Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, There's Charles Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. It's a
Speaker 1: brand new day, it is. It's a it's a Wednesday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're welcome back, buddy from my vacation. Yes, you mean
Speaker 1: I went to New Zealand and then to Okinawa. It
Speaker 1: was pretty awesome. You want to say anything about it
Speaker 1: or New Zealand is wonderful. Yeah, I always love Japan.
Speaker 1: I've heard New Zealand is like America in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties that it's like I've heard it described that way.
Speaker 1: It's very pure still and like oh yes, friendly and
Speaker 1: just sort of uncorrupted. So um, Apparently New Zealand ranks
Speaker 1: fourth on the Global Peace Index, which is you know,
Speaker 1: it takes into account like, yeah, you don't get the
Speaker 1: impression that there's this nie a day or innocence necessarily.
Speaker 1: It's more just like they are a thoroughly content, peaceful
Speaker 1: people and it's not like, you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: that manufactured like labored kind of like friendly contentedness that
Speaker 1: you kind of run into sometimes this is the real
Speaker 1: deal and it rubs off on you while you're there.
Speaker 1: Like New Zealanders are a okay in my book. Everyone
Speaker 1: we met, everyone was friendly, except for one truck driver
Speaker 1: who I had an incident with, But in retrospect, I
Speaker 1: look back and I'm wondering if he thought he was
Speaker 1: trying to protect me by not letting me go around him.
Speaker 1: But everybody else was just like totally friendly, neat, cool people.
Speaker 1: And we were everywhere, Like we were in a little
Speaker 1: spot town of Rhoda Rura, we were in Auckland, we
Speaker 1: were in Wellington, we were in a little Napier, which
Speaker 1: is like the Art Deco capital of the world. They
Speaker 1: had an earthquake in and it just leveled the town
Speaker 1: all the a or afterward leveled town. So they're like,
Speaker 1: we need to rebuild. What kind of architectural movement is
Speaker 1: hip right now? Art Deco? So they rebuilt the town
Speaker 1: in Art Deco. It's really pretty that you would love Napier. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So New Zealand awesome, great stuff. Lots of sheep, like,
Speaker 1: no joke, they are probably more sheep than sheep than people. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and it's a wonderful place. And then of course Okinawa
Speaker 1: we Once we got there, we're like, okay, let's start eating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're like a japan expert at this point, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: except I can't speak Japanese, but yeah, everything, I'm an expert.
Speaker 1: I'm learning. We hung out with with Humi's family, nice
Speaker 1: and her little I guess second cousin or first cousin
Speaker 1: once removed a little kid. Awesome, little precocious dude at
Speaker 1: one point was trying to talk to me and he
Speaker 1: liked just put his face in his hands and said
Speaker 1: in Japanese, this communication in Japanese is not going very well,
Speaker 1: that's adorable. Yeah it was, and you ate like a king. Yes,
Speaker 1: I bet man, that sounds that sounds great. Thanks man,
Speaker 1: Thanks for welcoming me back. You're still a little jet legs,
Speaker 1: so in case I get a little weird, that's why. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe one day we can hit up New Zealand on
Speaker 1: a tour. I would love that. Yeah, and Australia too,
Speaker 1: I know they love us over there. Well, we can't
Speaker 1: go to one without the other. I just did well
Speaker 1: first stuff you should know show Oh that would be
Speaker 1: rude awesome. Well, welcome back, thanks um and now Stonehenge,
Speaker 1: have you ever been No, I've been to London and
Speaker 1: that's it as far as the UK goes. Yeah, same here. Um,
Speaker 1: I would love to go to Stonehenge too. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a very very cool place and I wanted to
Speaker 1: go before I researched this, but now that I have them, like,
Speaker 1: definitely want to go because it's not just Stonehenge. You
Speaker 1: think it's just Stonehenge and you go and there's like
Speaker 1: the rock formation, and sure, when you get in your
Speaker 1: car and go home, you could do that, but you'd
Speaker 1: be missing out on like a whole huge, rich tapestry
Speaker 1: of weirdo earthen works that are totally mysterious to us
Speaker 1: still to this day, in that whole area. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had no idea either. It's a hotbed of hinges. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know which technically a hinge, by the way, we
Speaker 1: should say, is an earthworks that I didn't know that
Speaker 1: dentil I studied this, I didn't either, But so it's
Speaker 1: an earthwork that consists of a bank and a ditch,
Speaker 1: and in most cases the high bank encloses a ditch
Speaker 1: within it. But Stonehenge, which is which gives the name
Speaker 1: hinge to other hinges, is the opposite it's a reverse hinge.
Speaker 1: It has the ditch on the outside of the bank. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and you know it sort of looks when you
Speaker 1: look at these images of hinges from above, um, sort
Speaker 1: of like a crop circle with nothing in the middle, right,
Speaker 1: just grass, just grass. Uh. And remember that's where the
Speaker 1: home of crop circles started, was in that area, the
Speaker 1: Salisbury Plain and outer space already Stonehenge. So, like we said, Chuckers,
Speaker 1: the the whole reason for any of this stuff, for
Speaker 1: building these things still defies understanding. But exploration has gone
Speaker 1: back many, many, many centuries. You know, you don't just
Speaker 1: walk past Stonehenge and say that's natural. It's clearly man made.
