge is the most important archaeological site in the world. It would mean Salisbury Plain is home to the first and most significant civilisation on earth. So how could this have happened?

“The geography and landscape of the site would have been very different. Britain would have been emerging from the last Ice Age, so much of the country we now recognise would have been under water. Stonehenge would have been on an estuary that led to the open sea. Too many important facts have been ignored,” says Robert.

“There is evidence that water was close, but that has been classified as a moat which I believe is wrong. It is also believed the stones were dragged over land from Wales which is misleading.

“The large sarsen stones came from an area close to Avebury which is not far from Stonehenge.  To have brought them overland all the way from Wales takes no account of the fact that according to the official time scale Salisbury Plain at that time would have been heavily forested which would have made that access all but impossible. The bluestones, which are the key to the secret of Stonehenge, were smaller and did come from Wales but they were brought there by boat.”

Robert’s hypothesis is based on his conviction that the men who built Stonehenge were much more skilled and sophisticated than is currently believed. In 10,000 BC, the Mesolithic period, he believes that men in ancient Britain developed the first recognisable civilisation and that Stonehenge was their greatest achievement.

“These were extremely capable people who found a way of drilling into stone and used sophisticated mortice and tenon joints to erect Stonehenge but most importantly they mastered the seas. These boat people, as we can call them, travelled widely and traded and these are the people I believe that Plato referred to in his writings on the origins of civilisation.”

So why did these people make such an effort to build Stonehenge? what was it intended to do?

“Stonehenge was accessible to boat people from  all over Europe and Mesolithic men and women came there to be cured of their ailments and to depart from this world. The alignment of the site to the sun and the moon is immensely significant but so is the presence of the bluestones in the circle.

“Bluestone turns blue in water, and was believed to have incredible powers of healing. Evidence from bones found close to Stonehenge suggests that the original inhabitants practised sophisticated medical procedures which included dentistry, limb removal and even brain surgery.

“These were not the fur-clad hunter gatherers living in mud huts that many mistakenly believe were the builders of Stonehenge. They were instead members of a great civilisation that moved out, leaving Stonehenge as the only surviving physical evidence of their genius.”

If Robert Langdon is right Stonehenge is much older than the Pyramids and there is a surprising connection between the two ancient stone monuments.

“Over the centuries the climate and landscape in Britain changed. Mesolithic men used their seafaring skills to move to a more sympathetic environment. They traded widely and sailed south to what is now the Mediterranean and moved in along the coast from Egypt to Greece and Italy. The ancient Egyptians’ skill at engineering and building with stone had its roots in the lessons learnt by the men who built Stonehenge.”

It is not only archaeologists with a theory about the significance of Stonehenge. The Druids regard it as a sacred place where they perform spiritual rituals.

Robert says: “I don’t have any disputes with the Druids and they don’t seem to mind me. I’ll be rubbing shoulders with lots of them at the midsummer solstice. The Druids may well have their beliefs but they came on the Stonehenge scene very late in the day.

“They would have discovered the site as an ancient and abandoned temple and taken it over but that’s all right. I get on pretty well with other archaeologists too although they do tend to dismiss my work, but that’s their loss. Stonehenge has a special hold on me and the more I learn about it the more fascinated I become. I’m already working on a new book which I think will ruffle quite a lot of feathers.

“In a sense what we know as Stonehenge is almost the foundations of a much bigger edifice. Stonehenge is, despite all the myths that have been fostered, a very special place. It is, I believe, the birthplace of civilisation and we all ought to give it the respect that it really deserves.”

To order a copy of Prehistoric Britain – The Stonehenge Enigma by Robert John Langdon (ABC Publishing Group, £14.99) with free UK delivery, please send a cheque or PO made payable to the Sunday Express Bookshop to: PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4W J, or telephone 0871 988 8366 with credit/debit card details or order online at expressbookshop.com. Calls cost 10p per minute from BT landlines.

