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MEGALITHIC TECHNOLOGY

A paper by Frater Choronzon first presented to Philos-o-Forum at Eccleston House on Monday 18th February 1991

"Even to this day there is the huge boulder of 'Tay Ninu', Annam, in French Indo China. Reported to weigh over 300 tons, it hangs suspended in mid-air, with no visible means of support; a floating miracle of levitation. The natives believe that it is held in the air by means of sound, so every moment of the day and night somebody is humming a mantra to keep it from falling." - The Hon Desmond Leslie - 'Flying Saucers Have Landed' 1953. Desmond Leslie has acknowledged, at least since the late 60s, that the "Boulder of Tay Ninu" is apocryphal - he claims the source of the information was a column in the Daily Express called 'Believe It Or Not' edited by one George Ripley. Notwithstanding this disclaimer by Desmond Leslie, the oral tradition of the 'Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom' maintained that the Tay Ninu Boulder was for real, and that this had been confirmed to them by an operative of the CIA who had attempted to recruit one of their members. Regrettably, though, it was also revealed by that source that the Boulder's existence had been of such concern to the Agency that a covert mission to demolish it had been authorised, and that this had been achieved by means of a "mistargetted" B52 sortie in the early days of the Vietnam war. Tales such as this, and other speculations in more recent books by Brinsley le Poer Trench (the Earl of Clancarty), Erich von Daniken, and even John Michell, have led to the development of a pervasive belief which holds that ancient cultures had an advanced technology by which they were able to work, move, and manipulate huge stones (megaliths) across large distances using some sort of sonic resonance technique. The assertion by conventional archaeological authorities that, for example, the Egyptians used thousands of slaves to erect the Pyramids, has been dismissed as part of a conspiracy to prevent the members of humankind from realising their true potential to the detriment of the incumbent 'powers that be'. The apparent ordering of megalithic monuments and other similar sites into straight lines has

been presented as further evidence of the possession of advanced surveying techniques and the power of flight (or levitation) by ancient cultures throughout the world. Such beliefs are still to be found alive and kicking among many adherents of so-called 'New Age' thought. One of the favourite retorts of adherents of such belief systems has always been "OK then so how else did they build Stonehenge/the Pyramids/ Carnac/Tiahuanaco/the Platforms of Baalbek?" (delete as applicable). Curiously, authentic megalithic construction methods have survived into the modern era, and a well documented account of these has been available throughout the period of recent popular debate on such topics. The relevant material is to be found in Thor Heyerdahl's work on the monuments of Rapa Nui (the Navel of the World) otherwise known as Easter Island. In the mid 1950s Heyerdahl, a Norwegian adventurer, captured international attention by sailing across the Pacific on a raft constructed of balsa wood in an effort to validate a theory that the islands of Polynesia could have been colonised by migrants from the South American mainland. The raft was named Kon-Tiki after an incarnated solar deity of the Incas, who, according to legend, had made this precise journey with a group of companions. Work which Heyerdahl undertook to follow up this remarkable and hazardous expedition has commanded rather less attention. It is notable, for example, that the world's largest second-hand bookshop in Hay-onWye had in its section on the South Pacific some 20 copies of 'KonTiki', the book about the raft expedition, but only a single copy of Heyerdahl's follow-up volume 'Aku-Aku' which gives a comprehensive account of the history and folklore of Easter Island, together with convincing explanations of how the megalithic sculptures there were constructed, transported and erected. The book includes photographs of such operations being carried out in the mid 1950s. Why this compelling evidence has been largely ignored during the past 30 odd years of intense speculation about Megalithic Technology seems to me to be the real mystery of the matter. It may be that the material in 'Aku-Aku' strays too close to ceremonial magic for the liking of the conventional archaeologists (who tend anyway to dismiss Heyerdahl's ideas about a westward migration from South America), and that the style of presentation was too rational in character for those seeking miraculous explanations. Whatever the explanation for its having been ignored for so long, Heyerdahl's evidence on megalithic technology as it has survived in Easter Island

is worthy of some detailed examination, both for what it can tell us about the techniques employed, and because circumstances in that island's history reveal much about how such skills and knowledge can become lost or forgotten.

