Orkney Garrison Withdrawal 2300 BCE
Andre Willers
5 Nov 2014
Synopsis :
Orkney garrison withdraws after big farewell feast . 2300
BCE
Discussion :
1.Orkney (Maeshowe) was a farflung military outpost . It
utilized acoustic technology .
Similar to http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/nessofbrodgar/ (note the military style of construction)
There is a whole network of fortresses here , that must have
required considerable effort and expense to maintain .
2. Why ?
Apart from the standard Neolithic Acoustical Ley-line
communication system , the submarine legs of the ley-system at the Orkneys seem
inordinately large .
Below are the remains of the business end of a submarine
acoustical system . The wave-guides are very big (the energy handled rises as
the square of the amplitude)
It seems more like a weapon . Would also be pretty good
Sonar .
Against who or what ?
The Matriarchs ?
This fits in with the general time-line . See Appendix A .
Against what threats ?
Well , warnings about tsnunami’s , landslides , earthquakes
seem useful , but worth this scale of effort ?
https://www.academia.edu/8873547/The_Click_Ur-Language , specifically http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2011/05/click-and-ley-lines.html
Humans can usually only be stirred up from their lazy
behinds by some dire, immediate threat .
It is difficult to see how acoustical systems can serve as
adequate protection against bio-war infiltration .
Unless , the bio-weapons have built-in failsafes that can be
acoustically activated .
Then it makes sense to have acoustic area-saturation at the
resonant frequencies
2.1 Intriguing
speculation :
If many of present diseases (TB is a very good example , and
so are some of the nastier neurotrophic vectors of psychosis , Alzheimer ,
paranoia ,etc ) are degenerate old weapons , then some of the acoustic triggers
might still exist . Worth a try .
2.2 Ebola .
This exhibits some of the characteristics of a
Matriarch-designed bio-mine .
It is nasty , hangs around in rhizomes , has a high mutation
rate and has a quorum system that seems designed for a society with high
connectivity .
A decivilizer of a weapon , designed to keep them poor ,
ignorant and low in numbers .
But it should then also have sonic keys to activation and
de-activation .
Oh no ! Don’t tell me rock Music activated things like Ebola
or HIV ! .
Unfortunately , a connection can be made statistically
between these diseases and music players like radios, tv , ipods , etc .
Also means that you can have an App that can switch them off
.
Now , there is The Next Big Thing !
3.Withdrawal .
About 700 years after the Saflieni Armageddon , https://www.academia.edu/9063568/Saflieni_armageddon
the Orkney garrisons
withdrew and stood down in an orderly fashion .
Did they win or lose ?
The Roman model suggests a mutual exhaustion .
But first they had a Big Party !
Killed and ate all the cattle , then erased the site . All
good military doctrine in any age .
Though the hangovers must have been humongous .
See http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/08/neolithic-orkney/smith-text
in Appendix B
Acoustics in Maeshowe
 One of the four massive stone buttresses in the main chamber of Maeshowe. |
Investigations into the behaviour of sound inside
Maeshowe has opened up a new avenue of possibilities into the cairn's use and
function.
Because of the chamber's acoustic properties,
a drummer or chanter within the tomb could appear to be surrounded by silence,
while the sounds they created were emphasised at significant parts of the
chamber.
This effect - zones of extreme high and low
sound - is due to the interaction of standing sound waves in the prehistoric
structure.
The loudest areas, it was found, seemed to
concentrate around the tomb's side chambers,
The business ends of the weapons or
communications outputs . Note how the operator is safeguarded in a cancellation
spot . Some quite deleterious energy resonances must have been used . The
mutation rate in the area must have been quite high . Another reason they
destroyed all domestic animals and dismantled the weapons . Safeguard the
civilian descendants .
Their own , in this case . They settled around
. Had no choice .
5. Submarine leylines .
If , as seems likely , the leylines were
acoustical communication devices , submarine legs is a new understanding .
The actual ruins left would be on the shores ,
but there probably are some subsided wave-guides in the north-Sea .
Mysterious “walls” underwater , with no
seeming purpose . But they had a purpose
. To channel aquatic pressure waves at crucial points .
I wish I had more resources to investigate
these possibilities . There are literally thousands all over the planet .
6. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geisslerlieder
for hints where to look for key frequencies .
The past might have no direct connection with
the future , but out-of-the-box constructions like this one can lead to
fruitful endeavours .
“Here , we make the Past fit for the Future “ 1984.5
TransBoxingly Yours
Andre
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Appendix A
Timelines BCE .
Latest on top .
