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Maen Llia

Welsh Ramblers walks May 2014

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tiompan T
tiompan May 10, 2014 15:42:24
Replying to GLADMAN

GLADMAN wrote:
tiompan wrote:
It’s worthwhile looking at the detail of the relationship between these monuments . An undated cairn is equidistant to Maen Llia and an undated “ ringwork “ . If Maen Llia was also equidistant to the ringwork it would be more noteworthy but more importantly the Coflein comment about Maen Llia “its geometric relationship with nearby Bronze Age monuments points to its prehistoric origins .” This comment along with that for the cairn “The site lies equidistant from Maen Llia and concentric 'hengiform' earthwork within the triangle and thus is probably related to them.” Is nonsense , the other monuments have not been dated to the BA and since when did a couple of equidistant monuments indicate a relationship , where are the precedents ?
Another monument has been introduced into the equation , an undated platform which is also described as being equidistant to Maen Llia and the “ringwork” , it’s 143 m from the stone but due to the diameter of the ringwork it could also be described as being 126m from the cairn . Again there are not two monuments equidistant from Maen Llia . If there is any degree of saliency in these “relationships “ then just as Google earth has produced relationships between obscure monuments from all over the globe and Giza or Stonehenge we will find the old Ley hunters will be out with their rulers , measuring and finding large scale and small scale relationships everywhere .
btw it was not David leighton who first noted this ,it was Bill Griffiths in the late 60's .
I've always been on the way to - or coming home from - somewhere else to stop off and take a proper look at this grouping of monuments. Seems it'll be worthwhile at some point.

Just out of interest, what would be the statistical likelihood of two monuments just happening to randomly be equidistant from another? If it's pretty low... wouldn't that imply a reasonable chance the latter was used as a reference point for the others?

T tiompan
tiompan May 10, 2014 15:56:29
Replying to tiompan

tiompan wrote:
GLADMAN wrote:
tiompan wrote:
It’s worthwhile looking at the detail of the relationship between these monuments . An undated cairn is equidistant to Maen Llia and an undated “ ringwork “ . If Maen Llia was also equidistant to the ringwork it would be more noteworthy but more importantly the Coflein comment about Maen Llia “its geometric relationship with nearby Bronze Age monuments points to its prehistoric origins .” This comment along with that for the cairn “The site lies equidistant from Maen Llia and concentric 'hengiform' earthwork within the triangle and thus is probably related to them.” Is nonsense , the other monuments have not been dated to the BA and since when did a couple of equidistant monuments indicate a relationship , where are the precedents ?
Another monument has been introduced into the equation , an undated platform which is also described as being equidistant to Maen Llia and the “ringwork” , it’s 143 m from the stone but due to the diameter of the ringwork it could also be described as being 126m from the cairn . Again there are not two monuments equidistant from Maen Llia . If there is any degree of saliency in these “relationships “ then just as Google earth has produced relationships between obscure monuments from all over the globe and Giza or Stonehenge we will find the old Ley hunters will be out with their rulers , measuring and finding large scale and small scale relationships everywhere .
btw it was not David leighton who first noted this ,it was Bill Griffiths in the late 60's .
I've always been on the way to - or coming home from - somewhere else to stop off and take a proper look at this grouping of monuments. Seems it'll be worthwhile at some point.

Just out of interest, what would be the statistical likelihood of two monuments just happening to randomly be equidistant from another? If it's pretty low... wouldn't that imply a reasonable chance the latter was used as a reference point for the others?

The mimimum is two and that is what we have in thsi case . I think the likelihood for two is high , I seem to remember one bloke who wrote of a "grid " of equidistant monuments , that was on the macro scale ,but it would apply on the micro too . Imagine how many you could find in the Stonehenge landscape ? ,you might even get past the minimum particularly if you can include undated monumnets ,as above , and sites from different periods . Despite the "“its geometric relationship with nearby Bronze Age monuments points to its prehistoric origins .” I can't think of of any examples where equidistant spacing of monuments was considered intentional in a UK prehistoric setting . Why bother ? comes to mind and also moderns need for imposing their knowledge and ideas on data ,so often abused by metrologists , archaeoastronomers and anybody who can count /measure .