A CLASH OF EARS AND CULTURES


At the time when Captain James Cook visited Easter Island in 1774 there were two tribes living on the island. These are conventionally referred to as the 'Long Ears' and the 'Short Ears'. According to Heyerdahl the Long Ears were an industrious people and the descendants of migrants from South America, while the Short Ears were of Melanesian origin and adopted a more laid-back attitude to life. As is the way of the world, the Long Ears dominated the society and pressed the Short Ears into their service, clearing land for agriculture, building walls, and subjected them to a general life of "moil and toil". This led to resentment and, in the end, effectively to revolution. The final straw was a Long Ear project to clear all the stones off the island to maximise the land area available for agriculture; needless to say, it was the Short Ears who had to do the actual work! The task began with the Poike Peninsula at the eastern extremity of the island, and it is indeed reported that that area is completely free of stones. The Short Ears rose in rebellion, and the Long Ears fled to Poike where they dug a ditch right across the island which was filled with brushwood and flammable materials. Behind this defence they felt secure, but by a treacherous stratagem the Short Ears infiltrated into the Long Ear territory and in the ensuing battle the Long Ears perished en masse in their own defensive ditch. Only three escaped, and two of those were later killed when found hiding in a cave. The last surviving Long Ear, a man called Ororoina, took a Short Ear wife, and their descendants are still living on Easter Island. By evincing a genuine sympathy and interest for the local cultural tradition, Heyerdahl befriended one of the Long Ear descendants, by co-incidence the islander's Mayor, and persuaded him to yield up and subsequently to demonstrate the techniques used both to carve and to transport and erect the famous statues. These methods were not known to the Short Ears who now make up the mass of the inhabitants of the island, and had been preserved as hereditary family secrets.

It may well be that Heyerdahl's friend, Don Pedro Atan, represented the sole remaining repository anywhere in the world of the wisdom of that same Megalithic Technology which built Stonehenge.

A TECHNICAL DEMONSTRATION
Heyerdahl commissioned Don Pedro to make him an Easter Island statue. A band of Long Ear descendants were assembled, and their work was prefaced by a ritual vigil featuring a distinctive rhythmic stone-cutters chant. The following morning they set to in the quarry using only stone picks and gourds of water, chipping away in resonance with the chant. The task occupied six men for fifteen days. Heyerdahl sponsored a further project to re-erect a large statue which had been toppled. This task was again preceded by a ritual involving prominent use of "hypnotic" rhythmic chanting. The procedure is illustrated in a series of photographs taken by Heyerdahl at various stages of the work. The statue is levered with wooden poles a little at a time, and small stones are inserted under it. As the statue is slowly raised, those small stones are replaced with larger ones and so on, until the statue can be slid into a prepared socket or onto a plinth and pulled upright with ropes. Using a similar technique, capstones could be set on top of a statue. Once the pile of construction stones was removed, no trace would remain of the techniques used. Raising a 25 - 30 ton statue from a recumbent position appears to have taken twelve Easter Islanders eighteen days using this technique, and the most tricky part seems to be the final stage when the megalith is actually tilted into position. A further demonstration of the method of moving megaliths was organised by Don Pedro Atan with Heyerdahl's encouragement. This involved significantly more people, around one hundred and eighty to move a statue estimated at twelve tons across flat ground, but with no runners or rollers - just ropes. The work was preceded by a great feast for which two oxen were slaughtered. Again music and chanting were an important element, with the giant first being moved in short jerks. Then, in Heyerdahl's words, "suddenly it seemed to break loose. The colossus slid away over the plain so quickly that Lazarus, the Mayor's assistant, jumped up onto the giant's face and stood waving his arms and cheering like a gladiator in a triumphal procession, while the long lines of toiling islanders hauled patiently and yelled at the pitch of their voices with enthusiasm. It went as quickly as if each of them had

