Deciphering the Pagan Stones

beansidhe
reply to post by KilgoreTrout

 

Hi there! If Neil says it's time, then it's time in my book!
But why? Why would women and men go to all the bother of etching that onto stone as a permanent reminder of time?

As a predictor?

Because they had the time to do so, and because it was important to them to do so. And of course, why do we etch our names into our desks at school, or can't resist the wet cement?...because we want to leave something as proof that we were here, or as a reminder of an experience. Rock held a very special significance to the Neolithic people beyond giving the period that they lived in a name, whether it was an awareness of it's ancientness compared to our own blip on the radar life spans, or whether it was the way that it could be transformed by the elements, or all things and everything, but it was certainly important to them that our hands could work and shape it, that our elemental selves could leave an imprint on it, and that fascination and need is ongoing, it is a living, continuity of expression.

It is also possibly a predictor, a calendar. We have a need to measure and control time, and it is important, has been important, to our survival. We have lunar calendars dating from 1000s of years ago, aimed at marking the passage of time, for purposes of predicting when the herd would return, for planning hunts etc. We also have more mobile forms, that women possibly used, for plotting menstrual cycles, predicting the time of birth...very important to nomadic humans and vital for the health and survival of mother and child. I am sure that other events were recorded, such as meteor showers as has been discussed, though I don't see them as being terrifying, meteor fragments were worshipped as embodiments of the ancient Goddesses, kept for generation after generation. Some saw them as ill omens, but we humans are an awfully superstitious lot.

reply to post by punkinworks10


Nice Punkin! The Reinhardt Rock I posted above is also from
the Georgia sight & includes very similar features.

Cheers
Ektar

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


That makes a lot of sense in regards to how important a person's
name is, as well as leaving their mark. I have always wished to have
a small stone from Urquhqrt Castle as a family reminder & as good luck.

The calendar is crucial for herds, crops & etc & I totally forgot about
women's cycles & births which is extremely important. Thanks!

Cheers
Ektar

Ektar
reply to post by punkinworks10

 

Nice Punkin! The Reinhardt Rock I posted above is also from
the Georgia sight & includes very similar features.

Cheers
Ektar

nice,
I thought that the symbols were very familiar,
The lost worlds site has a good bit of information on such sites in the south east

This article is interesting & at the end (last few pages)
you see the actual Crescent V rod Sundial the author created by using
the latitude.
I hope this wasn't a repeat.

The Pictish Symbol known as the ‘Crescent V rod
and its possible use as a Seasonal Sundial or Farmers Almanac

The Crescent V-rod(example 2)in particular is an interesting shape.
It appears to be crescent moon on its side with an 80 - 85 degree chevron
intersecting it. Obviously it has an important significance to have occurred
on so many standing stones and crosses.
What constant did the Picitsh people deal with? Somehow they knew how to survive
and farm at Latitude of 56.5 North to 59 degrees North. The Picts must have known
when the growing season started and when it ended.
All without modern instrumentation like a compass or even a
known calendar.

Source www.bellchamber.net...

Cheers
Ektar

This should be interesting to follow... ( I hope I entered the info correctly)

The Scotsman Friday 7th February 2014


New excavations to find lost Pictish kingdom
Picture: University of Aberdeen
by FRANK URQUHART

Snippet

ARCHAEOLOGISTS are planning a major dig to uncover one of the lost Kingdoms of the ancient Picts, the tribe of legendary warriors whose empire stretched from Fife to the Moray Firth before they mysteriously vanished from history. Until recently historians had believed that Fortriu - one of the most powerful Kingdoms of the “painted people” - had been based in Perthshire. But recent research has now placed the Pictish stronghold much further north to the Moray Firth area. And it was revealed today that a team of archaeologists from Aberdeen University are to embark on a series of excavations on the Tarbat peninsula in Ross-shire where archaeologists have already uncovered evidence of the only Pictish monastic settlement found in Scotland to date. A spokesman for Aberdeen University said: “The new project will explore for the first time the archaeology of the most powerful kingdom of the Picts – the kingdom of Fortriu. Over the next four years a programme of fieldwork will target the rich archaeological resource that the Picts and the Kingdom of Fortriu left behind.”

