Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Pre-Columbian New England Megaliths?


rakovsky

Recommended Posts

The BU Bridge lists some places, with photos from Stonehenge USA in NH in its article " Archaeology professor debunks claims for ancient rock structures as pseudoscientific fallacy ", dedicated to debunking the idea that it was made by bronze age Europeans .

Quote

 

rock.jpg

rock2.jpg

 America's Stonehenge in NH

America's Stonehenge is one of hundreds of areas of odd stone arrangements and underground chambers on this continent that some claim were built by Bronze Age European settlers for ceremonial meetings and astronomical events. Many of these sites are in New England, including the Upton Chamber in Upton, Mass., Gungywamp in Groton, Conn., a beehive-style stone chamber in Petersham, Mass., and stone-lined tunnels in Goshen, Mass. Some have been discovered near Boston: in Concord and in the town of Bridgewater. For years they were assumed to be colonial root cellars ...

Radiocarbon analyses point to a period of human occupation at America's Stonehenge extending back to the second millennium b.c., but a majority of archaeologists say this is evidence of a Native American presence there, not of Bronze Age Europeans. "American Indians had an interest in celestial alignments," says Runnels.

https://www.bu.edu/bridge/archive/2002/02-01/archaeology.htm

It quotes a scholar who makes a good point about how the sites likely didn't come from Bronze Age 2000 BC Europe:

Quote

says Runnels. "If you've got a Bronze Age site in, say, Great Britain, near Stonehenge, you're going to find pottery, tools, evidence of burials, and hearths. You're going to find artifacts of bronze, tin, copper, gold, and silver, and they'll have distinctive forms that are easily recognized, like this one."

Native Americans of 1000 BC did not have bronze or pottery I think. But they did have fire, tools, and burials.
Europeans on the other hand in Britain had bronze starting in c.2100 BC:

Quote

Believed to be of Iberian origin (modern day Spain and Portugal), part of the Beaker culture brought to Great Britain the skill of refining metal. At first they made items from copper, but from around 2150 BC smiths had discovered how to make bronze (which is much harder than copper) by mixing copper with a small amount of tin. With this discovery, the Bronze Age began in Great Britain. Over the next thousand years, bronze gradually replaced stone as the main material for tool and weapon making.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_Britain

So the site is not likely from Europeans of the Bronze age, but either from Native Americans or pre-Bronze Europeans.

It's true that in 12,000-5,000 BC a lot more land was exposed on the shorelines than today, but that still doesn't make travel to North America from Europe easy for those days.

I don't know if any Northeast US tribes have any European precolumbian DNA, but generally Native Americans don't:

migration_map4.png?width=500&height=276

The Frontiers of Archaeology website claims pre-Bronze relationships across the ocean:

Quote

James Tuck and Robert Mcgee of St.John’s Memorial University uncovered a rectangular stone chamber of upright stones on the coast of Labrador that closely resembled similar stones found on the island of Teviec just off the coast of France. Both were burial sites where the dead were covered with red ochre, and dating of charcoal pieces from ceremonial burnings at these sites have been carbon dated as being 7,500 years old. [5500 BC]

Slate Tools of the Maritime Archaic Peoples are very similar to Scandinavian Mesolithic and Neolithic ground-slate tools and in turn are similar to ground-slate tools all around the arctic. The similarity of the ground-slate tools on both sides of the Atlantic at about 3000 BC was noted by Scandinavian archaeologists...

slatetools.jpg

 

Many common forms of ground-slate items including the halfmoon-knife or Ulu are illustrated at left. A stone lamp for burning seal oil is below. Similar groundslate artifacts are found in Neolithic and Mesolithic Ireland and in the Orkney Islands: however the oldest ones seem to come from Spain...

olsen_megalithicNW_400.jpg

(America's Stonehenge on right)

pic0014%2BNW%2BDolmen.jpg

Dolmen in New England

 

http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/03/megalith-builders-red-paint-people-and.html

carrolWNWMeg.jpg

Another chamber in Vermont (http://www.geomancy.org/index.php/sacred-space/old-sacred-spaces/new-england/other-vermont-chambers) One of the difficulties is being able to say how many of these chambers are root cellars from Colonial times.

