The Buthiers-Boulancourt burial contained the well-preserved skeleton of a man who died at roughly 50 years of age. The radiocarbon date for his bones was 5100-4900 BCE, about 2,000 years before current theories say that Stonehenge (the centre of the most technologically advanced society in European prehistory) is supposed to have been built. Two trepanations had been carried out on this man: one to the front, measuring 2.5 inches by 2.6 inches, and one to the top, measuring 3.7 inches by 3.6 inches. The frontal operation scar was completely healed, and the larger surgery wound on the top of the skull had partially healed, indicating that he survived both operations successfully.
Another interesting aspect of this story that was missed by most commentators was the age of the man found. He was 50! According to experts, the life expectancy of a Neolithic man was 20-25. The Romans were not expected to live more than 30 years. In fact, a life expectancy of 50 was not reached until the 20th century, so what kind of society could have such long life expectations? And this is not an exception; judging from the bones found in Britain so far, the average age of a Mesolithic man at death was 35. Is it possible that a civilisation had developed that was so sophisticated that they built massive stone monuments, and were able to cure the sick with health spas and surgery? If so, did our French man travel to Stonehenge for his operation? If he did, is there any evidence that other people travelled these vast distances to be cured of their ills?
The Amesbury Archer is one of the most famous stories about Stonehenge that has come out in recent years. This man, who was suffering from a bone infection, travelled from the Italian Alps to Stonehenge, but died and was buried with a selection of grave goods that amazed archaeologists, as they gave an insight into the life of a man who lived some 4,500 years ago.
So the Archaeologists said he must have walked. Unfortunately, he was missing his left knee cap, so he must have hopped more than 800 miles to get here!
Bringing the Stones to Stonehenge
The Amesbury Archer must have travelled by boat to Stonehenge. This means that this trading route had already been well established, as most people would have to take time to consider and prepare for such a journey. The grave goods found on the Archer show that he was a craftsman, so he would have traded his craft in exchange for food, water and accommodation during his trip to Britain. He must have also taken his family, as he was buried with all his worldly goods, which would have been very unlikely if a stranger buried him.
Moreover, the Amesbury Archer was about 35 to 45 years old, 10 years older than the life expectancy of an Iron Age man, clearly showing that the treatment found at Stonehenge was successful even for his crippling illness.
Farming
Traditionally, the Neolithic Period is famous for the birth of civilisation and farming. We need to spend a couple of moments considering this aspect of life. The classic classroom bunkum would normally go like this:
The change from a hunter-gatherer to a farming way of life is what defines the start of the Neolithic or New Stone Age. In Britain the preceding period of the last, post-glacial hunter-gatherer societies is known as the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age. It used to be believed that the introduction of farming into Britain was the result of a huge migration or folk-movement from across the Channel. Today, studies of DNA suggest that the influx of new people was probably quite small - somewhere around 20% of the total population were newcomers.
So the majority of early farmers were probably Mesolithic people who adopted the new way of life and took it with them to other parts of Britain. This was not a rapid change - farming took about 2,000 years to spread across all parts of the British Isles. Traditionally the arrival of farming is seen as a major and rapid change sometimes called the ‘Neolithic revolution’. Today, largely thanks to radiocarbon dates, we can appreciate that the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer was relatively gradual. We know, for example, that hunters in the Mesolithic ‘managed’ or tended their quarry. They would make clearings in woodland around sources of drinking water, and probably made efforts to see that the herds of deer and other animals they hunted were not over-exploited.
The switch from managed hunting to pastoral farming was not a big change. The first farmers brought the ancestors of cattle, sheep and goats with them from the continent. Domestic pigs were bred from wild boar, which lived in the woods of Britain. Neolithic farmers also kept domesticated dogs, which were bred from wolves. It is probable that the earliest domesticated livestock were allowed to wander, maybe tended by a few herders. Sheep, goats and cattle are fond of leaves and bark, and pigs snuffle around roots. These domestic animals may have played a major role in clearing away the huge areas of dense forest that covered most of lowland Britain.
This is quite a modern interpretation, taken from the BBC history web site. Radiocarbon dating is now leading to an adjustment of the date archaeologists had established for the earliest signs of ‘civilisation’ or farming, which was about the same time as Stonehenge in about 3000 BCE. This has now been slowly extended, as more evidence is gathered, to the late Mesolithic in 5000 BCE. Yet even with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, archaeologists drag their heels at the suggestion that the old dating system is simply wrong! In the quoted website article, the evolution of the domestic dog is placed with farming (as they believed it was associated with sheep farming) in the Neolithic. However, the earliest known domestic dog bones were found at another famous Mesolithic camp, Star Carr, dated to 7500 BCE.