been towing an empty soap box." Heyerdahl estimates that with wooden runners and more people much larger statues could be moved in exactly the same fashion. Once the techniques are revealed, they seem so obvious that one wonders that there was ever any mystery about them. The practitioners themselves, though, stress the importance of the mantic chanting, and it may well be that this allows them to focus their attention on the task in hand, and that the hypnotic trance state induced is thus as important a factor in the technology as the actual physical methods employed.

ORIGINS AND MIGRATION OF THE TECHNOLOGY


As far as can be determined from radio-carbon dating of material associated with megalithic sites, the very oldest examples of this class of structure are to be found in the Armorican region of north-west France. Passage graves at Kercado near Carnac in Brittany have been dated to 6000 years before present - that is around 4000 BC. These are similar in character to structures such as West Kennet Long Barrow in Wiltshire. Around Carnac there are numerous examples of megalithic structures of this kind. Some are covered over, while others resemble extended Dolmens with an exposed framework of gigantic stones, some of which bear more or less elaborate decoration or carving, often featuring spirals, anthropomorphic designs or characters which may represent a script of some sort. There seems to be a consensus that the very earliest examples are tombs, and it should be noted that those in Brittany pre-date the oldest such burial chambers in Egypt, for example, by a full millennium. Much attention has been focussed in recent years on alignments of such structures. These fall into two categories; firstly examples of features within the monument itself aligning on some astronomical phenomenon, like the rising position of the sun or moon at a particular time of the year; and secondly alignments between monuments on different sites, sometimes across large distances. The latter category are often referred to as forming 'Ley Lines' after the term introduced by Alfred Watkins in his book 'The Old Straight Track'.

The earliest examples of megalithic structures with clearly discernible astronomical features embedded in the architecture occur almost at the same time in Ireland's Boyne Valley and in Egypt; that is around 2500 BC. The Irish examples are the huge chambered cairns of New Grange and Knowth, which resemble elaborate versions of the structures in Brittany. These early alignments are of the type where an astronomical body can be sighted from within the monument only on a particular day when it is at an extremity of its movement. Thus in New Grange at mid-winter the sun casts a beam of light through an aperture above the entrance and down the main passage to illuminate a prominent stone which may have had a ceremonial purpose. In Egypt similar alignments have been noted with observations of the star Sirius being possible on particular days. It seems likely that these types of observational alignment were important for calendrical purposes to time plantings, or, in the Egyptian case, to time the annual inundation of the Nile. Could alignments of this type be co-incidence? Certainly in the case of New Grange it seems unlikely, as it has recently been pointed out that one of the internal megaliths appears to have been modified for the explicit purpose of allowing the shaft of light to penetrate the innermost recess on the shortest day, and only on that day. Is it co-incidence that this sort of calendar technology should have been developed more or less simultaneously in two different cultural environments? To me happenstance seems reasonable in this instance. Examples abound, particularly in the field of technological innovation, of two or more people in different locations arriving at the same idea at the same time. That phenomenon can often give rise to disputes about precedence and accusations of plagiarism, even today. A recent example has arisen in the fracas attending the supposed discovery of a technique for producing nuclear fusion at room temperature. Nonetheless, those who seek to demonstrate that the Egyptians derived their culture and technology from the Irish point to a discovery made in 1968 when the mound of Knowth, a few miles from New Grange, was opened. There in a recess was a splendid carved stone bowl bearing a winged solar disk - I have been reliably assured that it wasn't a plant! The oldest Menhirs or Standing Stones are generally reckoned to be later than the early megalithic chambers. Again there is some