Speaker 1: But the idea behind it has been lost. But study
Speaker 1: of the whole thing has kind of has yielded some
Speaker 1: pretty good stuff. Like, for example, we have a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea of when Stonehenge was constructed and apparently, uh,
Speaker 1: it was constructive of a period of less than two
Speaker 1: hundred years. Yeah. We also have a pretty good idea
Speaker 1: about where it is because it is where it is,
Speaker 1: which is eight miles north of Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. Crop
Speaker 1: Circles home of crop circles and where the Banshees live
Speaker 1: and they do live well, the Banshees. Yeah, you're not
Speaker 1: a spinal tap band. No, I've been having that song
Speaker 1: Stonehenge in my head all day on a loop. They
Speaker 1: talk about the Benshees. That's one of the lines where
Speaker 1: the Banshees live and they do live well. I thought
Speaker 1: they were from Ireland, the Banshees. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean they're talking about Druids and the song as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's spinal tap, which is a common, uh, a common
Speaker 1: misconception that the Druids built Stonehenge, right, Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: dated it and they were not there at the same time, correct. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So back in the nineteenth century, some antiquarians which was
Speaker 1: what they used to call historians and archaeologists and stuff
Speaker 1: before there were such things, um, figured that Stonehenge was
Speaker 1: some sort of Druidic temple, which made a lot of
Speaker 1: sense because the Druids were a weird mystery cult that
Speaker 1: um we're big on, like human sacrifice and all sorts
Speaker 1: of like really interesting stuff. They were the priestly class
Speaker 1: of the Celts, right. Um. The problem is is the
Speaker 1: Druids were around from about till the first century c
Speaker 1: E when the Romans suppressed them. H and Stone Inch
Speaker 1: is way older than that, at least the whole earthworks
Speaker 1: thing goes back at least five thousand years. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's the earthworks, the actual large stones that it's most
Speaker 1: famous for. UM. They date that between b c. E,
Speaker 1: which is about the same time as the Great Pyramids
Speaker 1: in Egypt. So UM, if you're wondering how they managed
Speaker 1: to get these large stones, that's still a mystery. But um,
Speaker 1: they were not as advanced as the Middle East at
Speaker 1: the time. Right. So in the Middle East they know
Speaker 1: they were well into I guess the Bronze Age UM,
Speaker 1: while the I guess so well at the time Europe,
Speaker 1: Western Europe at least was still in the Neolithic, the
Speaker 1: New Stone Age UM. So yeah, the idea that there
Speaker 1: was this massive public works UM is a huge mystery,
Speaker 1: like why that happened, how it happened, how they got
Speaker 1: the stones there. There's another um long held theory that
Speaker 1: was recently discarded that the stones were moved there through
Speaker 1: glacial activity, uh thousands, hundreds of thousands of years before UM.
Speaker 1: And they've they've checked it out and they said, no,
Speaker 1: these stones actually did come from quarries at a minimum,
Speaker 1: I think of forty miles away. Yeah, they said that
Speaker 1: even if um there was glacial evidence, then it would
Speaker 1: not have been able to carry it that far. There's
Speaker 1: just no way. Yea, So humans did again no idea
Speaker 1: how because this is before the wheel was around in
Speaker 1: Western Europe, which makes the whole thing that much more impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've got some theories like um, basically things that sort
Speaker 1: of acted as wheels before they were technical wheels, like
Speaker 1: small rocks or stone ball bearings or the old log
Speaker 1: roller trick, which makes sense because the largest of these
Speaker 1: things can weigh up to fifty pounds. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: smallest ones are you know, about five thousand pounds two
Speaker 1: to five tons, So the smallest ones get like the
Speaker 1: strongest men to lift these things that you've got a
Speaker 1: hundred strong men because they're you know, only so big.
Speaker 1: You can't crowd that many dudes around and lift this
Speaker 1: thing anyway. Exactly. There's just no way. It's a mystery.
Speaker 1: It's a mystery. So let's talk about the stones themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what people think of when they
Speaker 1: when they talk about Stonehenge. But there's more too, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into it. But the stones, um, they're the
Speaker 1: upright stones are called um Sarsen's right, that's right, And
Speaker 1: sarson it's a it's a kind of sandstone that's particularly
Speaker 1: peculiar to the region. Uh. Yeah. And the closest um
Speaker 1: they found this is the Marlborough Downs about twenty miles away. So, um, basically,
Speaker 1: if you haven't picked up on it by now, what
Speaker 1: we're saying is these stones weren't just laying around and
Speaker 1: they decided to prop them up right. At the very least,
Speaker 1: they were brought from twenty miles away and likely much
Speaker 1: much further. Oh I thought it was forty miles away.