This either means that sheep farming started 2,500 years earlier than archaeologists are telling us, or (as we believe) that dogs were domesticated long before farming arrived – which opposes the traditional view. At the end of the Ice Age, our ancestors walked the tundra tracking for food just like the Eskimo do today; they would likewise have used dogs to pull their sledges. These dogs were bred from wild wolves, which would have become domesticated in the course of time. This means that the dogs would have been passengers on the boats of the civilisation that built Stonehenge, as sheep had yet to be introduced. Farming was probably taken up in the Mesolithic Period, in about 5000 BCE. Initially, this would have started from ideas brought to Britain by traders from other, older civilisations within Europe.
Farming was not necessary in Britain, as our boat-dwelling ancestors had a plentiful supply of fresh fish and other seafood, but in a trading nation, supplies of exotic foods would have carried greater value than the abundant staple supplies relied on in the past. So tools could be purchased with some food supplies in this open marketplace. Later in the Neolithic Period, farming became a growing necessity as the groundwater tables throughout the country fell and life as a boat family became increasingly difficult. At this point, our ancient civilisation had a decision to make that would change the course of British history.
Our ancestors decided to leave and move South, taking their technology, culture and philosophy with them. Regarding this journey, I will go into further detail in a future book.
Conclusion
This is not the only time in our history that an established civilisation has come to the fore and then subsequently disappeared, to be replaced with a lesser form of society. The ancient Romans brought new technology to rural Britain in 45 AD with brick houses, central heating, glass windows, roads, wine, sanitation, art and literature (we’ll forgive them for slavery for the time being!), Only to be replaced in less than 200 years with wood and mud huts, disease from poor sanitation, hunger from poor cultivation, and lots of beer drinking by horned warriors. We now refer to this as the Dark Ages within the Mediaeval Period that lasted about 1,000 years. As we are aware of such reversions in history, archaeologists should be more careful in their assumptions about how our world has developed. This book has revealed a new world of groundwater in the Mesolithic Period; it has also discovered that a civilisation of huge potential did in fact exist 5,000 years before conventional archaeology and history recognises their existence.
This knowledge fundamentally changes the hi
story of Britain, and subsequently the world, because unless our prehistoric ancestors’ technological and mathematical skills were completely lost, they must have passed down their skills to other generations and cultures. When we look at the history of the world, particularly if we seek to find out where the ancient Greeks and Egyptians first obtained their engineering and mathematical knowledge, we find that we have been left with an incomplete history of their origins. In some instances, this practical knowledge seemed to ‘appear’ suddenly, without any evidence of prototypes or of failures in the course of its development.
But there are accounts of a great civilisation that may have influenced ancient Greece. For example, great writers such as Plato referred to such a nation with advanced technology and knowledge, which influenced their society through trade. Within this book, we have proved that a great nautical civilisation did exist that was capable of building monuments of such magnitude that they still lie on Britain’s hillsides some 10,000 years later. This civilisation traded throughout Europe, and had knowledge of medical procedures and techniques not seen again for another 7,000 years in Britain. The reputation of their medical treatments enticed the sick and disabled to travel across the known world to bathe in the pure waters of a Mesolithic hospital.
In Plato’s account, this great civilisation was a ‘naval power’ lying in front of the ‘Pillars of Hercules’ (the opening to the Atlantic Ocean from the Mediterranean). It conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa, 9,000 years before the time of Solon (i.e. in 9500 BCE). Amazingly, this is approximately the same date as one of the four gigantic metre-wide mooring posts was being placed on the shoreline of a peninsula on what is now known as Salisbury Plain. This mooring post, which has been carbon dated to 8500 BCE ±500, was the beginning of a construction that was to become the greatest and oldest surviving monument of the prehistoric world: Stonehenge.
In our next book ‘Dawn of the Lost Civilisation’ we will trace the movements of this great society that started its journey in the Caspian Sea and finally travel to all four corners of the world, where there DNA lays testament to being the forefathers of our civilisation, for Plato was referring to the great ‘lost civilisation’ known to the ancient Greeks as: Atlantis.
Epilogue - Ancient monument to the Lost World of Atlantis
If the builders of Stonehenge were the lost civilisation of Atlantis, where did they originate from and why did they come to the Salisbury plain to construct their monument?
We have shown that after the last ice age the ‘great melt’ flooded the landscape of Britain for over ten thousand years. This flooding started a ‘chain reaction’ and as a consequence the sea level slowly increased and vast areas of land were lost including a land mass known as ‘Doggerland’.
Throughout the 19th century, oyster dredgers working the shallow waters off the north east coast of England, recorded frequent finds of animal bones caught up in their nets. These discoveries became a regular occurrence as the fishing technology increased and the trawlers at a later date and in deeper waters of the North Sea also found traces of civilisation and a lost continent. Sadly, the location and accuracy are rarely recorded with any degree of accuracy; this material appeared to come from a number of areas within the North Sea.
One area where the greatest number of finds discovered is known as the ‘Dogger bank’ which lies just 90km – 110km (60-70 miles) from the coast of the British Isles. This shoal (a shoal, sandbar , sandbank or gravel bar is a somewhat linear landform within or extending into a body of water, typically composed of sand, silt or small pebbles.) rises about 45m (150 ft) above the North Sea bed, to the north it plunges into deeper water and forms a subterranean plateau covering 17,600 sq. km. (6,800 miles) with a maximum dimension being 260km (160 miles) from North to South and 95 km (60 miles) from East to West. Over time the number of finds reduced as the same area was dredged day after day and any artefacts sitting on the surface would have been scooped up and either returned as a curiosity or in a majority of the time just thrown back in a different location.