The Russia stones (again)

Today I had another look at the Russia Stones, referred to by Robin Heath as a prehistoric megalithic alignment, precisely aligned east - west.  This photo shows the biggest of the stones, and it is indeed pretty spectacular.  But as we now know, this one was put in place in 1977 by the local farmers while they were clearing their fields.  Not far away is another massive stone, with a chain still wrapped round it -- they obviously gave up on that one, since it was TOO heavy.  But this vertical stone is covered with gouges and scratches made by the JCBs and other vehicles used to move it -- I'm surprised that Robin never noticed these surface markings, which are still very fresh..........  If he had done, he would have realized that this stone has NOT been in position since the Neolithic or the Bronze age.

And by the way, the three stones that are supposed to be aligned are not aligned at all.  And the other two, used as gateposts just along the lane, close to the ruined cottage called Russia, are also covered with fresh machinery markings made when the stones were manoevred into position and pressed into service as gateposts.

On the trail of Bluestone Erratics (2) Entrainment

 The process of entrainment where thickening ice (during the waxing phase of a glacial episode) encounters a large obstacle which hinders or blocks its progress.  It is inevitable that entrainment will be concentrated on the up-glacier side of the obstacle, and that as the ice thickens the erosive / entrainment episode will come to an end, as the entrained boulders are carried away towards the glacier snout, wherever that may be. Thus there is an entrainment "pulse" similar to that which occurs when avalanches or rockfalls introduce depris onto the glacier surface -- cf The Foothills Erratic Train, and the Darwin Boulders in Tierra Del Fuego.  The entrained erratics may also be carried tens or hundreds of kilometres away from their source area, with no erratic dumping in the intervening area -- as seen in the case of the Darwin Boulders.

 I have covered this topic at length before -- please type in "entrainment" into the search box, and you will find many entries.  Sadly, my entries are not being read by the right people -- or, if they ARE the right people, they just don't like what they read, and choose to ignore it.........

This is not the place for a treatise on glacial erosion -- that is well covered in thousands of papers and scores of text-books, including some of mine!  Suffice to say that there are many different erosional processes at work beneath ice, including abrasion (in which the base of a glacier, armed with abundant stones and other debris, acts like sandpaper on overridden rock surfaces) and plastic scouring (which produces smoothed and moulded forms where the till at the base of the glacier is saturated, or where large volumes of meltwater may be flowing along the glacier bed).  The effect of abrasion, when relatively large tools are involved, is the creation of deep, parallel, long striations (striae) and grooves in the rock surface.

Another process is gouging, in which large, heavy "tools" on a glacier bed are used effectively like chisels on a rock surface that is being over-ridden, creating friction cracks, chatter-marks and gouges that can be tens of centimetres deep.  Many of these cracks or fractures are transverse to the direction of ice movement.  Anybody who has wandered about in the Stockholm Atchipelago (as I have) will know exactly what I am talking about!  The physics of these processes are complex, and are best left for another day and another geomorphologist.

What we are especially concerned about here is QUARRYING, by which large blocks of bedrock are broken away from rock surfaces or are picked up from old scree slopes or other accumulations of blocky debris that happen to be overridden by ice.  Without becoming too complicated or too mathematical, we can refer to the summary below by Prof David Evans.

Essentially, what he is saying is that pressure variations on the bed of a glacier favour the breaking off of slabs or blocks of bedrock, on the basis that rock under compression (on the up-glacier sides of obstacles) is quite strong, but is much weaker -- and therefore susceptible to entrainment -- when it is under tension (on the down-glacier sides of obstacles).  Where glacier ice is relatively thin, and where cavities can be created on the glacier bed, quarrying is enhanced.  The process is essentially one of spalling, sheeting or pressure release -- something which geologists are familiar with, and which can sometimes lead to solid rock shattering or "bursting" with near-explosive force.

