Numerous menhirs (standing monoliths), dolmens (boulders standing on smaller rocks), and underground and above-ground megalithic chambers have been found in New England. But who made them and when?

We should be able to rule out Bronze age cultures, because they would leave bronze age artefacts in the ruins, and those have not been found. It seems quite unlikely that they would leave all their bronze equipment and home and leave us nothing of the kind in New England... other than a few artefacts like coins of questionable providence.

A more likely possibility is Paleolithic or Ice Age Europeans, who could have sailed along the North Atlantic at a time when the sea level was lower and an ice cap connected the land continents of both hemispheres. Their arrival would explain why only more simple tools and pottery have been found at these sites. Such a theory would go along with the "Solutrean Theory", according to which tools in Solutrean prehistoric European sites of eg. 20,000 BC resemble Clovis or pre-Clovis tools of 15,000-10,000 BC in the Americas. It's a curious fact that both West Eurasians and Northeast Amerindians bear DNA of haplogroups R1 and X, and so their DNA turns out to be distantly related. Since Inuits were able to migrate to Greenland and Polynesians were able to migrate to Easter Island and Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific, one could reasonably suppose that Europeans could also make the journey to North America's continental mainland in rafts or ships. Indeed modern explorers like Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic in simple boats to test this thesis. Still, none of this proves that the Europeans in prehistoric times actually did so.

And finally we get to the curious question of the origin of the megaliths and the time when they were built. Haven't mainstream reliable archaeologists investigated the most famous proposed pre-Columbian megalithic sites of New England?



Bill Vieira, a stonemason and amateur archaeologist, writes that "America's Stonehenge in North Salem New Hampshire is ....probably the most elaborate and controversial site in New England. ... this 30 acre complex is a mixture of stone chambers, stone solstice and equinox markers, cairns, chimneys, fireplaces and carvings. Some stones here weigh between 15 and 20 tons. It is carbon dated to at least 2000 B.C., half a millennium before the final phase of Stonehenge and like Stonehenge it possesses many precise astronomical alignments."

He describes another major site: "Gungywamp [in Groton, Conn.] has stone chambers, petroglyphs and at it's center lies a double circle of 21 large quarried stones. The main stone chamber has a light shaft in which the equinox sun has shone through precisely on March 22nd and September 21st for centuries just like similar chambers in Ireland and Scotland."
(http://ashfieldnewsarticles.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-mysterious-stone-structures-of-new.html)

He posted a photo of one dolmen in New York here:
[4.bp.blogspot.com]
He adds about the dolmen: "There is also a stone chamber located there. In Goshen there is a large balanced rock in the DAR forest that is set upright with another stone. He other large dolmens and says that the one in the photo below around Hawley's Bog is a chain of artificially placed boulders ending in a snake's head boulder:
[4.bp.blogspot.com]

I think it takes some imagination, but I see what he is talking about, with a kind of mouth and teeth in the lower right.



S.B. Shaffer claims in his book "Voices of the Ancients" that :
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carbon dating show remains of an archaic maritime 'Red Paint People' living in Labrodor and New England as far back as 5000 BC, with evidence of sea worthy wooden vessels of similar design on both sides of the Atlantic. Around 4000 BC there appeared dolmens in the British Isles.... Such dolmens have also appeared on the shores of North America dated very near that same timeline... One of the most compelling discoveries suggesting New World exploration by an ancient sea faring people is what is known as the Old Copper culture of Northern Michigan and Lake Superior. Ancient tools and other artifacts have been carbon dated to circa 2000 BC
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I read about the Red Paint people and Copper culture elsewhere, but Shaffer is less reliable when he goes on to talk about extreme numbers of these copper mines in the region or supposed "trade" with Europe in that era.



Jason Colavito has a skeptical article titled "The Depressingly Fake Mysteries of America's Stonehenge", where he argues (rather persuasively for me) that the "sacrificial tablet" is a lye stone, but that Amerindians could still be involved in the manufacture of the site:
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The “sacrificial table” is actually a colonial-era lye-leaching stone used in soap-making. Similar stones were also used for apple pressing and other tasks. The image below at left is a known apple-pressing stone, and the image at right is the “sacrificial table.” I think you can see they are virtually identical in form, just as the lye-leaching table is as well.
[www.jasoncolavito.com]
[APPLE PRESSING STONE]

[www.jasoncolavito.com]
["Sacrificial table"]

Mystery Hill is in all likelihood a collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century farming structures, cold cellars, etc. [In] 1937, ... William Godwin bought the stone structures and convinced himself that Celtic migrants from Ireland had built them in the Middle Ages. He then “restored” the structures to what he felt was the “original” configuration, thus creating the pseudo-Celtic, pseudo-Neolithic look of the place

.... there is evidence of “megaliths” at Mystery Hill. Native Americans came there thousands of years ago and used the large boulders in the area to chip away stone tools. This left behind large stone cores from the quarrying that could be mistaken for fallen megalithic architecture. (And who knows, maybe some ancient Native group thought it would be cute to arrange them artistically.)

SOURCE:
[www.jasoncolavito.com]
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I found the discussion in the comments section quite interesting:

Ron wrote critically about the carbon dating's value: "The carbon 14 dating used also comes into question. This site has been used by many different people over the years for many different things and contamination of the samples could be very real. However, even if the dates are correct you can’t use them to date the stone structures around them. Just because you have a hearth somewhere does not mean that the people that lit the fire built the structures in the surrounding area."

GG tries to use the astronomical coordinates of the site and of stonehenge in the UK to date it, saying "This dating is also consistent with radiocarbon dating of Stonehenge's construction which is referenced as 1600-3100 BC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_about_Stonehenge)".

Dan Britten says about the Carbon Dating "A date of 4,000 years was extracted, not on the rocks per se, but on a charcoal pit at the site. Then we have the fact that New England has numerous sites like this one. A few were altered. That makes none of them fake or real. Remember, the pro side has a carbon 14 test in their arsenal. That's evidence if not out and out proof."

Matthew Howes added: " Carbon dating of plant matter in one of the stone walls predates any european/euro-american occupation at the site, indicating some of the walls there today are original and in fact pre-colonial. Also, the alignments of standing stones along the outer parameter of the site are legit. They were where they are today when Mr. Goodwin bought the property. It wasn't until later in the 1970's and 80's that they started (the Stone family and associates) using archeo-astronomy and were finding alignments with these "stone monoliths". ... Some of these alignments, such as the standing stone with the Pole Star alignment, could only have occured thousands of years ago and do not work today. There is no way that Mr. Goodwin in the 1930's and 40's could have known about this."
(SOURCE: [www.jasoncolavito.com])

The Atlas Obscura website claims that despite the weak pseudohistorical theories about the site (like Phoenician or Celtic builders), "there are some genuinely intriguing elements about the site acknowledged by respected historians and archeologists. Some of the stones at Mystery Hill were indeed quarried using primitive stone-on-stone techniques, two reputable surveyors vouched for an alignment of stones that might be consistent with the astronomy of a few thousand years ago, and radiocarbon analysis points to human occupation of the area as far back as 2000 B.C."
[www.atlasobscura.com]

What do you think? Couldn't skilled archaeologists investigate the main supposed "pre-Columbian" megalithic sites of New England to decide using tools like carbon dating of plant remains inside the stone walls to determine their age?