Speaker 1: Twenty miles away. Well, they said the closest source of
Speaker 1: this sandstone is twenty miles away. But there were there's
Speaker 1: all different kinds of rocks, which we'll see. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so the Sarson's it's a type of stone. But when
Speaker 1: you're talking about Stonehenge, if somebody points to a stone
Speaker 1: and say, is that sarson there, they're talking about the
Speaker 1: upright column, that's right. The Sarson's are topped in the
Speaker 1: outer circle and in the inner circle of stones by
Speaker 1: what are called lentils, that's right, which are also starsin stone,
Speaker 1: I believe. But um, because they're horizontal on top of
Speaker 1: the upright ones, they're called lintels, and the upright ones
Speaker 1: are called Sarsen's right, Yes, pretty cool. And again these
Speaker 1: are really heavy stones. And again we have no idea
Speaker 1: how they got them there, how they erected him, and
Speaker 1: how they got the heavy ones on top of the
Speaker 1: upright ones. That's crazy because again we're talking about many
Speaker 1: many tons stones right each. But as if just to
Speaker 1: show off for the the people that followed, um, the
Speaker 1: people who erected Stonehenge carved the Sarson's with a knob
Speaker 1: knobs on top, and carved the lentils with grooves so
Speaker 1: that they fitted and they were replicating a type of woodworking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mortis and tinnin um and I'll put together. These are
Speaker 1: called the trilothon in the inner circle, the big ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you have the Sarson's and the lentils, it's called
Speaker 1: the trilathon. And uh yeah, they they don't know why
Speaker 1: they carved those because apparently when I heard that, I
Speaker 1: was like, well, probably to make them fit together better,
Speaker 1: But they said that it really has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it. Well, they said, it's totally unnecessary. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they think it may be symbolic. Um, which we'll get
Speaker 1: too later. Um. So so you've got inside the inner
Speaker 1: circle and I found, um this kind of thing. It's
Speaker 1: like describing a yo yo e motion or something like that,
Speaker 1: like a yo yo trick. It's just easier to go
Speaker 1: see it yourself. There's a thousand, a million and a
Speaker 1: thousand great pictures of stone Hings, yes, one million, one
Speaker 1: thousand pures. You just gotta look at one of them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it'll help if you if you're checking this
Speaker 1: out or we're describing it. But there's the inner circle
Speaker 1: of Stonehenge, and those are made of trilothons, which are
Speaker 1: two upright Sarsen's and a lintel, right, yeah, there's five
Speaker 1: of those. And then and those are the big boys.
Speaker 1: Those things are like thirty ft tall. I think it's
Speaker 1: the tallest pine. Yeah, which is I didn't realize it
Speaker 1: was that big. That's like ten Yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: I would say, you probably have to go there and say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is bigger than I thought. Right, unless you thought
Speaker 1: it was bigger than you might say it was smaller
Speaker 1: than you thought, you know, uh yeah, unless the opposite
Speaker 1: is true Um. And then in the outer uh circle
Speaker 1: it was apparently it was intended or it was at
Speaker 1: one point to be a complete circle. And this is
Speaker 1: made of lentils and sarson's, but they're not trial athons
Speaker 1: because it's just basically, if you took a bunch of
Speaker 1: um sarsen's, a bunch of upright columns and put them
Speaker 1: a circle and then topped it with as few lentils
Speaker 1: as it would make a complete circle, that's what you have.
Speaker 1: So it made a ring. Yeah, And I think my
Speaker 1: impression is that it was not ever completed because there
Speaker 1: would probably be some evidence of the you know, falling
Speaker 1: down sarsens or something. Um. Well, there's unless they were
Speaker 1: taken away. That is the theory that when the Romans
Speaker 1: came along, or then later on when the Church came
Speaker 1: to power after the fall of the Roman Empire, that
Speaker 1: um locals were like, well, that's some pagan weirdness. We
Speaker 1: don't want to encourage paganism. Let's just take it and
Speaker 1: build a church that'll show them. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: some of those rocks are found in medieval churches in
Speaker 1: the area. Interesting and that crazy, that is crazy. That's
Speaker 1: gray uh and there are four more of the stars
Speaker 1: and stones um that actually have names. The slaughter stone,
Speaker 1: the heel stone, which is huge, uh, and then to
Speaker 1: station stones and they're out of the outer Sarson circle
Speaker 1: inside the circle, and then also outside the circle or
Speaker 1: what are called blue stones. These are the smaller stones
Speaker 1: that are between two and five tons. Still little guys,
Speaker 1: but that's that's what they're calling. There's a bunch of
Speaker 1: those guys too. Yeah, and they're called bluestones because when
Speaker 1: they're cut or when they're wet, they look blue. Yes,
Speaker 1: pretty neat. So that's the stones and um, but that's
Speaker 1: just the bluestones. It's there's they're all different kinds of rock,
Speaker 1: which proves that they came from different sources. It is
Speaker 1: the key. It also might um, it might get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of why Stonehenge was built, but we always
Speaker 1: we just touched the tip of the iceberg here by
Speaker 1: just talking about the rocks. We're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: larger hinge part and what was originally there right after
Speaker 1: the Yeah, alright, chuckers, we're back. Yeah. I mentioned quickly
Speaker 1: before we broke about the blue stones being uh coming
Speaker 1: from different places. Um. One of the places they think
Speaker 1: that eleven of these bad boys came from was in
Speaker 1: western Wales and forty miles away Nuts, so that that's
Speaker 1: probably the maximum some of these stones traveled, which it
Speaker 1: kind of um gives a little bit of credence weirdly
Speaker 1: to one of the old legends of where Stonehenge came from,
Speaker 1: which was Merlin. Merlin and some of his boys stole
Speaker 1: it from Ireland and the stones proved too heavy for
Speaker 1: the uh, I guess Merlin's men to lift even fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand of them, so he just uses magic to load
Speaker 1: them onto the boats, which he should have done to
Speaker 1: begin with. Yeah, they were like, why don't you try
Speaker 1: this before, Like Jimmy broke his back, right, Jimmy the
Speaker 1: U the night Um. That was from the Historia Regum Britagnier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the History of the Kings of Britain from Jeffrey of
Speaker 1: Monmouth's name, and that was the one of the original
Speaker 1: um Jeffrey of Monmouth. Yeah, with the g Geoffrey Geoffrey Um.