synchronicity between Egypt and the lands of the Atlantic seaboard; the earliest pharaonic obelisks date from the 4th Dynasty, around 2500 BC, and few menhirs are estimated to be much older than that. The largest of this class of megaliths would have been the Great Menhir at Locmarquier near Carnac, but that one is on its back in three pieces. It is not known whether it was ever upright, or when the fractures occurred, but at some 350 tons this stone would have been some 50% heavier again than the largest Egyptian obelisk. By comparison with these monsters the stones at Avebury and Stonehenge are quite modest, with the largest at those sites estimated at a mere 50 tons. The largest megalith in the British Isles would in fact appear to be 'Cleopatra's Needle'. That obelisk is a specimen from the time of Tutmose III, and, by co-incidence, it is almost contemporaneous with Stonehenge, having been set up originally at Heliopolis in 1500 BC. We have become accustomed in this country to think of sites like Stonehenge and Avebury as the focal points of a megalithic culture, but viewed in a broader European context they must be seen as comparatively late provincial examples. If 'Megalithia' was a country, there can be little dispute that its Capital City would have been at Carnac in Brittany. The standing stones there are numbered in thousands, arrayed in parallel avenues running for miles, up and down hills, through forests and even across small lakes. So exactly who were the 'Megalithians' and what happened to them? They certainly weren't the Druids. There are no records of that priestly caste until more than 1000 years later than the most recent of the megalithic monuments, nor indeed of the Celtic peoples to whose spiritual needs the Druids ministered. It has been suggested that there are Minoan influences in the design of Stonehenge. That may be so, but Stonehenge is a very late example of European megalithic structure, and if any linkage of influence is at work in that connection, it is more likely that the Cretans learnt their construction techniques from the builders of the chambered cairns of Carnac. In terms of chronological sequence it would make as much sense. There seems to be evidence that the people involved were also competent seafarers, so what about the Phoenicians? After all the greatest stone structures of all are supposed to be those at Baalbek in present day Lebanon. It is well established that ancient Byblos to the

north of modern Beirut has been continuously inhabited for 12000 years (i.e. since the end of the Ice Age when Britain was still joined to France), and that copper and bronze were being used in that region by 4000 BC. Those Bronze Age people, however, were not the folk who we refer to nowadays as Phoenicians. The records show that the original culture was overwhelmed in 3000 BC by "sea-faring colonisers", and it is postulated that the invaders came from the area of the Persian Gulf. This suggestion seems to me to be absurd. There was no Suez Canal, and the only direction from which 'sea-farers' could have come was from elsewhere in the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, or through the 'Pillars of Hercules' from the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Egyptian records show that there was contact with these 'seafarers' from early dynastic times, and the acquisition of megalithic construction techniques seems to have occurred in the Nile Valley from that time forward. It was not until 1000 BC that there was any colonisation out of Phoenicia and back along the North African coast. By that time the Eastern Mediterranean had been convulsed by the events consequent on the explosive eruption of Thera, the civilisations of Mycenae and Knossos (Minoan Crete) had long declined, the cities of Greece were warring with the Trojans of Asia Minor, and no-one was building traditional megalithic structures anymore; except in America! Anyone presenting a paper on the origins of the Megaliths has a duty to offer a half-baked theory on these knotty problems. Some have gone as far as to suggest that the only conceivable explanations lie in Lost Continents or 'Gods' in Flying Saucers, but I don't think it has to be that extreme. There is good evidence to suggest that the area now occupied by the Sahara Desert supported abundant human life from the earliest times up until the period of global warming which caused the retreat of the North European ice caps some 10000 years ago. There are plentiful archaeological remains in the Hoggar Mountains of southern Algeria to support this assertion. The final desiccation of the Sahara is estimated to have occurred progressively between 5000 and 3000 BC, and a dramatic increase in the population both of the Nile Valley and of oases such as the Fayyum dates from that period. At the same time those areas of Northern Europe which had been tundra regions during the previous millennia were becoming inhabitable, and even fertile. My own crazy megalith hypothesis says that there were people living in what is now the Sahara who were forced to migrate northwards, and that they took with them some folk memory of a key feature of the landscape they left behind - namely the termite mounds. These

