EDITORIAL

When the builders of Stonehenge decided to use the Bluestones, they were faced with the problem of transporting them to Salisbury Plain from their native Prescelly Mountains in Wales. Legend attributes this transport ‘not by force, but by Merlin’s art’, alluding to the supposed part played by the wizard Merlin in their removal. However, the orthodox archaeological world thinks differently.

We all know Alan Sorrell’s scribbly drawing of savages dressed in tattered rags desperately attempting to control a battered raft carrying a Bluestone through a wicked-looking sea. This image from the ‘skins and woad’ school of British prehistory has had a great bearing on the collective psyche of this nation, making it appear that a much lower level of ability existed and thus rendering artifacts like Stonehenge inexplicable on those terms.

The ultradiffusionist voyages of Thor Heyerdahl and to a lesser extent Tim Severin have shown what ancient navigators might have accomplished. Let the orthodox archaeologists employ one of these archaeonavigators to sail a replica Bluestone from Wales to wherever the archaeologists believe landfall was made. A Sorrell raft, even when sailed by such a master mariner, would soon prove laughably inadequate. Perhaps, then, a ship of the design of that found at North Ferriby in the River Humber could be constructed and similarly tested. It is up to the orthodox archaeologists, who have the facilities, and, more importantly, public money, at their disposal, to prove their theories in a practical manner. Until they have done so, the raft comedy ought to be expunged from their self-styled history books. Come on, archaeologists, put our money where your mouths are!

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Gog Magog Scandal

Unfortunately, the Cambridge Preservation Society appears to have succeeded in preventing the preservation of the Gogmagog Hill Figures. The ‘resistivity study’ which was supposed to have been carried out last year seems (conveniently) forgotten, and so the rot continues unabated. Thus the Cambridge Preservation Society has succeeded in preventing (by devious means) the I.G.R. offer to clean up the disgustingly neglected site, thus preventing the destruction of a great British antiquity.