The team of archaeologists also plan to examine the Pictish cross slabs found at Shandwick, Hilton and Nigg in an attempt to understand the power structures that led to the formation of the early Pictish kingdoms. Preliminary excavations of a hill fort at Easter Rarichie in Ross and Cromarty have already revealed a remarkable stone-walled structure that may be an important settlement dating to the Iron Age or Pictish period.

Source www.scotsman.com...

Cheers
Ektar

reply to post by punkinworks10


That is curious. 500+AD is too late for our pict stones,(class 1) which were dated to around 4-5AD. I can't help wondering if they were older, though.

However:

Approximately 2000 years later, in roughly 7640 BC, a cometary object sped towards the earth. This time, however, rather than passing by the earth as the cosmic object of 9500 BC had done, the cometary object actually entered the atmosphere, broke into seven pieces, and impacted the earth at known locations on the planet’s oceans. The following map shows the general location of each of the seven impacts.

Scientific studies of the effects of rapidly moving large objects impacting with the ocean surface have conclusively demonstrated that waves resulting from a massive cometary impact would attain vertical heights of 2-3 miles, with forward speeds of 400-500 miles per hour, and a sustained force that would carry them 2000-3000 miles in every direction radiating from the impact location. From the above map it is clear where these great waves would have crashed upon the shores of numerous continents, totally obliterating, especially in coastal areas of gently rising lands, all human settlements and any structures they had built.

Archaic myths from many parts of Europe (and around the world) refer to this event by mention of bright new stars which fell to earth as seven flaming mountains, of how the oceans rose up in vast waves and totally engulfed the lands, and how summer was driven away with a cold darkness that lasted several years. In support of the mythological accounts of the vast waves covering the lands it is important to mention that many of the highest mountains in England, Scotland and Ireland are littered with beds of sand and gravel containing sea shells deposited in the very recent geological past. Geology also gives irrefutable evidence that at two times in the recent past, around 7640 BC and 3100 BC, there have been complete reversals of the earth’s magnetic field caused by an outside influence, most probably a comet.

Estimates of the decimation of the global human population from this event range as high as 50-60% (many people would have lived on sea shores due to the availability of fish stocks). Therefore, the decimation of the planet’s human population from the 9500 BC cosmic object pass-by compounded with that of the 7640 BC cometary impacts would have severely decreased the number of humans on earth during the following four thousand years. This is a crucial matter to consider, for the reason that orthodox archaeologists have long been mystified by both the relative scarcity of human remains from the period of 7500 BC to 3500 BC and, even more important, by the apparently sudden appearance of the highly developed civilizations of Megalithic Europe and Dynastic Egypt around 3100 BC.

Cometary Impacts in Neolithic Europe

So (and bear with me here, as I clutch at some tenuous straws) if McHardy et al are right, and the 'Picts' was just a derogatory name given to the Caledonii, Venicones etc, who were actually the indigenous people of Scotland from the last ice age, then
could we suggest that the symbols on the stones, in themselves, represent ancient knowledge?

In other words, around 7640BC there was a comet impact. Memory of this massive event was carried for generations, and recorded accordingly.

It's a really interesting proposal, punkinworks.

reply to post by Ektar

This should be interesting to follow... ( I hope I entered the info correctly)

The Scotsman Friday 7th February 2014


New excavations to find lost Pictish kingdom
Picture: University of Aberdeen
by FRANK URQUHART

Oh Ektar, GREAT FIND!! That's so exciting! Thank you so much!

reply to post by KilgoreTrout

I am sure that other events were recorded, such as meteor showers as has been discussed, though I don't see them as being terrifying, meteor fragments were worshipped as embodiments of the ancient Goddesses, kept for generation after generation. Some saw them as ill omens, but we humans are an awfully superstitious lot.