The role of water is important too ---  on the compression side of obstacles, water remains in a liquid state, but on the tension side pressure is reduced, and water often freezes back onto the sole of the glacier, and in doing so incorporates or "entrains" any large blocks that have been loosened.  So blocks can be dragged away and incorporated into the glacier.  If the glacier is flowing smoothly, and if the glacier bed is still melting here and there, and lubricating the basal ice, the entrained boulders will remain close to the glacier bed and may not be carried very far;  but if the ice thickens over time, because of a deteriorating climate or because of topographic controls, then the ice may freeze onto its bed.  In other words, the glacier will change from being "warm-based" to being "cold-based."  When that happens, the only way for the glacier to continue its forward momentum -- because it is being forced by accumulating ice upstream -- is by processes of internal deformation, including shearing.  Thrust planes can carry big slabs and pillars of broken rock up into the body of the glacier -- and in some circumstances even up onto the glacier surface.  The extent to which these blocks will be modified or smoothed during transport will vary according to the potential that there may be for abrasion or further breakages -- but now we are straying into the territory of the next chapter in this treatise.....

There now -- that wasn't so painful, was it?

Entrainment territory.  Ice-smoothed slabs near Garnfawr on Dinas Mountain, North Pembrokeshire

The implications of all this for the Stonhenge Bluestone debate?  Well, that I would not be at all surprised to find "bluestone erratics" turning up on Salisbury Plain which have come from either the north Pembrokeshire coast between Dinas and Newport, or from Carnedd Meibion Owen and Tycanol Wood, or from the northern slope of Preseli (where we find the tors of Carn Alw and Carn Goedog).  I would find it very surprising indeed if erratics were to turn up from the southern slopes of Preseli.  As for erratics from Carn Breseb, Carn Gyfrwy, Carn Sian, Carn Meini, and Carn Dafad-las,  I would expect some to turn up on Salisbury Plain, although the circumstances for entrainment would not have been quite so favourable.

What I would expect is that erratics derived from the southern slopes of Preseli or from the crest of the ridge might be quite extensively spread across the landscape of mid- and south Pembrokeshire, after entrainment and transport during later and less extensive phases of glacial activity.  We don't know how many "pulses" of late-glacial activity there might have been at the end of the Anglian glaciation, but if the Devensian Glaciation can be taken as a reasonable model, there may well have been one or more coolings equivalent of those we refer to as the Younger and Older Dryas phases in Western Europe.  These coolings just MIGHT have been associated with short-lived regional glacial advances.
-----------------------------

Quarrying (Prof David Evans)
Prog in Phys Geog 2004
 
Quarrying
Quarrying involves two separate processes: (1) the fracturing or crushing of bedrock
beneath the glacier;  and (2) the entrainment of this fractured or crushed rock.  Fracturing
of bedrock may take place where a glacier flowing over bedrock creates pressure
differences in the underlying rock, causing stress fields that may be sufficient to induce
rock fracture (Morland and Boulton, 1975; Morland and Morris, 1977). Fluctuations in
basal water pressure may also help to propagate bedrock fractures beneath a glacier
(Röthlisberger and Iken, 1981; Walder and Hallet, 1985; Iverson,1991a). Brepson(1979)
has successfully simulated the sliding of temperate ice over an obstacle in the
laboratory, and noted that large cavities form in the lee of obstacles, aiding quarrying.
Evacuation of rock fragments along joints in the bed is possible where localized basal
freezing occurs, for example as the result of the heat-pump effect proposed by Robin
(1976). Although Holmes (1944) originally argued that quarrying could occur beneath
both thick and thin ice, and outlined a theory based on pressure-controlled freezing of
meltwater in joints in bedrock, there is now general agreement that quarrying is
favoured beneath thin, fast-flowing ice (Hallet, 1996). Modelling studies indicate that
low effective basal pressures (0.1–1MPa) and high sliding velocities are the dominant
glaciological conditions required for quarrying because these conditions favour
extensive ice/bed separation (subglacial cavity formation)and also concentrate stresses
at points, such as the corners of bedrock ledges, where ice is in contact with the bed
(Iverson, 1991a; Hallet, 1996).

More about Darwin's Boulders

 The two locations where erratic trains of granite are found, on the south shores of the Magellan Straits.  The source area of the erratics is shown in red on the top map.  Locations A and B are about 80 km apart, and there are no granite erratics in this intervening area.