This page shows how some sites line up with solar events like a calendar:
 

Quote

 

Cal-II-BettyW.jpg

Cal2interiorW.jpg

The interior of the chamber. This is the biggest chamber in Vermont, and perhaps in all of New England, measuring ten feet by twenty feet (approximately three meters by six meters).

Sunrise Calendar IIWinter Solstice Sunrise as seen from the back of the chamber of Calendar II. Notice that the sun is rising through a notch in the hills. Many chambers in New England are oriented towards significant horizonal astronomical events.

http://www.geomancy.org/index.php/sacred-space/old-sacred-spaces/new-england/calendar-1-and-2


 

Another website dates human relics from 2000 BC at one site:

Quote


The Sprawling Gungywamp Complex
Near the Thames River mouth in eastern Connecticut is a wide assortment of stone chambers, the most extensive being a complex called Gungywamp. This 100–acre site is located in the wooded hills outside the town of Groton, Connecticut, just off Gungywamp Road... Archaeological excavations at the site have confirmed the presence of humans at the site over the past 4,000 years. It is known there was a settlement by white farmers after 1780, and the site was also utilized from time to time by Native Americans.

olsen_gungywamp_300.jpg

Besides containing beehive chambers and a petroglyph image of a bird with outstretched wings, Gungywamp has a double row of stones, just north of two underground chambers. This double ring stone circle, no longer standing, consists of 12 rectangular stones in the outside circle measuring over 10 feet in diameter.

olsen_gungywamp_480.jpg
Ceremonial Stone Circle at Gungywamp, near Groton, Connecticut.

 

http://www.perceptivetravel.com/issues/1109/new_england.html

The Upton Chamber in Massachussets is quite large:

small__1342069805_9449.jpg

fdbcec6669eae2e9102d13afc34a7a40.jpg

When I consider this topic, I prefer hard evidence, and even though it's very interesting, I have a sense of skepticism:

One essay claims that Ice age artefacts have been found:

Quote

 

Other rock shelters seem to be the hunting or fishing camps of the region’s indigenous peoples; some have turned up artifacts that go back to the end of the last Ice Age.

And then there are a few with more mysterious origins and purposes that evoke the ritual stone circles and megaliths of Pagan Europe: clusters of stones that seem to align with astronomical phenomena and the cycle of the seasons.

http://hudsonvalleyone.com/2016/02/18/learn-more-about-the-hudson-valleys-cryptic-ancient-structures/


 

Wikipedia has some evidence that the site of Stonehenge USA is ancient and Native American:
 

Quote

 

Carbon dating of charcoal pits at the site provided dates from 2000 BC to 173 BC, when the area was populated by ancestors of current Native Americans. In archaeological chronology, this places indigenous use of the site into either the Late Archaic or the Early Woodland time periods.

In 1982, David Stewart-Smith, director of restoration at Mystery Hill, conducted an excavation of a megalith found in situ in a stone quarry to the north of the main site. His research team, under the supervision of the New Hampshire state archaeologist, excavated the quarry site, discovering hundreds of chips and flakes from the stone. Both the state archaeologist and Dr. Stewart-Smith concurred that this was evidence of indigenous tool manufacture, consistent with Native American lithic techniques

Carbon-14 dates

All dates are uncorrected radio carbon years expressed as Years before Present (BP) with present being defined as the year 1950. ....

  • 6530 ± 40 BP Excavation in wall east of north stone by David Stewart-Smith, Patricia Hume & W.E.J. Hinton Jr. in 1995. Lab Report 8923 (PDF)
  • 3470 ± 30 BP Fire pit at North Stone excavated by David Stewart-Smith, Patricia Hume & W.E.J. Hinton Jr. in 1995. Lab Report 8924 (PDF)
  • 3475 ± 210 BP Flecks of charcoal were found lodged between the exterior stones of the north wall of the Collapse Chamber 2 to 4 inches above the bedrock during a 1971 excavation. The charcoal was most likely in backfill disturbed during the construction of the chamber and therefore does not date the chamber.[10]Lab Report GX2310 (PDF)
  • 2995 ± 180 BP James Whittall Jr. excavated several units outside the north wall of Collapsed Chamber in 1969. At the 24 inch level charcoal was found in association with fire-burnt stone spalls, hammer stone, broken pick, and scraper.[11]Lab Report GX1608 (PDF)
  • 2120 ± 95 BP James Whittall Jr. excavated a unit near the earthen ditch on the summit of the hill near the main complex of structures. Charcoal was found on and in a seam of quarried bedrock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Stonehenge


 

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that, once again, human stubbornness is getting in the way of the exploration of history.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Lord Fedorable said:

I think that, once again, human stubbornness is getting in the way of the exploration of history.