PERIODS, PHASES & DATES
Period Phase Time BCE
Bronze & Iron Age Bahrija 900-700
Borg in-Nadur 1500 –
700
Tarxien Cemetary 2500
– 1500 (End of this epoch)
Orkney 2300 BCE
Temple Period Tarxien 3000 - 2500
Saflieni 3300 - 3000
Ggantija 3600
- 3300
Mgarr 3800 - 3600
Zebbug 4100 – 3800
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Appendix B
Before Stonehenge
One long-ago day around 3200 B.C., the farmers and herdsmen
on Scotland’s remote Orkney Islands decided to build something big...
By Roff Smith
Photograph by Jim Richardson
They had Stone Age technology, but their vision was
millennia ahead of their time. Five thousand years ago the ancient inhabitants
of Orkney—a fertile, green archipelago off the northern tip of modern-day
Scotland—erected a complex of monumental buildings unlike anything they had
ever attempted before.
They quarried thousands of tons of fine-grained sandstone, trimmed
it, dressed it, then transported it several miles to a grassy promontory with
commanding views of the surrounding countryside. Their workmanship 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 80 feet long and 60 feet wide, with walls 13 feet
thick. The complex featured paved walkways, carved stonework, colored facades,
even slate roofs—a rare extravagance in an age when buildings were typically
roofed with sod, hides, or thatch.
Fast-forward five millennia to a balmy summer afternoon on a
scenic headland known as the Ness of Brodgar. Here an eclectic team of
archaeologists, university professors, students, and volunteers is bringing to
light a collection of grand buildings that long lay hidden beneath a farm field.
Archaeologist Nick Card, excavation director with the Archaeology Institute at
the University of the Highlands and Islands, says the recent discovery of these
stunning ruins is turning British prehistory on its head.
“This is almost on the scale of some of the great classical
sites in the Mediterranean, like the Acropolis in Greece, except these
structures are 2,500 years older. Like the Acropolis, this was built to
dominate the landscape—to impress, awe, inspire, perhaps even intimidate anyone
who saw it. The people who built this thing had big ideas. They were out to
make a statement.”
What that statement was, and for whom it was intended,
remains a mystery, as does the purpose of the complex itself. Although it’s
usually referred to as a temple, it’s likely to have fulfilled a variety of
functions during the thousand years it was in use. It’s clear that many people
gathered here for seasonal rituals, feasts, and trade.
The discovery is all the more intriguing because the ruins
were found in the heart of one of the densest collections of ancient monuments
in Britain. The area has been searched for the past 150 years, first by
Victorian antiquarians, later by archaeologists. Yet none of them had the
slightest idea what lay beneath their feet.
Stand at “the Ness” today and several iconic Stone Age
structures are within easy view, forming the core of a World Heritage site
called the Heart of Neolithic Orkney. On a heather-clad knoll half a mile away
rises a giant Tolkienesque circle of stones known as the Ring of Brodgar. A
second ceremonial stone circle, the famous Stones of Stenness, is visible
across the causeway leading up to the Ness. And one mile away is an eerie mound
called Maes Howe, an enormous chambered tomb more than 4,500 years old. Its
entry passage is perfectly aligned to receive the rays of the setting sun on
the eve of the winter solstice, illuminating its inner chamber on the shortest
day of the year.
Maes Howe also aligns with the central axis and entrance to
the newly discovered temple on the Ness, something archaeologists believe is no
coincidence. They suspect that the freshly uncovered ruins may be a key piece
to a larger puzzle no one dreamed existed.
Until as recently as 30 years ago, the Ring of Brodgar, the
Stones of Stenness, and the Maes Howe tomb were seen as isolated monuments with
separate histories. “What the Ness is telling us is that this was a much more
integrated landscape than anyone ever suspected,” says Card. “All these
monuments are inextricably linked in some grand theme we can only guess at. And
the people who built all this were a far more complex and capable society than
has usually been portrayed.”
Orkney has long been good to archaeologists, thanks to its
deep human history and the fact that nearly everything here is built of stone.
Literally thousands of sites are scattered through the islands, the majority of
them untouched. Together they cover a great sweep of time and settings, from
Mesolithic camps and Iron Age settlements to the remains of Old Norse feasting
halls and ruined medieval palaces.
“I’ve heard this place called the Egypt of the North,” says
county archaeologist Julie Gibson, who came to Orkney more than 30 years ago to
excavate a Viking cemetery and never left. “Turn over a rock around here and
you’re likely to find a new site.”
Sometimes you don’t even need to do that. In 1850 a gale
tore away some sand dunes along the Bay of Skaill, on the western flank of
Mainland island, exposing an astonishingly well preserved Stone Age village.