I have blogged about these famous granite boulders before.  They are located in Tierra del Fuego, not far from the Straits of Magellan.  There are two erratic trains, made of boulders up to 16m long and apparently scattered across the landscape close to the coast.  They rest in a till sheet, but where they are found on the shore all of the other sediments have been washed away, leaving the boulders in glorious isolation, washed by the waves.
 
Evenson and colleagues have interpreted the erratic trains as resulting from localised and short-lived rockfalls or avalanches in the high mountains which were the collecting grounds for the glaciers that flowed northwards and north-eastwards towards the lowlands.  The erratics are very rough and angular -- which means they have been transorted on, rather than within, the glacier ice.  So the interpretation is very like that for the Foothills Erratic Train in Canada.

There are several noteworthy things here.  First, note that the two erratic trains are very narrow -- up to about 500m wide, with very few boulders outside the "train".  In case B, there are some anomalous boulders to the north of the main train, explained by the authors as being due to lateral spreading in the terminal ice zone of the glacier as it reached the coastal plain.  Both trains were laid down by the same glacier lobe, but during different glacial phases.  The other thing of considerable interest is the manner in which these two lobes are physically separate from one another, with a large belt of country between them which is quite free of these granite erratics.  This "empty zone" is about 80 km wide.

This study reinforces the idea that erratics are input (sometimes, not always) into glaciers during short-lived "pulses" which can then result in erratic trains of limited length being transported from source area to dumping area, with no tail or trail being left behind in the area traversed by the ice.

I keep on trying to explain this to the archaeologists, who simply refuse to listen.......

Source:
GSA Today
Article, pp. 4-10 | Volume 19 Issue 12 (December 2009)http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/19/12/article/i1052-5173-19-12-4.htm
Enigmatic boulder trains, supraglacial rock avalanches, and the origin of “Darwin's boulders,” Tierra del Fuego Edward B. Evenson et al

The Foothills Erratic Train

Two new maps of the Foothills Erratic Train, which is over 600 km long.  Note how narrow it is, and note how there are a number of changes in direction, some of them quite sharp.  In some areas the trail is discontinuous, and in some areas there are "clusters" of erratics.

The famous Foothills Erratic Train in Canada is the most famous example of a "train" or trail of erratics -- as distinct from an erratic "fan" where boulders from one source are spread widely across an arc of countryside.  Both types are well documented -- but it should be borne in mind that a fan is nothing more than a collection of erratic trains which are quite close together, arising from changes in ice directions during the course of a glacial episode.  There is no mechanism for erratics to "spread sideways" in a glacier of ice sheet -- they have to move in the direction of ice movement, up or down, but always forward and never laterally.

The interesting thing about the Foothills erratic Train, as pointed out by Lionel Jackson and many others, is that the string of erratics was created by the parallel streaming of two very large ice masses -- the Cordilleran Ice Sheet to the west, and the Laurentide Ice Sheet to the east.  With very good reason, Lionel and I proposed that this was a close parallel to the situation than occurred in the Bristol Channel area at the peak of the (Anglian?) glacial episode:
http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/1a1-7d8-c-1f

The Dalsetter Erratic

 The Dalsetter Erratic (about 1m across) near Boddam, near the southern tip of the 

main island of Shetland

Those who expect to see erratic trails or erratic fans between source point and dumping point conveniently forget that there are well-known examples (from all glaciated areas)  of erratics that are so extremely erratic that they are almost anomalous.  One such is the Dalsetter Erratic on Shetland -- a large boulder made of a rock called "tonsbergite" which has come from the Oslo district in Norway.  Luckily it has a very distinctive colour and texture -- so identification was made a long time ago, and did not have to depend upon modern geochemistry techniques etc.

