Watch out -- there's a glacier stalking you

As part of my occasional series extolling the virtues of glaciers and the work of ice, I came across these pics. Wow! This is Fridtjofbreen in Svarlbard. The photos were taken in 1996, around the peak of a surge that caused the glacier to advance 2.8 km between 1991 and 1997. At the peak of the surge, the glacier ice was moving at 4.2m per day, or almost 30m per week or about 130m per month. The lower photo shows that the ice was moving so fast that the glacier surface was literally torn to shreds.....http://www.unis.no/35_STAFF/staff_webpages/geology/monica_sund/web/New/glacier_surge_sund_unis.htm

Experts gather for jolly debate

Thanks to PG for drawing attention to this. I wonder if it will be terribly polite, or whether there will be blood on the carpet afterwards?
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Experts gather to gather for Stonehenge debate
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LEADING experts on Stonehenge will be gathering in Salisbury to debate the monument’s purpose next weekend.

The event, called Solving Stonehenge, is part of Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum’s 150th anniversary conference on October 2 and 3.

The main speakers will be Professor Tim Darvill, Professor Mike Parker Pearson, Mike Pitts and Julian Richards.

The debate will be chaired by Andrew Lawson.

Museum director Adrian Green said: “This is the first time that all the leading Stonehenge archaeologists have been gathered together for a public debate in recent times.

“With all their conflicting opinions about the role of the monument, and the opportunity for the public to quiz the archaeologists, this promises to be a thought-provoking event.”

There will also be a paper about recent survey work at Stonehenge by English Heritage archaeologist David Field on Saturday afternoon and a tour of the Stonehenge landscape on Sunday afternoon.

Stonehenge has been a vital part of the history of Salisbury Museum. The first official guidebook to the stones was written by former curator and director Frank Stevens in 1916.

The museum’s collections contain finds from every major excavation at the site, and since Victorian times it has had permanent displays about the monument.

Tickets for the whole conference, including a buffet, are £60 for members and £75 for non-members. Separate tickets for the Stonehenge debate are £15.

For details phone 01722 332151 or email museum@salisburymuseum.org.uk.

Politics and Stonehenge Myth-making

I've been pondering a bit more on where the great Stonehenge myths came from, and why they were peddled by the myth-makers and believed by the rest of us (with few exceptions).

Strangely, the two great myth-makers were both Welshmen -- Geoffrey of Monmouth and Hebert Thomas. And they both had ulterior political motives.

When Geoffrey wrote his stirring novel "The History of the Kings of Britain" around 1136 he was certainly seeking to tell a stirring tale and to captivate his readers -- but there was also a strong political motive in what he was doing. He was intent upon flattering his own Celtic community, buttering up the Anglo-Normans who had taken over the country following the invasion of 1066 (and who were still gradually insinuating themselves into positions of civil and ecclesiastical power) and vilifying the hated Saxons. He tried to flag up "the west" -- ie Wales and Ireland -- as the places where an ancient and noble culture still resided. To invoke the magic of Merlin, and to pretend that the stones at Stonehenge has come from an ancient stone monument at Mount Killaraus (which does not exist and never did) suited his purpose very well. So if, in the telling of his tale, he managed to increase respect and even awe for the Celtic civilization that was then on the wane, all well and good. Good story; strong political motive.

Herbert Thomas, when he invented the myth of long-distance human transport in 1920, may also have wished to enhance the image of Wales by drawing attention to its ancient civilization, its old stone circles, and the supposed magical or mystical properties of its stones. Maybe he wanted British archaeology to pay more attention to Wales. Hmmmm -- I'm not sure about any of that, but it's a good debating point. What is much more likely, in my mind, was that Thomas was fully signed up to the post-WW1 obsession within the archaeological establishment for demonstrating that the British Neolithic tribes were cleverer than their German counterparts (who built their rather spectacular Neolithic monuments out of locally-sourced stone). Anything they can do, we can do better -- and our chaps went and fetched 82 bluestones all the way from the Preseli Hills, because those stones were greatly revered.

