Orkney - 5,000-year-old temple complex

More or less 5 months ago I read on a National Geographic magazine, about the Orkney excavation side and the archaeological works held there. It's a really interesting subject that I would like to share with you. Our ancestors never cease to surprise me.

The excavation of the prehistoric temple complex on the Scottish island of Orkney, has revealed that the Neolithic inhabitants of that same island were far more advanced than initially realised. It was also found a large collection of ancient artifacts that reflect a complex and culturally rich society, archaeologists also discovered that the three major monumental structures on the island  (the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stennes, and the Maes Howe tomb) were linked in a way, connected for the same purpose.

The archaeological site, known as the Ness of Brodgar, covers an area of over six acres and consists of the remains of housing, remnants of slate roofs, paved walkways, coloured facades, decorated stone slabs, a massive stone wall with foundations, and a large building described as a Neolithic "cathedra" or "palace", inhabited from at least 3,500 BC to the close of the Neolithic period more than a millennium and a half later.

The workmanship of these people was impeccable. The imposing walls they built would have done credit to the Roman centurions who, some 30 centuries later, would erect Hadrian’s Wall in another part of Britain. Cloistered within those walls were dozens of buildings, among them one of the largest roofed structures built in prehistoric northern Europe. It was more than eighty feet long and sixty feet wide, with walls of thirteen feet thick.

The archaeological excavation, which has so far only unearthed around 10% of the original site, has yielded thousands of incredible artifacts including a few ceremonial mace heads, polished stone axes, flint knives, a human figurine, miniature thumb pots, beautifully crafted stone spatulas, highly-refined coloured pottery, and more than six hundred and fifty (650) pieces of Neolithic art. It is by far the largest collection ever found in Britain.

The three monumental sites mentioned before, Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness and the Maes Howe tomb, are all located within several miles of the Ness, used to be seen as isolated monuments with separate histories but as the excavations at the Ness have progressed, archaeologists have come to believe that the megalithic sites in the surrounding region were all connected in some way with the Ness of Brodgar, although its purpose remains unknown. What the Ness is telling us is that this was a much more integrated landscape than anyone ever suspected. The people who built all those monuments were a far more complex and capable society than has usually been portrayed.

Menhirs in Agriculture

As we already know, menhirs and dolmens and all the other megalithic monuments are placed in specific places where the ley lines pass, with various purposes, one of those is to help in the fertilization of the soils for a better agriculture, concentrating the energy of the earth on those places, which makes the land around the monumento a proper place to grow food.
There is a well known report on this subject, counted by L. Charpentier in a dialogue  with a peasant in France who had one erected menhir with 4m in one of his meadows, and so he said:
 
"I do not know if it's because of the stone, but it's my best meadow and what has the best grass for the animals and they love it. If I knew, i would also put stones on the other meadows. If the ancients put this one here, they ought to have had some idea in mind. Perhaps they were smarter than what we think .. "
 
For this farmer and for many others like him, some stones properly placed, were beneficial for agriculture. As the human body is  traversed  by energy currents, and the land is covered by telluric currents, thus we can make a connection between acupuncture needles with the needles of Stone (Menhirs) that influence the vegetation.
 
Ancient legends say that in the vicinity of Mont Saint Michel, northern France, existed in some farmlands, menhirs with very strange names such as one called "Pierre Bonde", where it is said that it"Was blocking the entrance of the abyss", which means that if this menhir was removed, the waters from the ocean would invade the land. In olde times, Mount Saint Michel, now threatened by the waters, was once a fertile Hill. It is known that when the Britons expelled from Britain, took refuge in the country of Armor later Brittany (Northern France), already had been Christianized. Equally we know that they had to fight in the region of Mount Saint Michel, a religious war against autochthonous pagans who worshiped the standing stones. The Christian invaders destroyed a large number of these stones, and among them, the huge dolmen that crowned the hill and it was a place of pilgrimage in Gaul. Shortly after this invasion, by coincidence or not, the sea invaded the bay of Mont St Michel. Is it just coincidence that, after the invasion of these Christians in Britain, the sinking of the Gulf of Morbihan started, which did not exist in the time of Caesar.
This leads us to believe that the invaders, by ignoring the local traditions and ancestral knowledge about the science of megaliths have destroyed some vertical stone - menhir - which provided the important bio-energetic balance that exists there.
The fact is that the storming waters invaded the cultivated land that until then had been a fértile land for agriculture.