Speaker 1: That was one of the original theories was that giants
Speaker 1: built this and that to commemorate the death in the
Speaker 1: battle against the Saxons. Was when Merlin was like, let's
Speaker 1: steal this stuff. The giants dance, let's steal it. The
Speaker 1: giants built it in Ireland, and Merlin was like, let's
Speaker 1: go steal that because four Britons died. Al right, So
Speaker 1: that was one of the theories. We'll get to a
Speaker 1: few more of those in a bit. But jumping back
Speaker 1: to the Salisbury Plain, what they do think it's true
Speaker 1: is that they not giants. Not giants not Merlin was
Speaker 1: that this was a good place for hunting. It was
Speaker 1: a good hunting ground because there's a causeway from glacial
Speaker 1: heaving and thawing. It formed what they call like an
Speaker 1: avenue um which made of chalk apparently, so this avenue
Speaker 1: coincides with the rising of the summer solstice and then
Speaker 1: the setting eventually with the winter solstice um. And for
Speaker 1: many years they thought this was like this meant something,
Speaker 1: but now we think that it's just coincidence. Right. But
Speaker 1: I mean, like if you're if you're you know, hunting
Speaker 1: wooly mammoths and eating psychedelic mushrooms and that's your existence.
Speaker 1: You see the sun come up and then go down,
Speaker 1: and this crazy like the on the longest and the
Speaker 1: shortest day of the year, and it's like a white
Speaker 1: chalk line connecting the two. You gotta put a little
Speaker 1: significance on this um. So they did. That's why they
Speaker 1: think that they chose the site for um for Stonehenge,
Speaker 1: like it was sacred and divinely inspired. Exactly. Again, you
Speaker 1: were on a ton of mushrooms at the time, so
Speaker 1: it made sense. Then, Okay, that's right. Don't judge. So
Speaker 1: we mentioned the hinge earlier. That was these hinges, I
Speaker 1: don't think we pointed out they're not natural formations. They
Speaker 1: are designed and built by people. And so something like
Speaker 1: three thousand years BC, so about five thousand years ago
Speaker 1: on the nose almost some Neolithic uh Western Europeans in
Speaker 1: the area of what is now the Salisbury Plain um
Speaker 1: grab some deer antlers, turn them into pick axes and
Speaker 1: started digging the circles that ended up becoming the ditches
Speaker 1: that ended up becoming U. Stonehenge built the earthworks, they
Speaker 1: dug the ditch, they made the bank, and then you
Speaker 1: had this raised ground long four the stones ever showed up, Yeah,
Speaker 1: about three d and thirty feet across. And like you
Speaker 1: said earlier at the beginning, it is um a reverse
Speaker 1: hinge because the high bank is on the inside and
Speaker 1: not the outside. Right, Usually the ditches inside the bank,
Speaker 1: that's right, rather than outside. I don't know why stone
Speaker 1: Hinge is different. Who knows. Maybe they started to make him.
Speaker 1: We're like, oh man, we made it backwards. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we've already done like a hundred feet. I'm not digging
Speaker 1: another one. Uh. So they left a wider entrance on
Speaker 1: one side, on the northeast end um, which is that's
Speaker 1: like where the avenue runs into stone Hinge. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: main entrance almost like a road to a roundabout or
Speaker 1: cul the stack. Yeah, that's maybe that's what it was,
Speaker 1: was sun temple called the stack um. And then there's
Speaker 1: a narrow entrance on the south side. And um, that's
Speaker 1: not all. That's not all that's there. They found all
Speaker 1: these holes, the Aubrey holes, fifty six of them. Um,
Speaker 1: basically where they think that they're or wooden post that
Speaker 1: there were either totems or some kind of a structure
Speaker 1: there previously. Yeah, that structure that's very significant. Something like
Speaker 1: uh ten thousand years ago, I think about eight thousand BC,
Speaker 1: somebody put up three pine posts. They think it was
Speaker 1: probably pine Yeah, those are not the Aubrey holes. Those
Speaker 1: are those are different? Right? They discovered those. They were
Speaker 1: going to make a parking lot for Stonehenge in the sixties,
Speaker 1: and while they were while they were excavating. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess they should qualify that there would be a parking
Speaker 1: lot in the sixties. Well, actually, I guess we do
Speaker 1: know now there wouldn't be one. So in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties they were going to put a parking lot, and um,
Speaker 1: they discovered these three post holes and they were like,
Speaker 1: these probably held totems of some sort. This is huge
Speaker 1: because there's no other site like it. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: of any other kind of monument building this far back
Speaker 1: ten thousand years ago in Europe. It was a very
Speaker 1: that's crazy. So at least as far back as that,
Speaker 1: this site was considered somehow significant, if not sacred, by
Speaker 1: the locals years ago. Yes, all right, but then again
Speaker 1: we're fast forwarding to five thousand years ago, three thousand
Speaker 1: b C. And that's when the earthworks have have been constructed,
Speaker 1: the Henge is built. Now we're under the Aubrey holes
Speaker 1: because I think they were deposited at the same time, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: fifty six of them, and um, like I said, they
Speaker 1: could have had Um, they could have held blue stones.