As I have said elsewhere, there must also have been a "feel-good" motive. Thomas, and everybody else at the time, wanted some proof of the supremacy of man, of the longevity and permanence of British culture, and of the extraordinary skills of our ancestors as compared with lesser mortals who lived on the European mainland. "So to hell," thought Thomas, "with all of the evidence from Hicks, Geikie, Judd and Jehu of extensive glacier ice affecting Pembrokeshire and the coasts of the Bristol Channel! Let's shove all of that to one side, and give them a story that will have legs....."

One novelist and one geologist, each intent upon creating a myth, for reasons that did not have a great deal to do with science or integrity.

The other factor, of course, in the creation of myths, is that there must be a favourable context. Myths have to fall upon fertile ground if they are to survive. And of course, like all great myth-makers, Geoffrey and Herbert judged things perfectly. The time, and the public mood, was just right for each of them. So they both got away with utter nonsense, because nobody was particularly inclined to subject their ideas to careful scrutiny. That's OK in the case of a novel -- but it's not OK in serious science. Sadly, about a century after Thomas invented his myth, it is still not being subjected to scrutiny by the senior archaeologists of the UK. They still see it as THE TRUTH, and all of their efforts are devoted not to dissembling the myth, but to elaborating and enlarging it to its current rather grotesque and ridiculous proportions.

Does Stonehenge matter?

In the process of working out my talk for the Do Lectures, I wondered why on earth I had been asked to talk about Stonehenge (about which I have thought a lot and DONE relatively little) rather than about energy conservation, or renewable energy, or anti-GM campaigning (about which I have both thought a lot and done a lot.) OK. I thought, something frivolous and frothy to finish off a sequence of great and thought-provoking lectures by a group of very inspiring people...... to help folks to come down gently from the heights? But then I thought "Hang on -- this may not be quite so mad after all. Maybe there is a cunning plan here, on the part of Andy, Dave and the other organizers...."

And the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. What was I talking about? At one level I was talking about myths and myth-making. When we are dealing with the Stonehenge myths (and there are several), we are discussing rather esoteric (and unimportant) things including the distance over which the stones were transported, the places of origin of the stones, the mode of stone transport (ice or men with rollers and rafts), the state of the building at the point of abandonment by the builders, and the purposes for which Stonehenge was built -- or partly built. But at another level this is all about authority, established wisdom, control, and even power.....

Now we get much closer to what the Do Lectures are all about. Nearly all of the 28 lecturers were innovators who have refused to take no for an answer, who have broken out of the mould, got out of the comfort zone, and have challenged themselves and the system by doing highly innovative and even inspired things. OK -- that sounds like an extended cliche, but in reality the achievers of this world have been those who have had new ideas, have turned their backs on the established way of doing things, and have gone their own way. In doing so, they have brought into their lives stress and even physical danger -- maybe they are all people who live close to one end of the stress / stimulus / security continuum?

Back to Stonehenge. It is really a wonderful parable or fable for our time. The myths about the iconic ruin (namely that it was once an immaculate and completed structure which caused wonderment and awe; and that it was built as a result of a gigantic long-distance stone collecting corporate enterprise) started off as tentative suggestions, but then became ruling hypotheses, and have now become THE TRUTH. For all sorts of reasons, THE TRUTH has to be upheld and maintained -- and woe betide anybody who threatens to undermine it, or who is foolish enough even to question it with a degree of persistence. In the bad old days we had the Inquisition, and the burning of heretics, and the Truth Commission. Nowadays people don't get burnt at the stake or stoned to death for their beliefs (or at least, we hope they don't) -- but they do get vilified, ridiculed, kept out of jobs, denied promotions, and prevented from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.



