As they say, one does not know whether to laugh or cry. One might as well laugh, but I am not going to be bullied by anybody, and I will defend myself. And I'll do it here.
Rob Ixer has just launched an extraordinary personal attack on me in the discussion forum of The Megalithic Portal, a web site with which many will be familiar. The web site published a write-up on the Mumbles boulder discovered by Phil Holden, which was based on the press release issued (with the full agreement of all three of us) by Phil, Katie and myself on 27th January 2022.
https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=56283
In two very aggressive posts Rob accuses us of all sorts of things, but I am not going to get dragged into a slanging match on a public forum. As far as I can gather, he is furious with us on the following grounds.
1. He thinks we are trying to prevent access to the boulder for other researchers, by keeping the precise location secret.
2. He thinks we are being biased and inaccurate in our description of the boulder.
3. He thinks our press release is vastly inflated, and that the find is really of no significance whatsoever.
4. He accuses me personally of being a "lone voice" in claiming any sort of significance for this boulder and for the relevance of the glacial transport thesis with regard to Stonehenge.
Let's address his accusations.
First, the location. Rob has revealed the precise location of the boulder on the portal web site with the sort of glee normally experienced by small children who have just discovered the secret hiding place of the chocolate biscuits in the kitchen. He's published a large-scale map with a blue dot on it. On his own head be it. We have no problem with researchers knowing where the boulder is, but we were being vary careful with publicising it in view of its dangerous position between the tide marks, in an area of wet, slippery and jagged rocky outcrops. Somebody might well get hurt. We have now taken advice on this from the local authority and others -- and the advice was that we should not be too specific in location details. Too late now.......
Second, why the pretence that we are being biased and misleading? What would we have to gain from that? Rob has published a series of photos of the boulder taken by a "competent Welsh glaciologist" -- making an absurd situation laughable. Who is this mysterious person? Who decided whether he or she is incompetent, or competent? What on earth is the point in he or she trying to remain anonymous? Our measured dimensions are a bit different from those of this mysterious expert, but as with all irregular boulders, it all depends where you put your measuring tape. It's not just a simple triangular shape -- one end is flattened, and there is a twist in it, with a bulbous projection on one side. We estimate the weight as more than 7 tonnes, but does anybody actually care whether it is 5, or 6, or 7, or 8 tonnes? I doubt it. It is certainly a great deal bigger and heavier than the great majority of big erratic boulders which I see all over the place, which are generally smaller than 1m x 1m x 1m, weighing in at up to 3 tonnes. We stick by our description of the "giant erratic" because it is on a par with others that have been similarly described in other parts of the world and indeed on other sections of the Bristol Channel coasts. Rob pretends that three other "giant erratics" were described in the Bridgend BGS Memoir of 1904. I know the literature well, and he has got that completely wrong. The biggest of the erratics seems to have had a diameter of around 30 cms. All that having been said, we are pleased to see the other photos of the boulder surface, which will all come in handy in interpretation.
Third, the question of whether we have vastly inflated the significance of this find. In his rather bilious response, Rob is at pains to demonstrate that our press release greatly exaggerates the importance of Phil's boulder discovery, on the basis that it adds nothing that was not already known. He has no doubt said this as well to media people who might have contacted him for a comment, and he clearly takes pleasure in having "shut down" a certain amount of press coverage. Sad, but there we go. We stick by what we said, since there are no known giant erratics or super-erratics from the west on the South Wales coast; those "western erratics" that have been recorded and described are all, as far as we can see from the literature, less than 40 cms in diameter and probably weigh less than a tonne. There are bigger erratics (such as Arthur's Stone, reputed to weigh more than 25 tonnes) derived from the South Wales Coalfield and Brecon Beacons, but they have been carried southwards by glaciers connected to the Welsh Ice cap. Ironically, in seeking to demonstrate that there is "nothing new" arising from Phil's discovery, Rob admits that he accepts that there was at one time a substantial ice stream that carried Pembrokeshire erratics of all sizes far up the Bristol Channel and into Somerset and Avon. That's intriguing and quite heartening, since he and Richard Bevins in their bluestone provenancing articles refer (often quite gratuitously) to the human transport of the bluestones over and again, with hardly any mentions of the possibility of glacial transport. Somewhere or other there is a disconnect.
Fourth, the claim that I am a "lone voice" in the bluestone transport debate is simply absurd. All of the earth scientists to whom we have spoken since Phil's discover are very excited by it, and all have seen immediately how significant it is. I don't feel very alone at all when the other earth scientists who have accepted at least one incursion by Irish Sea Ice glacial ice as far east as Bath and the Somerset Levels include Judd, Geikie, Kellaway, Mitchell, Stephens, Bowen, Williams-Thorpe, Thorpe, Bevins, Synge, Lewis, Hunt, Gilbertson, Campbell, Hawkins, Kidson, Andrews and many others. And those who have accepted the possibility that glacier ice actually reached Salisbury Plain -- and maybe Stonehenge itself -- include Kellaway, Williams-Thorpe, Jenkins, Watson, Hubbard, Bradwell, Golledge, Hall, Patton and Sugden. Again, I could go on. I wish that Rob would drop this absurd pretence that "it is established or accepted" that glacial transport of the bluestones was impossible, because somebody or other told him that around thirty years ago.
Finally, Rob appears to be mightily aggrieved that he has not been invited to examine our sample from the Giant Erratic, since he clearly considers that he is the only person qualified to do so. In fact, he even questions my truthfulness when I say that we have samples. He has repeated the claim that we have no samples on the Magalithic Portal. That's a cheap insult, for which he should apologise. We have two samples, one of which has already been prepared for analysis. Analysis begins next week. We have taken the view that the samples from the boulder should not be examined or described by anybody who has been involved in the "bluestone debate." That includes me and it includes Ixer and Bevins. Impartiality is all-important in this case, and we will stand by our decision that the work should be done by somebody competent who is capable of bringing complete objectivity to the matter.
If Rob can just manage to relax for a while, and wait until the results of our commissioned analyses are published, he will have every opportunity to say whatever he likes about them at that stage, just like everybody else.