So how did this erratic boulder get from A to B?  It has to be the result of glacial transport, at a time when ice from the Scandinavian Ice Sheet was so extensive that it crossed the Norwegian Trench and invaded the Orkney and Shetland island groups.  There is no great doubt about that, since there is other evidence that can be adduced -- but in spite of a thorough search across 7 km of terrain near this erratic, no other erratic of similar type has ever been found.  In fact (please correct me if I'm wrong!) no other erratic from Norway has been found on the Shetlands.......

So because the Dalsetter Erratic is "anomalous" do we have to discount ice action and hypothesise that it was actually carried by human beings?  Well, that has been proposed, on the grounds that the erratic might have been carried ashore as ships ballast by the Vikings -- but there is no way that they would carry boulders of this size as ballast.  In any case, there is quite convincing evidence that the erratic was dug out of a local deposit of glacial till -- and that seems to put an end to the discussion.

So where is the erratic train, if there is one?  Simple answer -- under the sea.  Not so different from the Preseli / Stonehenge scenario, when you think about it.

On the trail of Bluestone Erratics (1) Principles

 

A huge erratic on the plains of Patagonia.  Where did it come from?  How did it get here?

The question I am most frequently asked about the Stonehenge bluestones is this:  "If the bluestones really were carried from West Wales to Salisbury Plain by a glacier, where is the trail of erratics that we should find in the landscape between Carn Meini and Stonehenge?"  Another form of the question is this:  "Where is the moraine that should be near Stonehenge, and where are the till formations and other glacial deposits that should be well mapped by now, given the many years of intensive research in the area?"

These questions are fair enough if they are put by laymen, or even by professional archaeologists who cannot be expected to know much about glacial geomorphology.  But it does tend to irritate me when they are put by senior academics who teach and research in various fields of geomorphology, especially when they then conclude, having considered the matter, that glacial transport from the Mynydd Preseli area to Salisbury Plain was "impossible."  To the best of my knowledge, that word has actually been used in this context in discussions and in print by James Scourse, Chris Green and David Bowen.  As I have said before, they should know better;  anybody who says that something is "impossible" is asking for trouble......... especially when there is abundant evidence on the table that glacier ice has indeed crossed the Pembrokeshire Peninsula and extended into the Somerset lowlands, on at least one occasion (and possibly several) during the Quaternary.  These three learned gentlemen know that, but they have still chosen to turn a blind eye to the evidence presented long ago by Judd and later by Geoffrey Kellaway -- and to sign up with precipitate enthusiasm to the human transport myth peddled by the archaeology establishment.  Why?  Better ask them that......

Interestingly enough, the reasoning of these three gentlemen appears to run as follows:  "if the route followed by the Irish Sea Glacier up the Bristol Channel was indeed as suggested, there should be a continuous trail or fan of spotted dolerite and rhyolite boulders roughly the same size as those of Stonehenge stretching from the eastern Preseli Hills and onto the chalklands of Salisbury Plain.  There isn't, and therefore the glacial transport didn't happen."

And it's also quite intriguing that since these senior academics have been selected as "THE authorities" on glacial transport, their pronouncements have also been taken on board by geologists who should know better.  Why?  Better ask them that too........

Part of the problem is that none of those who have been chosen as "expert geologists" or "expert glaciologists" is actually a glacial geomorphologist.  I am (or was, a long time ago!) and I think I can claim to know what I am talking about.


The other part of the problem is that "the experts" have never seriously considered the factors that are involved in getting large stones from A to B.  They tend, in a very simplistic way, to look at an erratic on the ground, and say "Ah yes, this came from location A -- therefore the ice crossed that location and then dumped it here, at location B."  But that may be only a very small part of the story, and it is now my mission to educate the world about glacial erratics.

In even the simplest glacial erratic story there are three (at least!) factors to be considered: entrainment, transport, and emplacement.  In other words, the picking up of the stone, the transport of it, and finally its dumping in a location where it is out of place, and therefore "erratic."  It seldom happens that a stone (or a collection of stones) has one simple glacial journey over a measurable amount of time;  I suspect that most erratics in the UK have been moved several times and have followed wildly erratic courses.    I'll come back to this in a later post.

Watch this space.........