The problem is that once THE TRUTH has been established, there are huge numbers of vested interests, individuals and organizations whose status -- and maybe income -- will be threatened if it should be shown not to be TRUTH at all. So we have English Heritage and the English Tourist Board who use THE TRUTH in their marketing campaigns, and who refuse even to allow the slightest shadow of a doubt to appear in their promotions. They pull millions of visitors a year into the UK, and bring them to Stonehenge... why should they let another version of the truth get in the way of a good story and a good marketing angle? After all, Stonehenge is one of the greatest icons and brands in the world. Then there are the senior academics who have spent their careers demonstrating to generations of students -- and to the rest of us -- how truthful THE TRUTH actually is. Their reputations would be in tatters if it should be shown that they have been barking mad, or out with the fairies, for years if not decades. Then there are the editors, publishers, museums, TV companies, bus tour operators, web site managers, tourist guides and all the rest of them who use THE TRUTH in their everyday lives -- and make good money out of it. They don´t want anything to come along and disturb their equilibrium either.

Enough of this. You get the point. All I want to say is that this sort of paralysis, respect for authority, unquestioning obedience, and comfortable acceptance of the mythology of Stonehenge is both pathetic and intellectually lazy. It is also -- and I use this expression very carefully -- PROFOUNDLY DANGEROUS. I say that because those who live in this comfort zone have allowed a cosy myth which is quite unsupported by evidence in the field to become a ruling hypothesis into which all sorts of peripheral information is then pulled, in one attempt after another to elaborate and perpetuate THE TRUTH. But it is not the truth at all -- it is a modern and extremely flimsy myth which should have been slung out decades ago, on the basis of hard evidence which I have tried to enumerate in this blog.

So pseudo-science has taken the place of science. Don't get me wrong. There is some serious and excellent science being done on Salisbury Plain. But where researchers are sucked into wild fantasies and unjustifiable speculations (sometimes to bolster their own egos, or to satisfy the TV producers and programme sponsors) they stray into pseudo-science, pulling together all sorts of nonsensical and unconnected items and calling them "evidence." Even the senior academics themselves state that certain of their colleagues are out with the fairies, and that tells us something........

So shame on the archaeologists who simply go with the flow, out of some misplaced reverence for their peers or for "established beliefs." And long live those who question the status quo, who show that the Emperors wear no clothes, and who are prepared to follow their own paths and their own dreams! They may live dangerously, and some will fall by the wayside, but they are at least being honest.

Barrie's Blog

Some very interesting entries on Barrie's Blog -- not least relating to the History of History and the History of Archaeology. Click on the title above to have a look..... and there are some excellent links for further exploration.

Talk at the Do Lectures

http://www.dolectures.com/

Been to the Do Lectures for 4 days -- at Fforest, near Cilgerran in North Pembs. The talk seemed to go down well -- like all of the 28 lectures it will eventually be placed on the Do Lectures web site -- they are trying to get 5 million hits in the year ahead. Best of luck to them -- the whole 3 days was inspiring and empowering -- lots of great young people with wonderful ideas and a phenomenal capacity for innovation and for refusing to lie down and accept mediocrity or red tape. These excellent people will get things DONE -- and I'm sure the world will be a better place for it.

The Emperor's Lack of Clothes

Did a nice piece (about 15 mins) for the Jamie and Louise Show on BBC Radio Wales this morning. It was quite a jolly chat, and they seemed quite entertained by the idea that Stonehenge might never have been finished. It confirmed my belief that the general public is blissfully ignorant of any doubts about the origins of Stonehenge or the mode of stone transport -- the myths about the old ruin are as strongly held as ever. The accepted English Heritage / archaeology establishment line that all is sorted, and that there is no room for any doubt, is profoundly worrying. It shows, at one level, that the "marketing" of the Stonehenge story is incredibly successful -- but it does get me thinking as to why the bulk of working archaeologists (who are honest hard-working academics with a reasonable respect for science) have not spoken up more vociferously on the nonsense about healing stones, neolithic hospitals, long-range stone collecting expeditions etc. These things have NO evidence worthy of the name in support of them.

The Emperor has no clothes -- but why are all those honest working archaeologists too timid to point that out? Are they all scared of stepping out of line, jeopardising their careers and having their papers blocked by senior academics whom they might upset? If so, that's a pretty depressing scenario, which does not augur well for the future of archaeology in the UK.