Er, lol! I think I might have mixed up comets and meteors there, partly because I'm an idiot, and partly because I'm getting a bit over-enthusiastic!!

reply to post by beansidhe

That is curious. 500+AD is too late for our pict stones,(class 1) which were dated to around 4-5AD. I can't help wondering if they were older, though.

I read some where either here in your posts or from the references that the stones were
thought to possibly or are from 3 to 4 AD.

The meteor had to have been extremely enormous to break into 7 pieces
& all 7 wreaking so much havoc on the planet. That is interesting.

Cheers
Ektar

reply to post by beansidhe


Hi Beansidhe,
Your 8th millinea bc date falls in line with as site northern Scotland, that has evidence of a "black mat" deposit that lies on top of a neolithiic she'll midden buried by a Tsunami.
When I get off work I'll dig up the article on the site.

reply to post by punkinworks10

I believe these marks represent astronomical observations and alignments, marked in stone. The reason for doing this is that many of the perturbations of the paths of celestial objects can only be detected by many observations over decades, even centuries.

The crescent moon symbol with the two arrows sticking up and out of it at approx 45 and 315 degrees from the horizontal, I think represents the extremes of the north and south rising/setting points of the moons orbit. At the start of an 18.61 year cycle, the full moon rises directly on the ecliptic (the sun's path through the zodiac). Over the next 9 years, it gets more and more extreme; rising further and further north each year, then coming back---the Saros cycle. It is the first thing you need to know in order to predict a solar eclipse.

I believe the two circles between the "Z line" represent the ascending and descending nodes of the moon's orbit. Those two points themselves are invisible, but must be known in order to accurately predict eclipses.

By studying the saros cycle for 3 repetitions (56 years), you begin to notice what the Chinese call the two "dragon points." These are actually the ascending and descending nodes, the two points where the plane of the moon's orbit intersects the apparent plane of the sun's yearly path through the heavens. The nodes, or dragon points progress through the zodiac over time. When the moon is new at the same time it is within three degrees of a dragon point, you have a solar eclipse somewhere on the earth, usually 5 time zones later that the previous solar eclipse.

I believe the stones carved with these two symbols are the "fore sights" of an alignment, pointing to the horizon. The marks are carved into them so that a future generation wouldn't forget which was which. Each community's wizard would make his own observations, in case one community lost the information, the neighbors got it right.

Plus, if the wizard was wearing a Golden Wizard Hat, he or she was probably using knowledge of eclipses to scare the crap out of the locals. It seems obvious that the golden hat's information is encoded so that the profane couldn't use it.

Descendants of the Kelts have preserved the folk-memory of the golden hat in the way we portray wizards, with a hat "full of stars".

reply to post by tovenar


Tovenar, thank you so much for this input. So the purpose of these V rods would be to calculate solar eclipses using the Saros cycle? And the two circles in the Z rod represent the ascending and descending nodes of the moon's orbit?
Just trying to check I've got that right.

We were wondering if the spirals could also represent previous comet impacts? It does look more and more, with everyone's brilliant input, that these stones were being used as astrology devices.

The Golden Hat is incredible, I'd never heard of them:

A detailed study of the Berlin example, which is fully preserved, revealed that the symbols probably represent a lunisolar calendar. The object would have permitted the determination of dates or periods in both lunar and solar calendars.
Since an exact knowledge of the solar year was of special interest for the determination of religiously important events such as the summer and winter solstices, the astronomical knowledge depicted on the Golden Hats was of high value to Bronze Age society. Whether the hats themselves were indeed used for determining such dates, or whether they simply represented such knowledge, remains unknown.
The functions discovered so far would permit the counting of temporal units of up to 57 months. A simple multiplication of such values would also permit the calculation of longer periods, e.g. metonic cycles.

reply to post by beansidhe


This is a thread that I wrote a few years ago, very dry and a bit dull I am afraid but here as some of the relevant 'highlights'...