might well have had some significance in a naturalistic religion and a practical use as landmarks. So when you are next contemplating your local standing stone, try thinking of it as an artificial termite mound set up by a tribe of homesick migrs from the desiccating Sahara. As the culture developed, of course, the original significance was lost and the monuments took on their own importance. After a further 2000 years the technology evolved until the structures were performing useful functions as calendars and even eclipse predictors, as has been claimed for Stonehenge. An issue which has exercised speculative thinkers for the past century (at least) concerns the existence of Pyramids and other manifestations of megalithic technology in the Americas. These are of prominent interest to the theorists who postulate Lost Continents in general and Atlantis in particular. That theory has its variants, but the basis is drawn from Plato's dialogues 'Timaeus' and 'Critias'. The first of those works sets out the geography ".. in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the opposite continent.. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others.. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune .. the island of Atlantis .. disappeared in the depths of the sea". Much of the 'Critias' is devoted to lengthy and detailed descriptions of the Atlantean political set-up, the temples, rituals, military adventures and general layout of urban and port facilities on Atlantis. The general impression is of a sizeable and opulent nation state. Some authorities claim that what is being described is Thera prior to the eruption, albeit that that island was within the Mediterranean. Personally I have no real problem with the idea of a large island, say the size of Iceland, in the middle of the ocean. Such a landmass astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is not at variance with the concepts of plate tectonics, though, if it had sunk in a day and a night, it is perhaps arguable whether anyone would have survived to tell the tale. What is postulated by 'Lost Continent' fanatics is that the escaping Atlanteans migrated East and West, and started building Pyramids in

Egypt and Mexico, or at least provided architectural guidance to the locals. This would be plausible if the Pyramids on both sides of the ocean were more or less the same age unfortunately they are not! The earliest megalithic artefacts in the 'New World' are indeed close to the Caribbean coast of Mexico. They are huge stone heads, roughly egg-shaped, about 9 feet high and weighing approximately 40 tons; they were sculpted by a people known as the Olmecs, and date from around 1000 BC. At almost the same time in the Chavin region of Peru there existed a pre-Inca culture who sculpted representations of a "Smiling God" typically 15 feet high in white granite; they also erected obelisks. The earliest pyramids in the Americas date from around 400 BC in the Nazca region of Peru. The Maya specimens followed close to year zero (OK then .. year one) of the Christian Era, the first of them being the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacan some 30 miles north-east of Mexico City. The megalithic sites around Lake Titicaca date from between 400 BC and 800 AD and include the celebrated Gateway of the Sun at Tiahuanaco which resembles a Stonehenge tri-lithon. The Aztec monuments in Mexico and the Inca culture in Peru were later than all of these and are contemporary with the mediaeval period in Europe. An interesting innovation attributed to the Inca is the concept of earthquake-proof walls. These are megalithic in style, and are constructed so that the blocks fit together like pieces of a jigsaw. In my opinion the existence of exactly similar walls on Easter Island is one of the most persuasive arguments to support Thor Heyerdahl's concept of a migration westwards from South America carrying megalithic technology into the Pacific.

PRE-COLUMBIAN NAVIGATORS
Conventional anthropological history tells us that the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas crossed via a land bridge which existed at the end of the Ice Age where the Bering Straits are now, between Siberia and Alaska. That is supposed to have been the only route by which humans arrived in the New World before "Columbus sailed the ocean blue" in 1492. Yet Plato mentions an "opposite continent" in the Timaeus, as quoted above, dating from around 400 BC. Trans-Atlantic voyages are also attributed to the Irishman St Brendan, perhaps around 550 AD, and to the Viking explorer Leif Erikkson shortly after his discovery of Greenland in 1000 AD. What sets those