How reliable do you think the carbon dating is?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

deciphering the past and lining out a chronological theory depends on how much we now know of the past ... the more we know the more accurate we can guess

its all guesswork and whatever tests or proving grounds we can come up with is at best an educated guess ... nothing more ... nothing less

but as ever as it is with all things we know ... the more answers the more questions ... the more we know the more we know of things we know not ~

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, rakovsky said:

How reliable do you think the carbon dating is?

Carbon dating only dates the carbon, not the period the edifice in which it was used (for example, if you carbon dated my house based on the door, it'd be a hundred years old, whereas my house was build roughly 25 years ago).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Lord Fedorable said:

Carbon dating only dates the carbon, not the period the edifice in which it was used (for example, if you carbon dated my house based on the door, it'd be a hundred years old, whereas my house was build roughly 25 years ago).

OK, so there is roughly 75 years time difference between your house building and the door's dating.

What happens then when numerous different remains from different artificial parts - like charcoal and walls - of a site are dated to 4500-1 BC?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wikipedia talks about carbondating of Gungywamp to ancient Amerindians:


 

Quote

 

250px-GungywampCircle.jpg

Gungywamp is an archaeological site in Groton, Connecticut, United States, consisting of artifacts dating from 2000-770 BC, a stone circle, and the remains of both Native American and colonial structures. Among multiple structural remains, of note is a stone chamber featuring an astronomical alignment during the equinoxes. Besides containing beehive chambers and petroglyphs, the Gungywamp site has a double circle of stones near its center, just north of two stone chambers. ... One of these "root cellars", also known as the "calendar chamber", has an astronomical feature where an inner alcove is illuminated during the equinoxes by the alignment of a hole in the west wall, through which the sun shines upon a lighter stone on the opposite side, radiating illumination within the smaller, beehive shaped chamber.

...

Somewhat removed from the structures, there is a stone circle, actually consisting of two circles of stones, one within the other, over ten feet in diameter. The outermost ring is made up of twelve stones worked to be curved. Archaeologists who have studied it consider it to have been a mill.... Other researchers have hypothesized it is a Native American built structure... Even farther away there is a row of low standing stones, lined up in a north-south facing, one of which features an etched image of a bird with outstretched wings. Native American artifacts include arrowheads, stone flakes and pottery fragments. ... possibilities include construction by slaves in colonial times, or by Native Americans such as the Pequot or Mohegan tribes.[1] It has been suggested that the site could be one of the ceremonial stone landscapes described by USET, United South and Eastern Tribes, Inc., in their resolution on sacred ceremonial stone landscapes.

North Complex

This area lacks stone chambers but it contains some interesting structures. One is a low earthen berm with a rectangular shape. When James Whittall, Jr. excavated the berm, he found stumps of posts on three sides indicating a Native American lodge built of saplings. Associated with the lodge were two hearths. Nearby is an elongated cairn in the shape of a boat (narrow at the tips and wide in the middle). On top of this cairn were three short standing stones. In the same general area there is a group of nineteen cairns built on the ground. More cairns were built on top of boulders scattered about the area. There were also three standing stones in the area.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gungywamp

So it turns out that pottery really is found at these sites, although it's commonly considered Amerindian.

 

 

Edited by rakovsky
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Prof. Legner has an essay mentions an interesting fact:

Quote


The work of Dr. Colon Renfrew at Sheffield University in England during the 1960s has shown that the European megalithic civilization was older than Egypt or Crete or Mycenae, and also suggests that the antiquity and technical sophistication of Mystery Hill belong within the mainstream of the prehistoric cultural development that laid the foundations of all succeeding civilizations.

 

It's actually true that the French and British megaliths of 5000-3400 BC predate the monuments and stone cities of Egypt, not to mention Crete and Mycenae. Egypt's first dynasty was only in 3100 BC.

