Did the Welsh build Stonehenge?

a reply to: Oldtimer2

I suppose the magnitude of the operations to get those stones standing where they are.

Something occurs to me in that context, lots of people with lots of spare time, so were they moved during the winter, when farming was at its quietest?

a reply to: dowot

Welsh is just the saxon word for foreigner. It's the root from which we get wall etc.

What we call the Welsh are actually ancient Briton who got pushed out of England by saxons into what we now call Wales and Cornwall.

No doubt some old gaelic names survived as many people intermingled

ETA should have read Ancient Britons/Celts. poor word choice by me.

a reply to: dowot

Stonehenge was already 3000 years old when the Celts - who were the antecedents of the Welsh - settled in Britain. So no.

It's far more ancient than the Welsh.

originally posted by: dowot
a reply to: dragonridr

Yes it was "renovated" to make it more of an attraction, but recasted in concrete,I think not, they are the original real stones put into their original holes, I've been there.

They have even identified the exact position where one of those stones came from with-in the quarry, according to the second of the links given in the 7th post. That's if I understand what is said.

The renovations were extensive and involved using concrete to recast many of the stones. It was done for ascetics to make is a tourist attraction. Every piece has been moved and replaced. People dont realize how extensive these repairs were. In fact in the 1700s when it was mentioned very few of the stones were standing. But here see for your self you even see them using cement

viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk...

originally posted by: dowot
a reply to: Oldtimer2

I suppose the magnitude of the operations to get those stones standing where they are.

Something occurs to me in that context, lots of people with lots of spare time, so were they moved during the winter, when farming was at its quietest?

Actually there is still quite an intense argument going on over this. Yes, the bluestones are from what is now Wales. However, there is some dispute if the stones were shipped across the Bristol Channel by the inhabitants of the area at the time, or if they were deposited there by glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age and then used to build Stonehenge by the people of the time. Frankly you can find proponents of both theories, to the point where the jury is still out on the issue.

a reply to: SprocketUK

Culturally accurate and it was also the dominant view of earlier study's but in later studies they found the Anglo Saxon's did NOT wipe out the Celt's of England but mixed with them.
Here is a BBC page from 2015
www.bbc.co.uk...
There are however individual family's with link's and some of them may go back much further, I stand by my assertion that if they could be isolated Pure blood Pict's are actually the oldest surviving indigenous Britain's however there may be no pure blood pict's left which would leave them in much the same boat as the Welsh, more British historical ancestry than there more mixed English cousin's but not by much.

Now it is worth remembering how the English - ruled by the Norman nobility however did persecute the welsh and try to destroy there cultural and linguistic identity a practice which continued right into the 1960's.

originally posted by: Kester
a reply to: dowot

Welsh people could be most ancient in UK, DNA suggests

www.bbc.co.uk...

Seems likely.

I am of Welsh decent and cant follow my heritage because the Welsh names were banned by England after Cromwell (is my understanding).

originally posted by: surfer_soul
a reply to: DISRAELI

History literally isn’t taught in schools anymore.

Dowot, only the blue stones are from Wales. Apparently they ring when struck

Blue stones playing blues tones. Hmmmm William Henry used that phrase in a book I read by him. I do forget which.

originally posted by: dragonridr

originally posted by: dowot
a reply to: dragonridr

Yes it was "renovated" to make it more of an attraction, but recasted in concrete,I think not, they are the original real stones put into their original holes, I've been there.

They have even identified the exact position where one of those stones came from with-in the quarry, according to the second of the links given in the 7th post. That's if I understand what is said.

The renovations were extensive and involved using concrete to recast many of the stones. It was done for ascetics to make is a tourist attraction. Every piece has been moved and replaced. People dont realize how extensive these repairs were. In fact in the 1700s when it was mentioned very few of the stones were standing. But here see for your self you even see them using cement

viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk...

Why not spruce it back up? I want to see it in all it's glory one day.

An interesting subject, one which I have spent some time reading upon!

Im more interested in whether the British isles held a proto indo european language
in that language had already been established here before the Inuds valley region birthed civilsation and the people who lived here moved to warmer climates and made gobleki tepi

just been reading about it !

I am also extremely interested in the fact that all of these old pagan sites, are also built near volcanic features and also are all related to ley lines

Well, then if they were made by the Welsh then how does this get explained ?