Archaeologists date the village, called Skara Brae, to around 3100 B.C. and
believe it was occupied for more than 600 years.
Skara Brae must have been a cozy setup in its day.
Lozenge-shaped stone dwellings linked by covered passages huddled close
together against the grim winters. There were hearths inside, and the living
spaces were furnished with stone beds and cupboards. Even after the passage of
thousands of years the dwellings look appealingly personal, as though the
occupants had just stepped out. The stage-set quality of the homesteads and the
glimpse they offer into everyday life in the Neolithic, to say nothing of the
dramatic way they were revealed, made Skara Brae Orkney’s most spectacular
find. Until now.
The first hint of big things underfoot at the Ness came to
light in 2002, when a geophysical survey revealed the presence of large,
man-made anomalies beneath the soil. Test trenches were dug and exploratory
excavations begun, but it wasn’t until 2008 that archaeologists began to grasp
the scale of what they had stumbled upon.
Today only 10 percent of the Ness has been excavated, with
many more stone structures known to be lurking under the turf nearby. But this
small sample of the site has opened an invaluable window into the past and
yielded thousands of priceless artifacts: ceremonial mace heads, polished stone
axes, flint knives, a human figurine, miniature thumb pots, beautifully crafted
stone spatulas, colored pottery far more refined and delicate than anyone had
expected for its time, and more than 650 pieces of Neolithic art, by far the
largest collection ever found in Britain.
Before visiting the Ness, I tended to view Stone Age sites
with indifferent curiosity. The lives of the long-ago inhabitants seemed far
removed and alien. But art offers a glimpse into the minds and imaginations of
the people who create it. At the Ness I found myself looking into a world I
could comprehend, even if its terms were radically different from my own.
“Nowhere else in all Britain or Ireland have such
well-preserved stone houses from the Neolithic survived, so Orkney is already
punching above its weight,” says Antonia Thomas, an archaeologist at the University
of the Highlands and Islands. “To be able to link these structures with art, to
see in such a direct and personal way how people embellished their
surroundings, is really something.”
One of the more startling discoveries has been discernible
traces of colored pigments on some of the stonework. “I’ve always suspected
that color played an important role in people’s lives,” says Card. “I had a
sense that they painted their walls, but now we know for sure.”
Indeed one of the structures apparently served as a kind of
paint shop, complete with piles of pigment still on the floor: powdered
hematite (red), ocher (yellow), and galena (white), together with the dimpled
rocks and grinding stones that served as mortar and pestle.
Also found among the ruins were prized trade goods such as
volcanic glass from as far afield as the Isle of Arran in western Scotland, and
high-quality flints from across the archipelago and beyond. These artifacts
suggest that Orkney was on an established trade route and that the temple
complex on the Ness may have been a site of pilgrimage.
More intriguing than the items traders and pilgrims brought
to the site, say archaeologists, is what they took away: ideas and inspiration.
Distinctive colored pottery sherds found at the Ness and elsewhere, for
example, suggest that the trademark style of grooved pottery that became almost
universal throughout Neolithic Britain had its origin in Orkney. It may well be
that rich and sophisticated Orcadians were setting the fashion agendas of the day.
“This is totally at odds with the old received wisdom that
anything cultural must have come from the genteel south to improve the
barbarian north,” laughs Roy Towers, a Scottish archaeological ceramicist and
the site’s pottery specialist. “It seems to have been just the reverse here.”
Traders and pilgrims also returned home with recollections
of the magnificent temple complex they had seen and notions about celebrating
special places in the landscape the way the Orcadians did—ideas which,
centuries later, would find their ultimate expression at Stonehenge.
Why Orkney of all places? How did this scatter of islands
off the northern tip of Scotland come to be such a technological, cultural, and
spiritual powerhouse? “For starters, you have to stop thinking of Orkney as
remote,” says Caroline Wickham-Jones, a lecturer in archaeology at the
University of Aberdeen. “For most of history, from the Neolithic to the Second
World War, Orkney was an important maritime hub, a place that was on the way to
everywhere.”
It was also blessed with some of the richest farming soils
in Britain and a surprisingly mild climate, thanks to the effects of the Gulf
Stream. Pollen samples reveal that by about 3500 B.C.—around the time of the
earliest settlement on Orkney—much of the hazel and birch woodland that
originally covered the landscape was gone.