Prof. Legner's essay continues, naming some sites in New England:
 

Quote

 

NEARA researchers concentrated on locating as many of the stone constructions as possible.  More than 200 were recorded, the majority still intact, a few fallen into ruin or recently bulldozed away.  There are certain areas where the sites are clustered, e.g., the eastern Berkshires around Shutesbury, Massachusetts; in central Vermont, around Royalton and Woodstock; in southeastern Connecticut, where a site with stonework second only to Mystery Hill was found near the Gungywamp marsh in Groton; and just outside New England, on both sides of the Hudson River in lower New York State (Scan Photos).  Most extraordinary of all were the standing stones or “monoliths” discovered on a mountaintop in the northwestern Berkshires; the exact location is not being publicized for fear that vandals may damage the site. 

on May 17, 1969 they discovered almost directly below where the pine root had been found, some charcoal only 2-4 inches above bedrock and along with small granite chunks from the working of that bedrock.  This charcoal had to be contemporary with the construction of at least that part of the site.  The Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts dated it at 1045 B.C., or about the time that the era of the European megalith builders had come to its close.

       Then in 1971 another specimen of charcoal was obtained from the pine-root area, even closer to the bedrock.  It was radiocarbon dated at 1525 B.C., contemporary with the later stages of the construction of Stonehenge.  ... In 1969 the swampy area to the left of the Mystery Hill entrance was investigated and was found to contain a large deposit of clay that had been worked for pottery material.  Just to the right, researchers uncovered a very large fire-pit where the pottery had been fired; ..., this excavation had found the source of the clay for the peculiar soft yellowish pottery shards that have been found at the site

Later refinements in the field of radiocarbon dating gave Mystery Hill an even greater antiquity, and at the same time proved that its megalithic counterparts in Western Europe were older than the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations (from which they had previously been thought to be derived).  Dr. Hans E. Suess of the University of California at La Jolla, working with the tree-rings of the bristlecone pines of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, established that there had been fluctuations in the solar radiation affecting organic carbon, and that for several centuries before 1000 B.C. the radiation had been so much more intense that all radiocarbon datings for that period had to be radically revised in the direction of greater age.  The recalibrated date for the original 1525 B.C. reading from the Mystery Hill charcoal found in 1971 is now 2000 B.C., and contemporary with the earliest stages of Stonehenge.

http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/rothview.htm

 

It then goes on to name some interesting issues, how the megalithic structures of New England could even be precursors to what is found in Britain, and he notes similarity in blood type between Scottish, Irish, and Amerindians. The current runs from North America towards Europe, and the builders could have taken canoes and traveled east to Britain. This however leaves me with skepticism.

It would be helpful to have more reliable scholarship on the origin of these structures in New England and when they were built.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, rakovsky said:

It would be helpful to have more reliable scholarship on the origin of these structures in New England and when they were built.

I think it highly unlikely that will ever happen: the sites have been severely disturbed -- by everyone from dilettantes to professional con-men and pre-modern "antiquarians" -- for four hundred years.

My gut feeling is that the vast majority of these are colonial, anyway, despite what fringe articles would have you believe. The scant few that may not be hardly warrant claims of some expansive, trans-oceanic, advanced, unknown civilization -- just implying such terms, I think, is enough to arouse questions of fringery and pseudo-history as it telegraphs the authors have more theory than than data, or a hypothesis that needs data rather than data that needs hypothesis, the reversal of modern methodology and the sourcepoint for a lot of pre-modern silliness.

--Jaylemurph

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

I think it highly unlikely that will ever happen: the sites have been severely disturbed -- by everyone from dilettantes to professional con-men and pre-modern "antiquarians" -- for four hundred years.

My gut feeling is that the vast majority of these are colonial, anyway, despite what fringe articles would have you believe. The scant few that may not be hardly warrant claims of some expansive, trans-oceanic, advanced, unknown civilization -- just implying such terms, I think, is enough to arouse questions of fringery and pseudo-history as it telegraphs the authors have more theory than than data, or a hypothesis that needs data rather than data that needs hypothesis, the reversal of modern methodology and the sourcepoint for a lot of pre-modern silliness.

--Jaylemurph

I think if English scholars can tell English sites of 5000-100 BC from 17th to 19th c. ones, their American colleagues should, and if not, they could at least help us.

