The Stonehenge Mystery of the Altar Stone.

 

Ten or more years ago, my imagination was captured by the mind-blowing discoveries at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney, where the archaeological dig had started uncovering this new discovery in a 2010 dig. Brick by brick, bone by bone, they revealed a 5500-year-old temple complex with more than 100 buildings, surrounded by a 10ft wall. Some of this complex is possible more than 800 years earlier than Stonehenge and could be as, if not more, important than the Wiltshire site.

The altar stone lies flat and buried under two fallen sarsen stones
and is barely visible to visitors. Photograph: Aberystwyth University

This week's jaw-dropping news about the Altar Stone at Stonehenge changes things again. Scientific research has revealed an extraordinary new mystery––the massive six-tonne stone at the heart of the monument was brought to Stonehenge from the far north of Scotland.

The Altar Stone is ritually the most important stone at Stonehenge. It marks the intersection of the winter solstice sunrise to summer solstice sunset alignment, and the summer solstice sunrise to winter solstice sunset alignment.

Individual crystals were examined which allowed the Altar Stone to be dated, showing Old Red Sandstone from the Orcadian basin in north-east Scotland. This basin was once a massive ancient water body called Lake Orcadie. It's possible that this was already a ritually important stone that  might even have been taken from the Orkney sacred site, or certainly the very north-east area of the mainland. 

Aberystwyth University geologist Nick Pearce
 analyses Neolithic standing stones in Orkney 
(Prof Richard Bevins, Aberystwyth University)

This journey of over 500 miles seems near impossible. It might have been brought by sea as there is evidence that people at this time were making sea journeys. However, it could have been dragged. That would mean organising teams of people to pull the stone, possibly swapping to new teams as the journey progressed south. But now we are beginning to realise how closely connected settlements might have been, this feels more realistic.

Speaking in the New Scientist,  geologist Richard Bevins from Aberystwyth University said, "Most stone circles are made from rocks found within a kilometre of the site. The thing that’s unique about Stonehenge is the distance that stones have been transported." 

Bevins’s team has already shown that the bluestones come from the Preseli hills in Wales, about 280 kilometres away. One idea is that they were part of an even older Welsh stone monument that was moved, a fascinating story to me, which I featured in this blog post here, because I live so close to these Welsh sites. 

It was always a possibility that early man travelled widely, and the news this week seems to confirm that both these sites were connected. 

An artist's impression of what
archeologists are uncovering

I first wrote about the amazing temple complex at the Ring of Brodgar after Jim and I visited Orkney just as they were starting to dig there. Even then,  it was quite apparent to us  that Orkney was a hub of society at that time, rather than an 'outback'.

You can read more about the full era of the Orkney complex  here on this blogpost, "Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Worship".

All this linking together of sites across England, Wales and Scotland (as we now think of it), suggests not only hardworking, intelligent and knowledgeable people living in the early Neolithic, but people who could plan, work and worship together. Of course, they may have argued, even fought each other too, but perhaps we might take a lesson from their achievements, which, in comparison, seem to outweigh our own 

The Siberian Shamanka: What we Know About Pre-historic Shamanism, PART ONE.

:   

Ice Maiden

I am the young girl:

warm-skinned,

beating-wild heart,

galloping with my tribe

across bleak plains,

calling to the wind.

I am the young woman:

dressed in silk tussah,

red-piped;

tasselled girdle;

boots, knee-high.

I am the story teller:

gold-leaf camels parade

my three foot crown;

prancing deer with

curling antlers

race across my skin.

I am ancient bones:

six dead horses

guard my grave-gate;

spices and mutton

nurture my silence.

I am the young girl:

I am treasure:

twenty-five centuries of

frozen sleep

and now they come to wake me;

warm water seeps through my ice mask,

but I do not smile

as the blue sky greets me.  © Theolyn Cortens 2000

What is a shaman? How far back into history can we trace shamanic work? The answers are startling, intriguing and convincing. They show a firm line from this century leading right back to the Mesolithic. 

But first we go back two thousand, five hundred years, and journey to Siberia.

The Siberian Shamanka (Shaman) showing tattoos

It was the summer of 1993. This was archeologist Natalia Polosmak's fourth season working with her team on the Altai Mountains, where the permafrost is a guardian of ancient secrets.

Diggers reported they had discovered a block of ice in which lay the mummified body of a 25-year-old woman.

Natalia found that this Siberian Ice Maiden was of Scythian descent––a tribe that roamed the steppes throughout the Bronze Age. The grandeur of the burial could only mean she was a princess. She was housed in a small cabin, and its wood has allowed her burial to be dated, indicating that the Ice Maiden was buried in the spring, at some point during the 5th century BCE. The Ice Maiden had intricate designs adorning her skin and lay surrounded by her six horses. Autopsy also revealed that the this young woman had suffered from breast cancer, and was using  cannabis to relieve her pain. 

Reconstruction of the tomb chamber of the Siberian Ice Maiden. Top, above, her costume reconstruction. Both can be seen in the Anokhin Museum.

Her costume was well preserved. Her blouse was wild silk, her full skirt was brilliant dyed. She wore a long cloak of marten fur, knee-high boots and a choker of wooden camels. Her headdress was particularly spectacular, and it seems to consist of her own elongated hair. Alongside her was a polished mirror (used for centuries as a divinatory tool) and the herb coriander, as seeds in a stone dish. 

the deer tattoo
.

It is her tattoos that lead archeologists to believe she was a shaman. She was marked with a deer motif on one of her shoulders, and on her wrist and thumb. 

The Sythians were a fascinating nomadic tribe which, by the time of the ancient Greeks, had settled on the Black Sea. To gain a colourful and beautifully realised picture of that time, try reading Naomi Mitchison's The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931, available from Amazon), a fabulous story of these ancient peoples.

But the Ice Maiden is by no means the oldest representation of shamanism discovered by archeologists. Shamanic activity and shaman costumes and tools  have been found around the world and indeed, in the United Kingdom. The  power to transcend spirit worlds, and to return with healing and knowledge can be traced into the distant past. In fact, as far back as the Mesolithic Period, around ten thousand years before our times.

I'll be returning to this subject in PART TWO of "What we Know About Pre-historic Shamanism". Watch this space!