Speaker 1: Maybe that was a structure. Maybe it was some sort
Speaker 1: of a astrological or astronomal astronomy astronomical design or layout
Speaker 1: or something. Uh. They didn't leave a book behind saying
Speaker 1: what they were doing, so we don't know. It's all
Speaker 1: the speculations. All we know is there is a circle
Speaker 1: of holes that probably held something at some point. We
Speaker 1: don't know what. But that was the original hence the
Speaker 1: original stone henge. Yeah. Uh. And then um, that was
Speaker 1: the first stage, right uh yeah. Basically at between is
Speaker 1: when these starson the stars in Horseshoe came about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: about three hundred or so years after the first construction
Speaker 1: of the earthworks, the stones come in, that's right. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so they bring the stones in again, like you said,
Speaker 1: from as far away as Whales. The nearest is twenty
Speaker 1: miles away. There's definitely a quarry. Some stones came from
Speaker 1: like forty miles away. Um. So they're coming from all
Speaker 1: these different places and they're being brought in and erected. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the that's the second phase. So the stonehenges
Speaker 1: we know and love it today was built about then
Speaker 1: about um b C. The last phase of construction as
Speaker 1: far as anybody can tell as undertaken, and it's basically
Speaker 1: like sprucing up the place. That's right. That's when they
Speaker 1: dug their ditches and banks. Um, that's when the avenue
Speaker 1: was cleared out, which is one point seven miles long
Speaker 1: by the way. Yeah, that's significant. Using deer antler axe
Speaker 1: picks they dug. They they made ditches on either side
Speaker 1: of this avenue to to um clarify it, I guess
Speaker 1: for two miles. Basically, it's pretty amazing. And they it
Speaker 1: followed a route um to the river avon Um and
Speaker 1: then over the next few hundred years, basically they would
Speaker 1: reposition some of these stones, these blue stones um to.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, to fit their whims maybe or
Speaker 1: should they had reasons. That's another mystery too. Some of
Speaker 1: this stuff would be moved around from one place to another. Yea, uh,
Speaker 1: you said that it goes to the river Avon and
Speaker 1: I think about two thousand there was a big archaeological
Speaker 1: survey undertaken that uncovered another hinge called blue Stone hinge
Speaker 1: that was at where the avenue hits the River Avon
Speaker 1: and so at the far end of stonehenge Um that
Speaker 1: they think that's where the bluestones came from. So apparently
Speaker 1: originally they may have had another type of hinge closer
Speaker 1: to the river and decided let's move it into Stonehenge proper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no idea. Why you know. I used to go camping
Speaker 1: at a place called Sunfish Pond at the Delaware Water
Speaker 1: Gap when I lived in New Jersey, and there was
Speaker 1: at Sunfish Pond there was this there's this one big
Speaker 1: rock bank basically with just tons of these huge, awesome rocks,
Speaker 1: and people would build just things out of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks a little like uh little totems or a
Speaker 1: little little uh structures, and uh. I think everyone that
Speaker 1: went there it was part of the ritual of camping
Speaker 1: there was to like spend a day moving these rocks
Speaker 1: around and doing stuff. And I think like this could
Speaker 1: very well be what happened here. People would show up
Speaker 1: hundreds of years later and be like, I kind of
Speaker 1: like the look at that, but maybe this was better
Speaker 1: over there. Yeah, like maybe it was. There wasn't some
Speaker 1: grand reason other than artistic. I get that. You know.
Speaker 1: My question is this, if you're talking about the smallest
Speaker 1: stone weighing two tons, that's not like you know, some
Speaker 1: hippie just going like, I've kind to move the stone,
Speaker 1: Like you gotta get a bunch of hippies together to
Speaker 1: move one of those, you know. So it's a community effort.