We know that Indians had mound culture along the Ohio river with massive astronomically aligned mounds centuries ago. But that is not the same thing as New England megaliths and rock chambers. It's not impossible or inconceivable for stone age people to build these things - the west Europeans did after all. But it would be very unusual for North American Indians to do so, at least northeast of the Mississippi river. Amerindians have been known to have gotten to Europe via Greenland in recorded times, but that does not mean that they did so and built megalithic sites in the UK in 5000-3000 BC.


However, take a look at the distribution of Haplogroup X. Kind of weird, huh?

haplogroup-x-distribution.png
 

Quote


Sub-group X2 appears to have undergone extensive population expansion and dispersal around or soon after the Last Glacial Maximum, about 21,000 years ago. It is more strongly present in the Near East, the Caucasus, and Southern Europe and somewhat less strongly present in the rest of Europe. Particular concentrations appear in Georgia (8%), Orkney (in Scotland) (7%), and amongst the Israeli Druze community (27%). Subclades X2a and X2g are found in North America, but are not present in native South Americans.[6]Many of the early carriers of haplogroup X2a were found in eastern maritime Canada, a prime theoretical landing location for Solutreans. This encouraged adherents to the Solutrean hypothesis. However, more recent discoveries of haplogroup X2a and subgroups have been more widely geographically dispersed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_X_(mtDNA)

 

The funny thing is, if you look at the previous map I posted, you can notice how the other Native American DNA groups are represented in East/NorthAsia and western North America, unlike the X haplogroup. However, Kennewick man, a very ancient corpse from Washington State, showed itself to be of haplogroup X, suggesting movement through Siberia eastward.

In reconstructions of Algonquin languages, which seem to follow this geographic distribution above, the urheimat has been considered to be west of the Great Lakes, rather than east of them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, rakovsky said:

I think if English scholars can tell English sites of 5000-100 BC from 17th to 19th c. ones, their American colleagues should, and if not, they could at least help us.

Problem is, there's good tertiary and secondary records in the British Isles that enable dating to be done by relative means (ie they know how old X is, and it shares design principles with Y but are less advanced, therefore it's safe to assume X and Y are connected and X older than Y). 

The Roman occupation helped,as did Celtic tradition surviving into the days of written record keeping and, importantly, the written record makers being on good terms with the oral record keepers (which isn't the case in the US).

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

R --

I hadn't thought of the fact that English sites have a far longer history of disturbance; you're def. right about that (though I like Hat's response, too). But what seems to be your premise -- they could do it in the West, so it could be done in the East -- seems sensible to me. As a historian, by definition, my area of expertise is later, so I don't have any special knowledge about this, but you seem to putting together a rational, interesting idea. I'm anxious to see what others have to add.

I don't know enough about genetic to even have an opinion on that, though.

--Jaylemurph

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do, so let me takes that one down.

Let's start with the Mal'ta boy. He is a 24,000 years old boy from South Central Siberia. When his autosomal DNA (his 22 non-sexual chromosomes) are compare with today's population we get this picture:

Anthropogenesis-MaltaSharedDrift.jpg
As you notice, Native American are his closest relative, but he also share DNA with people from North West and North Central Eurasia. However, there is a huge gap in North East Siberia, which mean there was a population replacement there. If I remember well, there was an ice sheet there which probably cut the North Eurasian population into the West Eurasian group and the Beringian group. Then, this map would indicate it was East Asian who repopulated the region, not the original Mal'ta Boy people. So the mt-X, which is already rare among Western Eurasians and Native Americans, even in the X hotspots became non existent there.

Then, not all X or even all X2 are the same. Native Americans have two subclades which are decently documented, X2a and X2g, they are only found in the Americas. X2a and X2j (which is found in North Africa) are separated from the rest of X2 subclades by one extra mutations that they share only with each other. Meanwhile, X2g is grouped with X2l alone on their own branch (X2l is found in Iran).

The X2 of Europe simply aren't closely related to the American X2. A Middle East expedition into America would be more likely (although still quite a long shot) than X2b Orcadians. Or even more likely, they walked the way North East from Central Asia.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Gingitsune said:

I do, so let me takes that one down.