Lake Michigan Stonehenge

The stones are organized in a circle 40 below the surface of Lake Michigan and is believed to be at least 10,000 years old. One stone in the outer circle, although still up for debate, appears to have a carving of a mastodon, an animal that closely resembles an elephant that went extinct over 10,000 years ago.

a reply to: dowot

This entire thread is interesting to me. Still, many of these posts don't address the question, "it possible that Stonehenge was some sort of indicator of the extent of Welsh occupation?"

From what I have read, most people agree that the stones are from Wales rather than being glacial deposits and there has been much discussion about how they were transported to Stonehenge.

Just because the stones were sourced from Wales doesn't by itself prove the site was occupied by the Welsh. If that were the case, I would expect to see many more Stonehenges in Wales, closer to the source of these stones. Maybe these do exist, I don't know.

I recall reading about Scandinavia and northern Germany. They also have ancient sites with magical bluestones. I got the impression that these stones were believed to have supernatural properties throughout much of northern Europe. Maybe all ancient British tribes believed this.

a reply to: toms54

You raise a good point as there are many henges in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Europe and even Syria/Turkey. Not all Henges consist of stones, though the ringing stones were probably considered magical in some way.

I think it’s highly likely these Neolithic structures were made by people sharing the same cultural beliefs as we also find dolmens scattered across these same places that are structured in the same fashion.

Here is a good site with lots of examples.

www.megalithic.co.uk...

a reply to: Justoneman

This was one of the earlier studies whose result's were put into question by the later study, many welsh are actually of Romano British descent meaning that some will have ancestry in places like Greece, Egypt and even further afield since the Roman empire was here for over 450 years and they settled among our Celtic ancestor's quite heavily.

So I would still stick with the Pict's if any pure blooded could be found since they held out right into the time of the Viking invasion's and only finally succumbed to the Irish Scot's whom then intermarried with them AND the simple fact that they were driven north into the highland's by the ancestor's of the Celt's which would therefore suggest they were here first.

That said they are commonly regarded as a Celtic people as well there own language having been replaced by that of the Britain's and there name meaning the Painted people, still there is a lot we don't know about them, the vitrified hill fort's were actually stone fort's with high wall's which suggest a forgotten bronze age culture one flourished in the land's of the Pict's, perhaps they themselves were invaders and those hill fort's were the home's of the previous resident's of Caledonia or perhaps it was an uprising and cultural change with those hill fort's having been the home's of there former rulers while they had been forced to live as peasant's in the valley's, had it not been for the clearances the population of Scotland would be in excess of thirty million people today.

But as for Stonehenge itself a Medieval illustration made by a monk showed the stone's laid out in a rectilinear fashion instead of the famous circular fashion and the whole site was actually rebuilt several times over the past couple of hundred years with many claim's of cover up's and worse.

The so called druid's that worship there today have nothing to do with Celtic Druid's (knowledge of the oak or there blood bond watering an oak with there heart blood and mingling there blood with it's sap to make it there's) but are in fact a new age cult revival based on fantasy's dreamed up by 1800's loonies.

And of course you have the whole claim that the circle was rebuilt BASED upon the layout of a certain cathedral tower rather than the other way around for esoteric cult purposes - all illumi what not and masonic stuff.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.the-stonehenge-enigma.info...
csglobe.com...



www.independent.co.uk...
sarahpeverley.com...

Some good reading in those links.

I found a rather long, and maybe tainted or maybe correct, summary at

www.ancient-wisdom.com...

which includes some original and interesting drawings and pictures.

John Constable, the great english painter of landscapes, made a sketch of the stones, that was in the 1800's.

a reply to: LABTECH767

It was renovated in the 1950's but was certainly there, in a rather dilapidated state in the 1820's when John Constable made a sketch of the stones.

a reply to: dowot

Here is a web page with very nearly the last thousand years of ownership of the site (legitimate or not it was such under the Norman's)
In the 1700's the stone's were said to be scattered about and the then owner of the site is said to have partially renovated the site, this you will note was well before Constable's depiction of the site.
What we see today is actually a REBUILD and therefore a recreation of this very ancient monumental structure.

zainabslounge.blogspot.com...

And as for the provenance of the site itself, well definitely not in the form we know it today but it has indeed been a site for potentially as far back as 7500 BC which is actually even older than the stone's themselves since it was reported back in about 2012 that evidence of prolonged human occupation of a site very close to the stone's as long back as that had been discovered.

But let's stick with the big stone's, they have been there since neolithic people brought them to the site so I am not arguing that the site is fake but rather that it was not as we see it today (And much like Puma Punku which was largely REBUILT/renovated in the early 20th century so muddying our modern view of the site and tainting any and all archaeology since performed there including claim's by some on this site based on samples taken from under stone's - stone's which may have been therefore moved very recently?).