intrepid characters apart from anyone else who may have made the crossing is that they also survived the journey back to Europe, and, in Erikkson's case, made a map as well. Recent archaeological work in northern Brazil has indicated that human contact with Africa must have existed, perhaps even earlier than the major migration via the Bering Straits. I do not find suggestions of such early voyages improbable. A quick glance at a globe shows that it is no further across the Atlantic Ocean, either from Ireland to Newfoundland or from West Africa to Brazil, than it is from Phoenicia to the Pillars of Hercules in the Mediterranean. Where one is dealing with skilled navigators, like the Phoenicians, or their predecessors, the 'Megalithians', it does not take any great stretch of the imagination, in my view, to conceive of their having made the crossing to the Americas. It might however be more difficult for anyone who had made the voyage across to get back. In that supposition may lie the origin of the tradition that people who went out into the Western Ocean fell off the edge of the flat earth they were usually never seen again. What seems intriguing is that the earliest examples of megalithic technology in the New World occur sequentially after the demise of that culture in those territories which later became home to the Celts. Moreover the emergence of pyramids in the Americas coincides with the beginning of the end of the ancient Egyptian culture. If such migrations did occur, it is at least consistent that those who survived the endeavour might have carried the wisdom of megalithic technology with them. Individuals who were privy to the processes of construction of the stone monuments would in all likelihood also be those who had some understanding of the astronomical sciences and of the applications attendant on making such observations, and therefore they would be able to bring their skills to bear in guiding a pioneer ship to its destination. When embarking on a hazardous sea voyage it always helps to have someone on board who knows something about navigation.

SUMMARY OF OMISSIONS
It would be inappropriate to sub-head the closing few paragraphs of this paper 'Conclusions' because present day understanding of many issues relating to the megaliths is very cloudy. There are many topics

which I have made no attempt to address, for example the nature of any ritual or observance which might have been carried out at megalithic sites. I have intentionally glossed over the 'platforms of Baalbek', which may be worth a separate detailed study. The stones at that site might more appropriately be termed 'gigaliths' if reports are accurate, for they are an order of magnitude larger (variously 1600 - 2000 tons) than any but the very largest regular megaliths. Some sources indicate that they are unfinished and not in their final resting places, others point to their having been used as the substructure in the temple complex there, and yet other authorities suggest that they are an Atlantean Space-Shuttle Port. There are few good photographs in the public domain, and even fewer that impart any sense of scale. Regrettably the site is located in a militarily sensitive part of Lebanon. As a result of focussing on the most recent megaliths and the oldest I have concentrated on tracing the migration and evolution of the technology. This has resulted in omission of reference to the wide geographic spread of sites which, although they are important in themselves, do not necessarily fall on the 'critical path'. Lastly I would say that the best way to come to a direct appreciation of standing stones is probably to try to erect one, and the absence of that 'hands on' experience is probably the most serious omission of all.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING (not


necessarily all recommended!)

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA General reference for dates & weights. 1988 GARRETT, W (ed) various articles - National Geographic Oct 1989 GIOT, P R Menhirs and Dolmens (Editions Jos) 1986 HADINGHAM, E Ancient Carvings in Britain (Garnstone) 1974 HEYERDAHL, T Aku-Aku (Allen & Unwin) 1957

LESLIE, D & ADAMSKI, G Flying Saucers Have Landed (Werner Laurie) 1953 LUCY, B et al Archaeological Survey of County Donegal (Donegal County Council) 1983 MERRY, E The Flaming Door (New Knowledge Books) 1962 MICHELL, J The Flying Saucer Vision (Sidgwick & Jackson) 1967 The Old Stones of Lands End (Elephant Press) 1973 PLATO The Dialogues; translated: J Harward (Univ of Chicago; ed 1952) ca 350 BC SAMAGALSKI, A Chile & Easter Island - A travel survival kit (Lonely Planet) 1987

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