Let's start with the Mal'ta boy. He is a 24,000 years old boy from South Central Siberia. When his autosomal DNA (his 22 non-sexual chromosomes) are compare with today's population we get this picture:

Anthropogenesis-MaltaSharedDrift.jpg
As you notice, Native American are his closest relative, but he also share DNA with people from North West and North Central Eurasia. However, there is a huge gap in North East Siberia, which mean there was a population replacement there. If I remember well, there was an ice sheet there which probably cut the North Eurasian population into the West Eurasian group and the Beringian group. Then, this map would indicate it was East Asian who repopulated the region, not the original Mal'ta Boy people. So the mt-X, which is already rare among Western Eurasians and Native Americans, even in the X hotspots became non existent there.

Then, not all X or even all X2 are the same. Native Americans have two subclades which are decently documented, X2a and X2g, they are only found in the Americas. X2a and X2j (which is found in North Africa) are separated from the rest of X2 subclades by one extra mutations that they share only with each other. Meanwhile, X2g is grouped with X2l alone on their own branch (X2l is found in Iran).

The X2 of Europe simply aren't closely related to the American X2. A Middle East expedition into America would be more likely (although still quite a long shot) than X2b Orcadians. Or even more likely, they walked the way North East from Central Asia.

Hello and good explanation in your 3rd paragraph about x2.

I am trying to figure out the maps. why do you think your map showed a big difference from mine? My map showed no x dna in south america, but yours showed it all in red?

Also your map showed Britain as being similar to the north siberia and Alaska groups and turned up nothing for the near east, but you said the near east was closest.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Lord Fedorable said:

Problem is, there's good tertiary and secondary records in the British Isles that enable dating to be done by relative means (ie they know how old X is, and it shares design principles with Y but are less advanced, therefore it's safe to assume X and Y are connected and X older than Y). 

The Roman occupation helped,as did Celtic tradition surviving into the days of written record keeping and, importantly, the written record makers being on good terms with the oral record keepers (which isn't the case in the US).

Hello, Lord fedorable.

You are right that British have lots of records. Let's say there is a mixed layered site that they only have partial records for though, like they have records saying a site existed in 18th c. records but they don't know how far back it goes. They should still be able to figure things out. I expect it happens a lot. And an analogous situation exists here:

ie. to fill in the blanks in your example, Imagine that we know how old Y, colonial American basements are, and they share design principles with X, New England's megalithic chambers, but are more advanced, like colonial basements being made with mortar and 17th c. tool use, "therefore it's safe to assume X and Y are connected" as being British Isle type architecture(and not the kind of buildings Amerindians constructed outside of the US Southwest where they did use stone) and "X older than Y". But then we are back to talking about ancient European stonework in New England.

 

Anyway, I imagine that British scientists have faced these kinds of dilemmas and had to use carbon dating for megalithic sites that spanned thousands of years, past anybody's written records and reliable oral history. I also imagine that US archaeologists should be capable enough to tell if a large stone chamber in CT is 200 years old or 2000, don't you?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

pic0014%2BNW%2BDolmen.jpg

Something like this in new england is not Colonial American. It's pretty hard to do something like that without cranes, at least for a few amateurs.

It could be natural, but if it was laying near stonehenge, people would call it megalithic. And if it were natural, I would expect more stones close by, which there arent. So it doesn't look random.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Weird fact also about northeast Amerindians having r1 dna that looks older than the European conquest of the 17th c. It could be a somewhat different strain of r1, so it didn't come from modern European contact. This is the same kind of issue as with the X dna group we have discussed.

 

800px-Haplogroup_R_(Y-DNA).PNG

 

 

Edited by rakovsky
Link to comment
Share on other sites

45 minutes ago, rakovsky said:

pic0014%2BNW%2BDolmen.jpg

Something like this in new england is not Colonial American. It's pretty hard to do something like that without cranes, at least for a few amateurs.

It could be natural, but if it was laying near stonehenge, people would call it megalithic. And if it were natural, I would expect more stones close by, which there arent. So it doesn't look random.

 

There are lots of these that were left by the glaciers. Here is a gallery of such images

http://neara.org/index.php/neara-gallery

dolmendanbury.jpg

tabledolmannorwalk.jpg

keyhole.jpg

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

There are lots of these that were left by the glaciers. Here is a gallery of such images

http://neara.org/index.php/neara-gallery

dolmendanbury.jpg

tabledolmannorwalk.jpg

keyhole.jpg

 

In each of the photos you showed, there are rocks laying around the sites and the big stones aren't perched on little pointy ones. That's why the one I posted seemed less random. But they could still all be random like I said.