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The Megalithic Phenomenon

Some authors though that the megalithic phenomenon had started in Portugal before it went to the other mediterranean countries and to the north of Europe, however, recente studies have shown that this phenomenon arose spontaneously in various regions of the globe. These megalithic monuments go all the way from south Sweden, to Corsica and Sardinia, going to the Brithish islands and Irland, back again to Denmark, France, Spain and Portugal, but there are also monuments like these, found along the African coasts, Asia and America. In Europe there are more or less 50.000 dolmens and menhirs, that have escaped to the destruction by the hand of man, either to make walls for houses or walls to enclose the fields for agriculture of each farmer and ruined by pillaging and looting, but the biggest threa of all, was bu christian hands, trying to clean these ancient pagan sites which were still in use by many cultures of Europe, even after thousands of years. We know for a fact that the number of megaliths in the christianized countries was twice that which is today.

The megalithic extension goes from Dhaka in the Asian continent, where we can find a big concentration of these monuments, more or less 2.200 dolmens, also in Pendjab, oriental Pakistan and Ceylon, in Africa, na extension covering the Maghreb region and the northern parts of Algeria and Tunisia and to the south, Ethiopia, and of course coming to Europe.

These monuments are surprising by their greatness and the perfection of its execution, despite the great difficulties of building these megalithic complexes in an era so remote with few or almost nonexistent construction utensils.

It seems strange to declare that this megalithic phenomenon spread to other countries by sea, however, it is true that we can see those in America, or in islands of the Iberian Peninsula, and the most famous of all islands, Great Britain, so there is this speculation, of navigators going into the oceans, spreading these monuments, but who were they? where did they come from? and what kind of scientific and technical knowledge they had to do such a thing and to lift those gigantic monuments? There is still much speculation about these questions and most of it remains a mystery, however, there is a very good and plausible explanation for how they went to continentes and islands only reached by sea. For example, Great Britain was once part of the European land mass, attached to the Iberian Peninsula, people from Egypt could go on foot from their country passing through the Iberian Peninsula and into Great Britain, without using a single boat, also, when the Ice Age begain,all the North of Europe all the way to the very centre of Portugal and of Spain, was an imense tick icy Wall, a great natural bridge that linked the European continent to the American one, and many people from that era, migrated from one palce to another, going to and from between continentes, so it is also possible that Alaska for example, was still attached to Sibéria.

This will be one of the greatest mysteries of humankind, but we are always working to find the truth, or at least a good explanation for how was it possible for these people, so called primitive, to erect these monuments, that even today is hard to lift with machines, i mean... we have to take into account that, most of these monuments, especially menhirs, far exceed 7 meters in height, and its weight reaches up to or exceeds 100 tons, we must take into account that the transportation and erection of these monuments should not have been a simple job. Quite the contrary, it implied a sophisticated technique and also a considerably  well planed organization to take this outstanding work. The European humans at this time, still lived on a primary stage of social organization and had a technique not evolved enough to allow them to perform these megalithic constructions.
Also we need to think about the fact that most of the stones of these monuments aren't near the quarry where they were previously extracted, for example the dolmen of El soto in Huelva in Spain, one of it's slabs was trasnported from a distance superior to 38 klm (23 miles ), but the most spectacular case is that of the "blue stones" of Stonehenge, these 24 blocks of stone, weighing more than 350 tons, which constitute the second circle of the great monument, were extracted for the Prescelly hills in Wales, and placed on the plain of Salisbury, about 230 klm ( 141 miles ) of its original place. Another amazing fact his the case of the dolmen in Pépieux ( France ) with a slab with more than 30 tons, on top of an isolated Hill, with very inclined slopes. How was it possible to bring such heavy stones up there?

This remains a mystery to be solved. Suffice to say, that these people weren't that primitive as we may think.

Note: The artwork to illustrate this post is a drawing of a sacred mound made by me. If you have any questions for me or if you want to see my artistic works, check out my Facebook page and make a Like if you can by following this link --> http://www.facebook.com/ArithHarger