Speaker 1: Every every stage of Stonehenge is a communal effort, which
Speaker 1: is it's it's that's important. You know, they probably had
Speaker 1: more significance than just artistic But what is that urge
Speaker 1: that drove people out in the woods, you know, to
Speaker 1: where it's sun fish gap, sunfish pond, some fish pond um,
Speaker 1: that that drove them to move the rocks around? Like
Speaker 1: what made you do it? Seeing other people doing it
Speaker 1: and thinking I want to build my own? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well like rock stacking is a thing too, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's basically what we were doing, Okay, stack
Speaker 1: in rock. Yeah. So it's an ancient prime orige um.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk a little more about some of the
Speaker 1: surrounding landscape in Um and Stonehenge right after this. So
Speaker 1: Chuck Stonehenge isn't the only place the only Neolithic weirdness
Speaker 1: in the area. Man that places there's a lot of
Speaker 1: wicker man stuff going on. Yeah, there was, you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's something like a thousand barrows which are um like tombs,
Speaker 1: mound tombs. Um. There's uh some other hinges that don't
Speaker 1: have stones necessarily. There's one called Woodhenge, but probably the
Speaker 1: most important other site around there is called Durrington Walls. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is also a hinge and it's on the other
Speaker 1: side of the River Avon. And one of the very
Speaker 1: significant things about during Tom Walls is that it is
Speaker 1: it has an avenue as well that's aligned with the
Speaker 1: sun on certain days and they just happen to be
Speaker 1: the opposite days of the Stonehenge avenue or the same day,
Speaker 1: but the opposite position, that's right. Uh. It had a
Speaker 1: couple of timber circles. Um. It's about the same size
Speaker 1: as Stonehenge roughly. And they think that this could have
Speaker 1: been like a staging area for what Stonehenge would become,
Speaker 1: which doesn't make sense to me. Like they're saying like
Speaker 1: this is possibly the builders camp for Stonehenge two miles away.
Speaker 1: That's not a convenient camp, No, No, it's good point plus. Also,
Speaker 1: so you've got Stonehenge, right, and then you have the
Speaker 1: River Avon, and then a little further up the River
Speaker 1: Avon you have but across the other side you have
Speaker 1: during ton Walls and on the summer solstice, Stonehenge hosts
Speaker 1: the sun the summer sunrise, right, But on that same
Speaker 1: day during ton Walls, that avenue features the summer sunset.
Speaker 1: So they're aligned. It's clearly they have something to do
Speaker 1: with one another, at least in the Neolithic mind. That's right.
Speaker 1: So it's not just this, it's not just Stoneheng's. This
Speaker 1: whole site allows you with him. But why, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that's we should look at some of the
Speaker 1: older theories first that have sort of been debunked. We
Speaker 1: already talked about the um the Giants dance and Merlin
Speaker 1: the Wizard, which we don't believe anymore because we're modern
Speaker 1: thinking guys. Uh. King James the First in the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century did an uh excavation of the site and they
Speaker 1: found a bunch of animal bones and burnt coals, um,
Speaker 1: which I was just learning about him. He was a
Speaker 1: scholar king. Yeah, he was pretty interesting. Well, he had
Speaker 1: like the King James Bible, sure he had that translated, um.
Speaker 1: But he also was like an early essayist, which is
Speaker 1: a new thing at the time. He was just a
Speaker 1: smart dude as far as kings went. He wasn't just
Speaker 1: like the fat, drunk, turkey leg eating kind, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like he actually was. Well, if he
Speaker 1: commissioned an excavation, that means he probably had a little
Speaker 1: bit of interest in things like this. And this is
Speaker 1: before archaeology even. Yeah, he could have just said people
Speaker 1: beheaded and you know it is turkey. It's good for him.
Speaker 1: We're done with King James. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1: All right? Um? So I don't think we mentioned either
Speaker 1: yet that there have been a lot of um, body
Speaker 1: well not body parts, but bones found. Yeah, human cremines,
Speaker 1: cremated remains. I think why was that defensive? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: remember funeral directors don't like to call him cremaines. They
Speaker 1: they said that that's just too shorthand r. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a McDonald's I got in my burger. Um, But
Speaker 1: there have been a lot of they think it. One
Speaker 1: possibility was that it was a burial ground um for
Speaker 1: maybe royalty. They've mostly been men, so maybe important people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is another reason why what was it called Mortis
Speaker 1: and tennin um? That woodworking, and we didn't mention that
Speaker 1: with the outer circle where everything fits together. Um. They
Speaker 1: used a woodworking technique called dovetailing, so that the lentils
Speaker 1: fit together to form like a well tongue in group. Yes, um, exactly.
Speaker 1: So there's all this kind of woodworking simulation that's totally unnecessary.
Speaker 1: So they're thinking maybe that they were replicating a monument
Speaker 1: to a human dwelling, which could suggest that basically a
Speaker 1: mausoleum of sorts. Yeah, and that that ties in with
Speaker 1: the theory that Durrington Walls was, um a place of
Speaker 1: the living. Stonehenge was a place of the dead, and
Speaker 1: that's how they are connected. Yeah, and Durrington Walls they
Speaker 1: call it a place of living because there's evidence of settlement,
Speaker 1: like human habitation, lots of um animal bones like from food,
Speaker 1: food waste. Um. So yeah, it's clear that people lived
Speaker 1: in in during exactly. Um. There's another theory that, uh,
Speaker 1: it's possible Stonehenge was a place of healing. There's something
Speaker 1: called the Amesbury Archer who was discovered and he was
Speaker 1: contemporaneous to Stonehenge. He had a knee injury and they thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe he was on his way to Stonehenge or something. Uh.