Stone's are robbed out from ancient sites and even great abbey's destroyed in the dissolution of the monastery's and mighty castles often made with some prodigious stone's have all but disappeared in just a few hundred years of there downfall, it was only the isolation of stonehenge that meant anything at all remained BUT we can wonder whether larger and certainly a great many smaller stone's were long ago taken and off for other uses and if the site was used as an open quarry from time to time which seem's not only logical but downright likely.

Undoubtedly those lord's of the manner in the region would have needed great lintel stone's above there hearth's and for other uses, what if stonehenge was something other than we are told today?, what if indeed it was once a large stone building? and for that matter what if the Celtic Britain's used the site for there own uses bearing in mind it is a PRE-Druidic site at least a thousand and a half years older than the influence of even the earliest form's of Druidic influence within our country, could the Celt's have altered it.

Now don't get me wrong Avebury and all the other stone circles around the nations of the UK prove that stone crop and astrological calender's were indeed built by these same neolithic people's But which other of these circles has the door style stone arrangement's that stonehenge does, to my knowledge NONE of them so why did stone henge have it unless it was actually something quite different to those other sites.
There are claim's that a wood henge stood nearby and that the site may have featured in a complex ceremony of passage for the deceased whose remain's would be brought along a processional way from the wood henge made of standing wooden posts to the stonehenge made of these mighty stone's symbolizing a transition from the mortal to the immortal but that is purely supposition and one archeaologists idea and really nothing more substantial than that.

Of course it still pale's before the site of the Mother Goddess worship on Malta with it's giant neolithic goddess and underground temple's but still for the people of Britain it may have served a great purpose of some kind.

As for it being a square it could also originally have been more like Carnac and arranged as part of a much larger complex with all those small stone's having long ago been robbed out, Carnac in france is from roughly the same time period and the peoples whom built that massive complex are supposedly linked at least culturally to those in the British isles of the time so why not?.

a reply to: dowot

There were no "Welsh" when stone henge was built. The Cymric ("Welsh") are a Celtic people. The builder of Stonehenge and the other megaliths were well prior to any Celtic or protoceltic people. Of course some people (including one well respected scholar ) think the Celtic cultures may have originated in the British Isles. I disagree, but hey thats is life.

So no the welsh did not build stone henge. No the Druids had zero to do with the place. There is a chance the stones are from where we now say Welsh nation is (that is a modern boundary).

Genetically however, as cultures are not Genetic they are cultural, yes the decendants of who built the Stone Cirlces are alive today, all over bits of the UK. Genetic Analysis of the European peoples, show for the whole, there is not a massive influx of new genetic potential in the western part of Europe. They are all Neo or Mesolithic hunters decendants. This is because cultures travel with small groups of people sometimes. SO the "Celtic" invasion of the British Isles (which happened twice) could have been from a small group, who took over, but did not breed the looser out of existence. They would have barely dented the genetic map.

a reply to: Noinden

Absolutely Correct, Or to put it in the word's most geneticists would use - made the genetic make up of the British Isle's more dynamic a necessity to strengthening the gene pool.

I wonder though were they really invasion's or more tribal migration's at a more sedate pace perhaps, obviously the Celt's gene's were the stronger and that may simply be down to the fact that a small gene pool is quite inbred and there presence may have reinvigorated it with there children then outpacing the previous native population in term's of birth rates.

Though of course those Celt's - and those that were here before them - were actually quite violent sod's at time's as shown by several gruesome neolithic and bronze through to iron age discovery's.

If anything the Celt's were less barbaric than those that were here before them (and the Celt's could be pretty bloody barbaric as we all know) BUT they also possessed more sophisticated technology and that may suggest it was indeed an invasion or several though human's do adapt and adopt whatever come's there way so yes the pre Celtic builders of the stone's are still here all over the nation and given the time and number of generations there may also be many of there descendant's whom have had there genetic markers bred out of them, still there descendant's but with no obvious markers to prove it especially for those not in a direct line of ascent.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Modern ideas have that its less an invasion, and more a diffusion. The Indo-European peoples could be forceful invaders (look at Rome, and later the Scandinavians we know as "Vikings" (a job no a people, it would like be calling a people the "blacksmiths") etc. We don't know how the Celtic Culture was assimilated into the British Isles. We do know that before the onset of "Celtic" Culture, there was a downturn in building monoliths. Its possible that was some incursions, or it was just a societal change.

What we do know is the Druids had zero interest in the megalithic structures for the most part. However in what is Ireland at least, some became places the Gods lived.