In Australia, the Henbury craters have been dated to 5000 years ago, it is suspected to have broken up in the atmosphere, creating around 13 or 14 craters of varying size and several tonnes of iron and nickel fragments have been excavated from the site. Older sites, long known about, and part of local mythology and the verbal tradition, can perhaps now be reassessed and placed into a wider body of our understanding.

The Kamil Crater in Western Egypt, 45 metres wide and 10 metres deep, was created by an impact 3,500 years ago. The Mahuika Crater at Snares Island off southern New Zealand, was with the aid of ice cores found to date from around 1443 AD, and Chinese records report a hail of “falling stones” in the Shanxi Province that, reputedly, caused 10,000 deaths in 1490. [18] Looking at historical records seems to have provided the route to a number of similar discoveries where fact may be starting to eclipse fiction.

The Kaali Crater on the Estonian Island of Saaremaa is thought to date to around 660 BCE and been caused by a meteor with a mass between 20 and 80 metric tones with an impact velocity of 10 to 20 kilometres per second. When it was about 10 kilometres above the Earth it broke up, producing 9 craters, the smallest of which is only 12 metres in diameter and the largest, at the bottom of which is Kaali Lake, is 110 metres in diameter and 22 metres deep, the craters are all within 1 kilometre of each other. The energy from the impact would have been equivalent to Hiroshima. Trees within a six kilometre radius were razed. [19]

In Estonian mythology, the lake is considered sacred and was, sometime around the Iron Age, enclosed by a stone wall. The Fins tell a tale of Louhi, an evil wizard who steals the sun and fire causing total darkness. Ukko, the god of the sky, orders that a new sun be made by the Virgin of the Sky. Somehow, the spark, from which the new sun was to be made, falls to the Earth behind the Neva River. The heroes of the tale rush to the fire and light their torches, thus returning light to their people. It has been proposed that Saaremaa may be the Thule of legend, the Finnish word for fire being ‘tule’.

The Lonar crater in India was also first presumed to be a volcanic caldera and is also considered sacred by local people. The salt lake that it houses has a mineral content much richer and quite unique from the other ‘natural’ salt lake found in India, and tests conducted in the first half of the 19th century concluded, “it is practically certain that the Lonar salts are derived from an unknown source in the bed of the lake.” [20] Another potentially interesting feature of this site, and the lake it contains, is the presence of Nitrogen fixing organisms in the water that can only live in conditions of pH-11. Due to a number of difficulties with the site, dating has been inconclusive and estimates vary from a few thousand years to a few hundred, a situation mirrored at the Wabar Craters in Arabia. [21]

First noted by the west in 1932, when Harry St John Philby stumbled across them while looking for the site of the legendary Ubar, or Iram of the Pillars which had been ‘smote’ by God when King Shaddad ignored the warnings of the prophet Hud. According to Islamic tradition, God drove the city into the sands, ‘never to be seen again [22]’. Philby soon realised that Wabar was not Ubar, and guessed that the five craters he observed were long dead volcanic caldera, due to the presence of ‘volcanic’ glass at the site. In 1937 Philby, by then in the employ of SOCAL, was joined by a team from ARAMCO to study the site but failed to uncover anything. They returned in 1966, with a bulldozer.