Speaker 1: They did a survey of the injuries and illness. Evidence
Speaker 1: of illness of the remains at Stonehengen found that it
Speaker 1: was about the same as other contemporary sites. UM, so
Speaker 1: they don't think that it was a place of healing,
Speaker 1: not like a spa. Well, it's probably a place of
Speaker 1: the dead probably, So in a lot of this new
Speaker 1: way of thinking has come about since the two thousand's
Speaker 1: started with UM. A guy named Mike Parker Pearson UM
Speaker 1: lead the Stonehenge river Side Project, and they've kind of
Speaker 1: brought like debunked a lot of these older theories that
Speaker 1: it was maybe a a monument for astronomy or you know,
Speaker 1: some of the other things we talked about. Yeah, apparently,
Speaker 1: like if you're a Stonehenge expert, you say, yes, stoneheng
Speaker 1: was clearly constructed and in some way related to the
Speaker 1: summer solstice and the winter solstice the sun. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they kind of draw the line at they used it
Speaker 1: to predict solar eclipses and stuff like that. They're saying
Speaker 1: there's no evidence of that, although it could be true,
Speaker 1: but they just don't know. I just haven't figured it
Speaker 1: out yet. Another theory that I like, UM, that's one
Speaker 1: of the more modern theories is that it was a
Speaker 1: monument to unification just kind of neat which makes sense,
Speaker 1: Um that the Britons at the time, we're from all
Speaker 1: sorts of tribes and that they blended together there and
Speaker 1: they that's why they might have brought stones from all
Speaker 1: over the place as a symbol of our unification, like
Speaker 1: here's some stones from whales, here, some from here, here's
Speaker 1: some from there, and here's a big monument to us
Speaker 1: all coming together to one day rule the world. And well, significantly,
Speaker 1: the Stonehenge site is at the area where three different
Speaker 1: chiefdoms territories came together. Um, so it is possible that
Speaker 1: is a if not a monument to a monument from
Speaker 1: cooperation from these groups. Remember we talked about the Upper
Speaker 1: Paleolithic warlessness. Um, it's supposedly these these chiefdoms were they
Speaker 1: peacefully coexisted, which also could explain, um, that why Stonehenge
Speaker 1: came about. You know, one of the things you do
Speaker 1: to keep your populations occupied and busy is creating massive
Speaker 1: public um structures projects or like pyramids or something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, and uh, Stonehenge could have been the result
Speaker 1: of that of clever chiefs saying I need to do
Speaker 1: something to keep everybody busy. Let's make Stonehenge my money.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's so many people buried there in
Speaker 1: and around Stonehenge. They say like maybe thousands of people
Speaker 1: have been buried there, so I think it was probably
Speaker 1: just some sort of final resting place that looked nice
Speaker 1: and uh they dressed it up. Yeah, and it's probable
Speaker 1: that the people there were part of the elite ruling class.
Speaker 1: There's like they found incense burner, polished mace head, some
Speaker 1: other evidence that the people there had some sort of
Speaker 1: political religious power that kind of stuff. And like we said,
Speaker 1: they're mostly men, which at the time, of course that
Speaker 1: that would have been the people in power. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know yeah at the time, that's right, not like these
Speaker 1: days when women could do anything they want. We need
Speaker 1: to do an episode on the Equal Rights Amendment. Man,
Speaker 1: is just mind blowing to me. Yeah, let's do it, Okay.
Speaker 1: I would inspire that Petri Shark at the facetiousness about
Speaker 1: um men being in power, yeah or not being in power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do that one. Okay. Patricia are cat inspired me.
Speaker 1: I'm like Meryl Streep here, Yeah, she was digging it. Um,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I'm sure we could go on
Speaker 1: about this for a while, but why you know? Um? Oh,
Speaker 1: there was one theory that they erected Stonehenge to create
Speaker 1: this piper's illusion. Did you hear about that? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: like two pipers in a field or playing in certain
Speaker 1: places that they will cancel each other out. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is weird. It's a weird acoustic phenomenon, and apparently in
Speaker 1: Stonehenge the phenomenon is replicated. And there is also an
Speaker 1: old legend that Stonehenge was the result of pipers leading
Speaker 1: maidens into a field and then turning them to stone.
Speaker 1: Well there's this um acoustic archaeologist who believes that like
Speaker 1: a lot more archaeological sites than we realized were dedicated
Speaker 1: to sound um and he has this theory about Stonehenge
Speaker 1: may or may not be right. I get the imperson.
Speaker 1: And it was also postulating it to get attention to theories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's definitely some weird acoustic features at Stonehenge. Um,
Speaker 1: so you can't discount that. Yeah. Was it a byproduct
Speaker 1: or was it international? Yeah? Who knows. We don't even
Speaker 1: know why they built it in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to visit it if we ever go
Speaker 1: to England for a live show for sure. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: do a live show at Stonehenge. Pink Floyd they did
Speaker 1: something at them, yeah, which I've been there and it's amazing,
Speaker 1: not just because Pompei, because Pink Floyd played there. You know,
Speaker 1: we'll do our live thing at Stonehenge. I think, if
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, Pink Floyd Live at POMPEII was a
Speaker 1: concert in front of nobody. Yeah, well on the on
Speaker 1: the Echoes video, they're not playing in front of anybody else.