Edited by rakovsky
Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, rakovsky said:

In each of the photos you showed, there are rocks laying around the sites and the big stones aren't perched on little pointy ones. That's why the one I posted seemed less random. But they could still all be random like I said.

No they are rocks sitting atop other little rocks they are common anywhere glaciers moved thru an area. They differ from dolmens that were constructed for tombs or other things.

So what evidence do you have for these supposed rock builders - what culture were they? Can you point to an excavated habitation?

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

No they are rocks sitting atop other little rocks they are common anywhere glaciers moved thru an area. They differ from dolmens that were constructed for tombs or other things.

So what evidence do you have for these supposed rock builders - what culture were they? Can you point to an excavated habitation?

Hello, Hanslune.

What you are asking about is basically the kind of archaeology and question I put in the OP. Namely, if there are New England sites with dolmens like you mentioned around the kind of tombs or other things as you also mentioned -but in New England, and the carbon dating like I quoted points to 4000 to 100 bc and later but before columbus, then are these things related?

 

Or did the glacier boulders just randomly fall on a few pointy rocks and then Amerindians with X and R1 Dna distantly related to what we find in Europe stopped by and left carbon dateable remains and charcoal, and then English colonists came by and dug unrecorded stone chambers there oriented astronomically without using mortar?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

 

"In each of the photos you showed, there are rocks laying around the sites and the big stones aren't perched on little pointy ones. That's why the one I posted seemed less random."

No they are rocks sitting atop other little rocks they are common anywhere glaciers moved thru an area. 

Maybe you did not understand what I was saying when you wrote " NO." In the first photo I posted there is a big lawn with lots of green grass and no rocks on the lawn except for a couple rocks used to hold up a big boulder. If there are no other rocks on the thick grassy lawn, then it seems less random that the Boulder is on the only few rocks gathered together in the lawn when it could have fallen anyplace else on the lawn. Do you understand what I mean?

 

The photos you showed me were on rocky terrain so it's more likely that boulders are going to randomly fall on rocks when they are in rocky terrain then when they fall on not rocky terrain.

Edited by rakovsky
Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, rakovsky said:

Hello, Hanslune.

What you are asking about is basically the kind of archaeology and question I put in the OP. Namely, if there are New England sites with dolmens like you mentioned around the kind of tombs or other things as you also mentioned -but in New England, and the carbon dating like I quoted points to 4000 to 100 bc and later but before columbus, then are these things related?

 

Or did the glacier boulders just randomly fall on a few pointy rocks and then Amerindians with X and R1 Dna distantly related to what we find in Europe stopped by and left carbon dateable remains and charcoal, and then English colonists came by and dug unrecorded stone chambers there oriented astronomically without using mortar?

 

 

Rakovsky you don't seem to understand how glaciers can leave errant rocks all over the place nor are you aware of the extensive rock clearning that occurred in New England when farmers were trying to make the fields useful.

To your second paragraph - yes in general.

I think you misunderstanding the age of x and r1 I suggest you look at those again.

Quote

Based on its ancestral lineages, an inferred origin for haplogroup R1 is South Asia or its western neighboring areas. For example, Kivisild 2003 believes the evidence "suggests that southern and western Asia might be the source of this haplogroup" and that "given the geographic spread and STR diversities of sister clades R1 and R2, the latter of which is restricted to India, Pakistan, Iran, and southern central Asia, it is possible that southern and western Asia were the source for R1 and R1a differentiation." Soares 2010 felt in their review of the literature, that the case for South Asian origins is strongest, with the Central Asian origin argued by (Wells 2001) being also worthy of consideration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1

Essan, Swede or Cormac are more knowledge in the complexities of DNA than I you might want to ask them.

When I worked in Europe and while on maneuvers I stayed in just such a rock made storage area - then used for turnips - how old it might have been was unknown. The present German family group had been living there since the hundred years war.

So unless you can come up with a European habitation site that can be dated back to a time before Columbus/Norse.....

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This Native American oriented website posted impressive ceramic artefacts and old stonework from New England (that would be impressive for Amerindians) in an article about pre-colonial culture, but I am skeptical about their authenticity:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/11/on-reading-cairnfields-in-new-englands.html

 

 

21947586550_72a57af958_o.jpg

Edited by rakovsky
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.