The largest fragment recovered weighed 2.2 tonnes and it is estimated that that fragment alone would have had an impact energy similar to Hiroshima. Dating the site has proved problematic, it was at first thought to be thousands of years old, but eyewitness accounts of a fireball seen from Riyadh in either 1863 or 1891, and the rapidity with which the sands have since consumed two of the craters that Philby have appeared to confuse the issue.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I only wrote it just over two years ago but they have since uncovered oodles of impact sites, a lot of them traced via folklore like those I have detailed in Eastonia and India. I personally suspect that much Prometheus-type mythology is related to such events.

reply to post by Wolfenz


Hey Wolfenz, I was going through your links about Gobelki Tepe in more detail, and couldn't believe my eyes. Look at the reconstruction image:



And the Pict symbol (aaargh, I can't find it on it's own, but look at the fourth symbol, top row - the disc and rectangle)




And if that wasn't strange enough, look at this from Linda Moulton Howe, a field researcher at the site:

Describing the site as looking like "an alien creation," Linda pondered whether it might have functioned as a kind of giant machine or tuning fork. She also described some of the bizarre carved creatures on the pillars, as well as eerie totem (see below).

Coast to coast

Tuning fork, Linda???

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Not dull in the slightest, absolutely fascinating!

The energy from the impact would have been equivalent to Hiroshima. Trees within a six kilometre radius were razed. [19]

That must have been absolutely terrifying. Can you imagine? You would want to learn about this, make sense of it - predict it for your children's sake.

Oh you have an eye witness account, I'll steal it:

Russian settler, S Semenov,

“…I suddenly saw, that directly to the north…the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot I couldn’t bear it, as if my shirt was on fire…but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few metres. I lost my senses for a moment…After that such a noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the Earth shook.” [23]

In Estonian mythology, the lake is considered sacred and was, sometime around the Iron Age, enclosed by a stone wall. The Fins tell a tale of Louhi, an evil wizard who steals the sun and fire causing total darkness. Ukko, the god of the sky, orders that a new sun be made by the Virgin of the Sky. Somehow, the spark, from which the new sun was to be made, falls to the Earth behind the Neva River. The heroes of the tale rush to the fire and light their torches, thus returning light to their people.

That is like Prometheus, who 'stole' fire from the Gods. Maybe this is where Bride/Bridget came from, the bringer of life, and light, and growth from the Cailleach of winter?

reply to post by beansidhe


The eye-witness account is from Tunguska of course, not Estonia. It is interesting though in the legend that while most would have been terrified, 'the heroes' rushed in to light their torches. We're the only mammals that have over come the base fear of fire to use it to our advantage. Those heroes most likely became chiefs, at the very least they got the pick of the ladies

Our ability to over-ride our reptilian brain and rationalise events is what is so very special about us. We have come so far because some of us don't simply shy from our fears but confront and overcome them. I suspect, at the start of things, when sexual selection was the prime mover and shaker, that it was this factor that gained the best breeding rights.

I was reading the first volume of Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks earlier today, this quote springs to mind...

"The senses are of the earth, reason stands apart from them in contemplation."

I like you signature by the way...not sure whether it is the topic under discussion or that which reminded me of the quote, perhaps a little of both combined.

And thanks for reading my thread, very glad you got something from it.

All the best.

reply to post by Ektar

What constant did the Picitsh people deal with? Somehow they knew how to survive
and farm at Latitude of 56.5 North to 59 degrees North. The Picts must have known
when the growing season started and when it ended.
All without modern instrumentation like a compass or even a
known calendar.

This was mentioned earlier, but kind of tucked away in a response to Thorneblood, so thanks for bringing it up, Ektar.
Tovenar has pointed out that the V rod could be " the extremes of the north and south rising/setting points of the moons orbit."

But what are they depicting as being opened? Could the V-Rod literally represent a compass open at those angles? Symbols are usually packed with meaning i.e. they stand for a number of bits of information within one picture, so maybe they did have compasses and were depicting it, exactly as they would use it? It could be, I think.

I know this is getting complicated, with so many strands of thought but...

"The claim of many of these old Scottish (Masonic) Lodges, even today, is the fact that they were already ancient when the Guild Masons Craft was reorganised by William Schaw on the feast day of St. John the Evangelist in 1598."
Karen Ralls MacLeod, 'The Quest for the Celtic Key', 2003.