Even so, items such as; bear, wolf, hyena, bison, woolly rhino, mammoth, beaver walrus, elk, deer and most importantly horse have been collected. This precious collection of findings gives us a fantastic insight to what Doggerland looked like, the environment that supported these animals and the climate of this unique area of the world.
It would be impossible to talk about Doggerland and its environment without understanding the clear connection to Plato’s written references to the lost world of Atlantis. Over the years Atlantis has grown to be both a legend and the source of much science fiction, this is neither correct nor helpful in tracing the history of mankind, as it moves the debate from scientific observation to fantasy and the degrading of the most important time of our history.
Doggerland
Plato is a source of creditable information for he is not a ‘story teller’ like some other historic writers, he is fundamentally a philosopher, whose writings are still studied even now, some 2,000 years after his death at the most famous and prestigious universities throughout the world. This man is not prone to fantasy or exaggeration, his writings therefore must be accepted as true evidence that once in the distant past an ancient great civilisation, did in fact exist and that they changed the course of mankind in ways which I believe we do not fully understand to date.
The next book in our trilogy traces the ‘megalithic builders’ from when they came out of Africa to where they landed in their boats in Doggerland following the herds of Animals as the ice caps receded and the food supply for these ancient ancestors moved north travelling to a new continent and constructing a civilisation that used new stone tools and incorporated megalithic stone constructions into their society.
Consequently, we need to look at the probability that Plato’s ‘Atlantis’ is a genuine reference to this land, as it is the oldest written source and may give us clues of how this civilisation lived and traded. Fortunately for us Plato gave some detail about this civilisation, such as how they lived and what they believed, which will allow us to compare what we know; from landscape and archaeological finds and look for other areas of investigation the texts might reveal.
Plato
Plato’s most famous line from ‘Timaeus’, a dialogue between Critias and Socrates, where ‘Critias’ tells a story he learned through his family, about the Greek statesman ‘Solon’, whilst he was studying with the most scholarly of Egyptian priests during a visit to Sais in Egypt in about 590BC. The priests claimed to have access to secret records about a lost civilisation called ‘Atlantis’, which only they were allowed to read, for it was written on the pillars within their most sacred temple. Now Sais was one of the oldest cities in the old kingdom and the city’s patron goddess was ‘Neith’, whose cult is attested as early as the 1st Dynasty, ca. 3100- 3050 BCE.
The Greeks, such as Herodotus, Plato and Diodorus Siculus, identified her with Athena and hence postulated a primordial link to Athens. Diodorus recounts that Athena built Sais ‘before’ the ‘deluge’ that supposedly destroyed Athens and Atlantis. While all Greek cities were destroyed during that cataclysm, the Egyptian cities including Sais survived. As we can see from this connection, the deluge has incredible important to ancient civilisations, clearly indicating that any prehistoric civilisation that wanted to ‘stay alive’ would possibly build boats, not for some, but for everyone. Sadly, the city of Sais has been recently destroyed by farmers who used the house and temple mud bricks, as free fertiliser for the fields – to this date the temple and its writings have never been found.
The most famous line from Plato’s dialogue is “in front of the mouth which you Greeks say ‘the pillars of Hercules’ there lay an island which is much larger than Libya and Asia together” translated by W.R.M. Lamb 1925 or “in front of the straits which are by you called the pillars of Hercules; the island was bigger than Libya and Asia together” B. Jowett 1871
This single sentence has caused no end of debat
e about the location of Atlantis. Some suggest that ‘the pillars’ can refer to water flows, thus allow the speculation (which is current) that Atlantis is a Greek Island. Others suggest (including myself) that the ‘pillars of Hercules’ is the mouth of the Mediterranean between Morocco and Spain. Now this is a case of translation and interpretation, the word ‘mouth’ is sometime called ‘strait’, in other quotations Plato refers to the Mediterranean Sea as “within the straits of Hercules”.
According to some Roman sources, while on his way to the island of ‘Erytheia’ Hercules had to cross the mountain that was once Atlas (the Atlas Mountains are in Northern Africa overlooking the Mediterranean), instead of climbing the great mountain, Hercules used his superhuman strength to smash through it. By doing so, he connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and formed the Straits of Gibraltar. But the best evidence is in the name itself ‘Atlantis’ for Herodotus (an ancient Greek historian, 484 BC – c. 425 BC) in a time before Plato’s writings calls the Sea outside the Pillars of Hercules the ‘Atlantis Sea’ (Cyrus, 557-530 BC: Book 1). Moreover, even today we call it the Atlantic Ocean and in history c’s and s’s are commonly transposed.
The Stonehenge Enigma (Prehistoric Britain Book 1) Page 18
