L Cooper Wrote:
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> rakovsky Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > But then.... like I said, colonists from 18th
> c.
> > England could have chosen springs as areas
> to
> > build their own structures themselves, no
> need to
> > demand it was done by Irish monks.
>
>
> And this they surely did, one needs water to live.
> However, the colonialists apparently made no
> special effort to build their homes directly over
> a 90 degree intersection - and yet all of the
> chambers I have visited were so built - with the
> intersection lying in the heart of each chamber.
> Go dowse them and you will see.

I don't understand your objection. Colonists wanted to build near water, so they put root cellars near springs, but often they didn't build their own houses right on the 90 degree root cellars, which they kept outside. So far it all sounds reasonable, with no dowsing by me necessary.


> Also, their
> openings all appear to be facing to the east, I
> would guess (based on my compass readings) to one
> or another local solstice or equinox position.
>
> As far as I have determined there is absolutely no
> record of, nor tradition of, colonialists building
> such chambers either in the New World, or the Old.

That's interesting. Maybe you should research the issue more extensively. See the book about analogous colonial Vermont Root Cellars and their early documentation by the Vermont writer named Peebles.

> The kind of dry wall stonework, with large flat
> roofing stones, is however, very much like that
> seen in the northern tier of the British Isles.
> There has been speculation that these chambers
> were built as root cellars, but this makes no
> sense. They are usually not close by to any old
> dwelling site,

Root cellars in New England were in fact often close by old colonial dwelling sites. If one is found a distance from the owner's property, it doesn't prove that he didn't own or build it.

> plus why go to all the trouble to
> build such a separate structure when you could
> simply incorporate your root cellar into the
> foundation work of your home or barn (as was
> commonly done) - thus saving on labor, distance,
> and effectiveness?

This is kind of like asking why people build sheds, outhouses, barns, etc. as a separate structure. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. My parents had a shed in the backyard. I never cared to ask them why they didn't incorporate it into the house.

> There is no record of Native Americans performing
> this kind of stonework in the northeast region, if
> indeed anywhere. Plus, as I've said, they
> apparently were not versed in a dowsing tradition.

How do you know as fact that Native Americans haven't done dowsing?

Instructions for Native American dowsers
[nativeamerican.proboards.com]

Amerindians did stonework with walls in Peru and Mexico. Think about the Incas. Is a Mesoamerican colony really that less likely than an English one of 2000 BC?

If they were Celts, where are their iron or bronze tools? Why did they chip away with stone tools like Amerindians did?

>
>
> Many still extant chambers are missing some, if
> not all, of their flat roofing stones - stones
> which were likely hauled off by the first colonial
> arrivals for use as culvert stones, or similar. I
> should think that they thought these structures
> had been built by the native Indians. However, in
> my area these chambers are almost all at elevation
> and some distance from the Connecticut River.
> There is ample documentation that the early
> colonial settlers here first established
> themselves up at elevation because the native
> tribes trafficked the River, but they did not
> stray far from the immediate valley floor. This is
> a curious thing unless you infer that they knew
> about these already then ancient mysterious
> chamber sites and decided to give a wide berth to
> whatever creature or god had built them.

I am not following your logic. You said the chambers are built at elevation almost always and far from the river, then you say that colonists established themselves "at elevation", but then you called it strange and asserted them they must have been giving a wide berth from the chamber sites "at elevation".

It's like you are making up explanations as you go along.

We already know that colonists had lots of root cellars like these (see Peebles' book), so if some root cellars are in the woods, discovered 200 years later, it doesn't disprove whether the colonists made them. How do you know you didn't find one that colonists made in woods to store or hide things?

> I have
> read documentation that the native Indians thought
> of the hills surrounding the river in this way,
> but would need to search to find the reference.

This was a typical Amerindian way of looking at the world - like it had spirits.


> I am certain that these chambers significantly
> predate the colonial period, but as to exactly
> when they were built I don't know. As I said,
> Goodwin's theory and explanation seem the best to
> me, and if you are truly interested in this
> subject I would suggest reading his book and
> exploring these chamber sites for yourself.

The book is called "William B. Goodwin, The Ruins of Great Ireland in New England"


One review said:
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Obviously this book is not "science" or even good archaeology, but it is sort of the "founding fiction" for the movement named various "cult archaeology," "fantastic archaeology," etc. ...
o, Irish monks or even ancienter (is that a word?) Celts were not in New England in any significant numbers to affect Indian culture (sure, maybe a boatload got here, and were perhaps swiftly killed or absorbed into New England leaving no trace, that is not beyond the laws of physics), but these ideas are still a necessary lesson in the way weak logic joined with strong sensation-value (or a will to believe a cool story) can lead to the development of groups who promote historical revisionism based on weak evidence and logic. So this book is a classic in a sense. Read Kenneth Feder's and Steven Williams' books on fraudulent archaeology as adjuncts to this classic.
[www.amazon.com]
==================================================================

I have been to Stonehenge USA, but not being a professional university archaeologist, it's hard for me to make judgments about it. This is why I want to see mainstream teams run studies and excavations on these kinds of sites.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2016 12:32PM by rakovsky.