Speaker 1: The deal so cool. I've got one more thing. There
Speaker 1: was a horrible police brutality incident at Stonehenge. Yeah. There
Speaker 1: was this hippie movement called the New Age Travelers from
Speaker 1: the sixties, seventies into the eighties and then they were
Speaker 1: gonna have they were going to celebrate the summer Solstice
Speaker 1: at Stonehenge and they had the year before, but a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people showed up and like just trashed the place,
Speaker 1: like dug into the ground to build bread ovens and
Speaker 1: like toilets and like just just totally laid waste to
Speaker 1: the place. Um, And so the the locals were like,
Speaker 1: you can't go to Stonehenge again. So the cops tried
Speaker 1: to barricade it. The hippies tried to break through. The
Speaker 1: cops club the hippies including pregnant women and women holding children.
Speaker 1: There were eyewitnesses. It was a horrible scene. Um. And
Speaker 1: it was later called the Battle of the bean Field. Uh.
Speaker 1: And after that, for like the next fifteen years, there
Speaker 1: was no You weren't allowed to go celebrate the Summer Solstice,
Speaker 1: which is a big thing for neo druids and stuff
Speaker 1: at Stonehenge. And then finally in two thousand, the English
Speaker 1: Heritage Group I can't remember what the full name is,
Speaker 1: English Heritage, Um, they're in charge of Stonehenge. They opened
Speaker 1: it back up. So now I think the most recent
Speaker 1: summer Solstice solstice had like thirty thousand or so people
Speaker 1: peacefully celebrating it. I think if you dig there, though
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble, still appropriate. Imagine it's pretty Uh
Speaker 1: that's a secure location. You can't just back into it
Speaker 1: like Clark Roswald. Okay, now I really don't have anything else. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about Stonehenge, you can
Speaker 1: type that word into the search bar at house to
Speaker 1: works dot com. And since I said search bar, its
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this ice cream email.
Speaker 1: And speaking of ice cream, we should thank uh a
Speaker 1: local ice creamery here, High Road Creamery. Yeah, high Road
Speaker 1: here in UH in Atlanta, well just outside of Atlanta.
Speaker 1: They got in touch with us. Two people did and
Speaker 1: one person said, hey, I don't know if you've heard
Speaker 1: of us, but you should um try your ice cream.
Speaker 1: And another person emailed from high Road. It was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should. I said, we'll send you ice cream. I
Speaker 1: was like, I like you better. Yeah. So they sent
Speaker 1: us some ice cream and it's delicious, and we just
Speaker 1: want to say things and nutritious. I don't know about
Speaker 1: that because rhymes and rhymes, but this is about ice
Speaker 1: cream from Nathan. Hey, guys and Jerry, just listen to
Speaker 1: your How ice Cream Works episode and thought your tuna
Speaker 1: gelato story reminded me of my own terrible gelato story.
Speaker 1: I want to refresh people about tuna gelato. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you go to Plaza Fiesta, the Latin American mall in
Speaker 1: Atlanta on Buford Highway, there's a gelato place there that,
Speaker 1: at least a year or two ago sold raw tuna
Speaker 1: flavored gelato. Is dead on the taste. Uh. So we
Speaker 1: lived in Naples, Italy for two years, guys, and fell
Speaker 1: in love with real Italian gelato. Uh and it's safe
Speaker 1: to say my wife and daughter would get it at
Speaker 1: least three times a week all year round. We took
Speaker 1: our summer holiday one year to a city called Tropea
Speaker 1: in the Calabria region. The city is famous for red onions,
Speaker 1: so much so that red onions in Italy are all
Speaker 1: called h chipola. As we were walking through the city,
Speaker 1: we saw a place that had onion gelato. Though decided
Speaker 1: to try it. I don't know, I know. Luckily, my
Speaker 1: wife is smart and suggested I try it before I
Speaker 1: ordered a whole cone of the stuff. Let me tell you,
Speaker 1: it was awful. It tasted like a spoonful of onion
Speaker 1: powder and had the consistency of snot oh gone and
Speaker 1: was cold. Uh if. It was all I could do
Speaker 1: to choke it down without throwing up. Even after eating
Speaker 1: tasty strawberry and lemon gelato, the taste still lingered to
Speaker 1: make it worse. Every time I burnt. The rest of
Speaker 1: the night, I got to relive the taste. Man. So
Speaker 1: that's my story, guys, will still I will steer clear
Speaker 1: of the tuna gelato if you stay away from the
Speaker 1: onion gelato. I will stay away from the onion gelato,
Speaker 1: but I think you should try the tuna gelato. That's
Speaker 1: the deal. Nathan Chow, he says, Chow Bella and all that.
Speaker 1: I would taste any of those, the small spoonful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like he's the very tip of my tongue. You're like
Speaker 1: the onion on the tuna was I mean, it was weird.
Speaker 1: It wasn't bad, it was just it was really surprising
Speaker 1: that like you could get that taste. Yeah, it's probably
Speaker 1: just ground up, tuned yogurt, Like it's not hard, dummy. Uh.
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