HapSmo19 wrote:muy_thaiguy wrote:So, in order to get an Irish Elk (I'm trying to figure out WHAT they could have hunted that MIGHT have required such large and heavy stones, and also the Irish Elk is about the only animal that I can place at the right time and place), they would, lure into the center of the ring, then stab at it when they could? I think it may be easier to just hurl a spear at it to bring it down then try and move all those ridiculously large stones just to get one or two animals.
A large cat? A mammoth? A dinosaur? Who knows for sure?
Though I believe it's far older than they say it is as the way it was dated is dubious.
Spears and arrows were secondary. The animal was lured in to the center with bait where a large stone (the "altar stone") was dropped on it while it was feeding.
The hunters(20 or so?), after coming out of the two barrows and circling in the ditch(bank on the inside for cover), snuck up behind the "lintels" and cut the rope, dropping the stone. Then safely filled it full of spears and arrows through the narrow slots between the stones. I think more to rid the area farmers and villages of a dangerous menace than for food.
And your the guy saying the bloke who suggested it was a monument to the vagina was a nutjob?
A large cat? You won't get anything bigger than a Lynx in Britain at that time (see my avvy)
Mammoth-no chance. Far too early for the Celtic civilization to develop (or in fact, any non nomadic tribe, it died out long before metalworking and defiantly long before humans had enough technology for mounting and moving
stones from walesAs for dinosaurs.
I definitely don't see hunters having stones, not only carved, but imported all the way from wales and mounted (proberbly using A frames from what we think now, a lot of bother and hastle) just to kill of a minor nuisance of an animal when they have perfectly good hunting techniques which can kill anything the British countryside had to offer.
The second thing is, its far too ceremonial for a simple trap (which could be made as you described by nothing but a few mounds of earth and a locally sourced stone.)
Why would hunters build such a huge construction? and one made from Welsh stones? Why take care so that the sun would move exactly through the central stone at midsummer and midwinter? Why line the outside banks with gleaming white stone so it can be seen from miles around? Why make stone lined pathways leading down to the river, rivers being holy places for the Celts, a boat ride from which will take you to the end of another path, which leads up to a second, slightly smaller stone circle?
A trap, no; temple, maybe
