Of Bluestones and Bronze
by
William Overington
Monday 10 October 2016
There is a thread in the Serif Lounge forum.
Stonehenge - A Second-Hand Computer?
The first post in the thread contains a link to the following web page.
Stonehenge wasn't so hard to build after all, archaeologists discover
There are links from that web page.
Here are some posts of mine from the thread.
A quote from the article.
> Stonehenge expert Prof Mike Parker-Pearson of UCL believes the Stonehenge stones were part of a monument that once stood in Wales which was dismantled and moved to Wiltshire. But even Prof Parker-Pearson was amazed at how quickly the stones could be dragged.
Wow!
Some time ago I was musing about writing a historical novel.
The story was to have two strands.
What, in the fictional history, had happened; and a succession of oral historians telling that fictional history over many generations.
The following is all my historical fiction story layout.
There were two tribes.
One was centred on what is now Salisbury Plain and the other was centred near the Preseli mountains.
The tribes lived in peace and traded.
There were kings of each tribe and succession was hereditary.
However, a time arrived when the King in South Wales had a daughter yet no son.
It was arranged that the daughter married the son of the King from the Salisbury Plain area and that the tribes would merge and become one tribe in due course.
The couple lived happily and they had a son.
All were pleased and when the two old Kings had both passed away the tribes did merge and all accepted that the son of the couple would become King of the whole united tribe in due course after his father's reign had ended.
The blue stones were moved to Salisbury plain so as to unify the traditions of the two tribes.
However, the happiness of the couple was destroyed when the King passed away in an accident.
The couple's son was still a young child and so could not assume the duties of a King.
Who would become the King?
There was much concern and there was talk of the possibility of the people separating into their original tribes.
However, it was decided that there would be no King until the boy was old enough and wise enough to become King.
It was decided that the bronze swords of the boy's father and of his two grandfathers would all be melted together and a new large ceremonial sword would be cast using all of the metal.
A stone mould was made and the sword cast.
It was agreed that no one would remove the sword from the stone mould until the new King could do it.
Over the years some men thought to remove the sword from the stone and become King by taking possession of the sword. A few proclaimed that they would do so, yet reason prevailed and by political reasoning that were persuaded not to do so, as each such man was from one or other of the two original tribes and removing the sword from the stone could cause a lot of problems.
Eventually the boy grew to manhood, grew wise and then was invited by the elders of the tribe to remove the sword from the stone and become King.
The other thread of the story is of a succession of oral historians telling that fictional history over many generations.
Eventually, one of the oral historians becomes a bit forgetful.
A young boy, learning to become an oral historian asks him why the other men could not pull the sword from the stone themselves.
The man thinks and then says "Well, they were not strong enough".
William
Tuesday 24 May 2016
09:00 am
Supplementary note of Thursday 26 May 2016.
I have now thought of a title for the novel.
Of Bluestones and Bronze
William Overington
Thursday 26 May 2016
I wonder if it might not necessarily have been a circle.
I wonder if it might have been two circles one inside the other, using the two different types of stone.
Yet supposing that it were originally a stone circle.
I wonder if the diameter of the circle in South Wales was the same as the diameter of the circle at Stonehenge.
I wonder if in moving the monument whether the order of the stones in the circle was conserved.
Suppose that the order was conserved.
How could that have been done in those times?
Maybe the team of people moving each stone had a lady with them who carried a bag and in the bag was a number of pebbles, as many pebbles as the index number of the stone? Just me musing.
William
12:49 pm
Just musing.
Maybe with all of those stones, perhaps rather than a team moving a stone all the way, maybe there were many teams and each team moved each stone over a particular part of the journey.
That way, there could be specialist teams for uphill sections, a bigger team of the strongest men; a specialist team to go across a river, with the same raft used for each stone in turn.
At the end of each day they go back to their semi-permanent camp where a hot meal was waiting for them.
William
13:05 pm
On Tuesday I wrote:
> Some time ago I was musing about writing a historical novel.
I have now thought of a title for the novel.
Of Bluestones and Bronze
William Overington
Thursday 26 May 2016
08:18 am
An extract from a post.
I have been thinking about the following, one evening at one of the temporary camps as the bluestones are being moved.
"I wonder how far away are the stars" she muses.
"Have you noticed, from night to night, that as they move across the sky, that most keep their positions relative to each other, yet that there are a few that wander" he replies.
William
09:18 am
Returning to this topic, not part of the transcripts of the forum thread, I have thought of an interesting historical fiction possibility.
Suppose that the tribe developed writing, perhaps brought from elsewhere, perhaps invented themselves, and over centuries developed literature and records, perhaps using clay tablets and there was a great library of those clay tablets.
Yet there was a flood, maybe from a tsunami, and the clay of the tablets was swamped in the flood and the literature and records of the civilization were lost.
Web search item Of_Bluestones_and_Bronze