“It’s been assumed that the woodland was cleared away by
Neolithic farmers, but that doesn’t seem to have been entirely the case,” says
Michelle Farrell, a paleoecologist at Queen’s University Belfast who studies
past land use and environmental change. “Although early farmers accounted for a
degree of woodland loss, in some areas much of the woodland was already gone by
5500 B.C. It seems to have been a prolonged event and largely caused by natural
processes, but what those processes were we really can’t say without better
climate records.”
One thing is certain, says Farrell: “The open nature of the
landscape would have made life much easier for those early farmers. It could
have been one of the reasons why they were able to devote so much time to
monument building.”
It’s also clear that they had plenty of willing hands and
strong backs to put to the cause. Estimates of Orkney’s population in Neolithic
times run as high as 10,000—roughly half the number of people who live there
today—which no doubt helps account for the density of archaeological sites in
the islands. Unlike other parts of Britain, where houses were built with
timber, thatch, and other materials that rot away over time, Orcadians had
abundant outcrops of fine, easily worked sandstone for building homes and
temples that could last for centuries.
What’s more, the Neolithic homesteaders and pioneers who
settled Orkney knew what they were doing. “Orkney’s farmers were among the
first in Europe to have deliberately manured their fields to improve their
crops,” says Jane Downes, director of the Archaeology Institute at the
University of the Highlands and Islands. “Thousands of years later medieval
peasants were still benefiting from the work those Neolithic farmers put into
the soil.”
They also imported cattle, sheep, goats, and possibly red
deer, ferrying them out from the Scottish mainland in skin boats, braving miles
of open water and treacherous currents. The herds they raised grew fat on the
island’s rich grazing. Indeed, to this day, Orkney beef commands a premium on
the market.
In short, by the time they embarked on their ambitious
building project on the Ness of Brodgar, Orkney’s farmers had become wealthy
and well established, with much to be grateful for and a powerful spiritual
bond to the land.
For a thousand years, a span longer than Westminster Abbey
and Canterbury Cathedral have stood, the temple complex on the Ness of Brodgar
cast its spell over the landscape—a symbol of wealth, power, and cultural
energy. To generations of Orcadians who gathered there, and to the travelers
who came hundreds of miles to admire it and conduct business, the temple and
its walled compound of buildings must have seemed as enduring as time itself.
But sometime around the year 2300 B.C., for reasons that
remain obscure, it all came to an end. Climate change may have played a role.
Evidence suggests that northern Europe became cooler and wetter toward the end
of the Neolithic, and these conditions may have had a negative effect on agriculture.
Or perhaps it was the disruptive influence of a new
toolmaking material: bronze. Not only did the metal alloy introduce better
tools and weapons. It also brought with it fresh ideas, new values, and
possibly a shake-up of the social order.
“We’ve not found any bronze artifacts so far on the Ness,”
says Card. “But a society as powerful and well connected as they were must
surely have known that profound changes were coming their way. It may have been
they were one of the holdouts.”
Whatever the reason, the ancient temple was decommissioned
and partially destroyed, deliberately and symbolically. Before the people moved
on, they left behind one final startling surprise for archaeologists to find:
the remains of a gargantuan farewell feast. More than 400 cattle were
slaughtered, enough meat to have fed thousands of people.
“The bones all appear to have come from a single event,”
says Ingrid Mainland, an archaeozoologist from the University of the Highlands
and Islands who specializes in ancient livestock. She has been analyzing the
piles of bones that were deliberately arranged around the temple. Curiously,
the people who ate that final feast left behind only the shinbones of the
animals they slaughtered. “What the significance of the tibia was to them, where
that fits in the story, is a mystery,” says Mainland.
Another unknown is what impact killing so many cattle may
have had on this agricultural community. “Were they effectively taking out the
future productivity of their herds?” wonders Mainland. “We don’t know.”
After cracking open the bones to extract the rich marrow
inside, the people arranged them in intricate piles around the base of the
temple. Next they draped unbutchered deer carcasses over the piles, presumably
as offerings. In the center of the chamber they deposited a cattle skull and a
large stone engraved with a sort of cup motif. Then came the final act of
closure.
“They deliberately demolished the buildings and buried them
under thousands of tons of rubble and trash,” says Card. “It seems that they were
attempting to erase the site and its importance from memory, perhaps to mark
the introduction of new belief systems.”
Over the centuries that followed the abandonment of the
Ness, time and the elements took their toll. Whatever stones remained visible
from the old forgotten walls were carried away by homesteaders for use in their
own cottages and farms. Now it was their turn to play out their history on
Orkney’s windswept stage.
Roff Smith regularly explores the English countryside on a
bicycle. Jim Richardson has photographed more than 25 articles for National
Geographic.
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