Stonehenge Discovery using 3D Laser Scanning

Alligator Descartes writes "The BBC reports - 'High-tech lasers have been used to unlock the secrets of Stonehenge. The work at the ancient site in Wiltshire has already uncovered two carvings which are invisible to the naked eye.' The project website contains lots of images plus some nice animations of the scan data."

Hmmm...

[Whispers_in_the_dark]

I'm no archaeologist, but the images [stonehengelaserscan.org] have about the same level of conclusiveness as to their composition (that they are "axe-heads") as the Cydonia Face [google.com]. I'm sure there are other reasons for their conclusions but I sure don't see them from my untrained eye.

They look rather dubious to me

[los furtive]

They look more like the sort of mark left after the impact of a metal object. Maybe someone just banged an axe against the stone. Cavemen were capable of better art than this (I'm not talking about the alignment of the stones themselves).

I dunno...

[iiioxx]

Looks more like tool marks than "carvings" to me. I think this is just a bunch of archeologists seeing what they want to see.

Erm, radio carbon dating huh?

[Senjaz]

From the project website:

"But the advent of radiocarbon dating showed decisively that Stonehenge was much older than Mycenae. Indeed, the idea of making carvings in stone springs from a long tradition."

Right, carbon dating rocks eh? Using what carbon? Carbon dating can only date things which had sufficient carbon 14 content and is based on its radio active decay to carbon 12. It only works on things that were once living (I'm no scientist but I'm pretty sure these rocks weren't) and even then it can produce hideously inaccurate results.

As for the scanning. The markings could be anything. Because of the extent of errosion there is no way you can tell if these were done shortly after construction or years afterwards.

Nothing but misinformation here.

Re:What would the builders have thought of this?

[digitalhermit]

I imagine stonehenge was more the equivalent of a present day water works project such as a dam or sewer treatment plant, except that it was likely controlled by priests who, throughout history, have a major goal of perpetuating the priesthood. This is assuming that Stonehenge could have been used for practical purposes such as forecasting the proper crop planting time rather than just some gee-whiz gadgetry to keep the general populace in awe and in bondage.

Re:What would the builders have thought of this?

[wytcld]

priests who, throughout history, have a major goal of perpetuating the priesthood - some gee-whiz gadgetry to keep the general populace in awe and in bondage

There's a major difference between shamanic and priestly practices - check the anthropological literature. In all likelihood the Stonehenge builders were still a shamanic society. Shamanism is more about freedom than bondage. All cultural groups tend towards conformity - just as you are conforming with a certain image of what all spiritual practice is about in your statement. The role of the shaman has always been to see the world from outside the safe sphere of conventional points-of-view, to bravely go beyond, even at the expense of becoming exceedingly weird.

Priests, on the other hand, often seek to defend the conventional from the perceived threat of shamans, burning them as witches in our most stereotyped example. But the point is Northern Europe was largely shamanic, not priestly, until the Catholics came in roughly 1000 years back. And Northern Europe largely threw off the Catholics in favor of a more individual relation with whatever's real after not so many centuries of allowing those priests to officiate.

The British and American heritage of valuing individual freedom and conscience reflects the closeness of the shamanic past, and the undercurrents from it that still nourish our roots. So the very tradition from within which you're condemning the Stonehenge builders as "priests" owes quite a lot to those builders, and the shamans among them who quite likely encourage this cool architecture not to enslave, but to liberate.

Re:I dunno...

[gnovos]

Looks more like tool marks than "carvings" to me. I think this is just a bunch of archeologists seeing what they want to see.

And this is new in archeology... how?

Re:And what do those carvings say?

[beantowne]

Looks to me like it says slashdotted.