Maen Llia 7
Image by cerrig
Maen Llia

Welsh Ramblers walks May 2014

thesweetcheat T
thesweetcheat May 16, 2014 20:13:10
Replying to tiompan

tiompan wrote:
... you don't date mouments from their distance to another monument, which is as bad as dating a monument from a possible astro event .
Yep. "Related" monuments might be 30m and 2,000 years apart.

tiompan wrote:
At ML it's over 300 m ,you can bet the bloke who first recognised the distances never traipsed a tape over the 300+m . The equidiatance was recognised on a map .
Which would suggest that for the equidistance to be significant, the people who laid the sites out would have to have understood the significance of correcting for slope in surveying (which they might have done).

The gist of the equidistance theory seems to be that the monuments are equidistant in real terms (i.e. as the crow hops, from above, measured on a map, etc) rather than what you would get from simply taking a length of twine to an uneven location and laying it out or holding it taut between the sites, as this would make them not equidistant when surveyed and measured on a map.

tiompan wrote:
People who are interested in monuments often notice similar features about the siting of moorland/upland monuments , not in the obvious spot but at a point where it might be visible from certain points lower down , relationships to water , direction of valleys etc , they crop up time and again and appear intentional as opposed to the pot luck of a siting imposed on it by the fiat of equidistance .
That's what I think, purely from site visits. But I've never measured anything to test it out!

T tiompan
tiompan May 16, 2014 20:23:59
Replying to thesweetcheat

thesweetcheat wrote:
The gist of the equidistance theory seems to be that the monuments are equidistant in real terms (i.e. as the crow hops, from above, measured on a map, etc) rather than what you would get from simply taking a length of twine to an uneven location and laying it out or holding it taut between the sites, as this would make them not equidistant when surveyed and measured on a map.
That's it , it's not in the real world it's in the armchair world of map gazers and measurers .
A 300m rope even in the BA is possible but why should such a concept , equidistance , have any importance to a culture that wouldn't have had maps as we know know them and where are all the other examples apart from those you might expect from chance , or have I just discovered that mapping and equidistance was done even earlier in the Neolithic ? e.g see Torrylinn example (not serious ) . I doubt that they were that daft . "I know it's on a precipitous ledge but it says 310 smoots in the manual "

G GLADMAN
GLADMAN May 17, 2014 00:00:44
Replying to thesweetcheat

thesweetcheat wrote:
tiompan wrote:
... you don't date mouments from their distance to another monument, which is as bad as dating a monument from a possible astro event .
Yep. "Related" monuments might be 30m and 2,000 years apart.

tiompan wrote:
At ML it's over 300 m ,you can bet the bloke who first recognised the distances never traipsed a tape over the 300+m . The equidiatance was recognised on a map .
Which would suggest that for the equidistance to be significant, the people who laid the sites out would have to have understood the significance of correcting for slope in surveying (which they might have done).

The gist of the equidistance theory seems to be that the monuments are equidistant in real terms (i.e. as the crow hops, from above, measured on a map, etc) rather than what you would get from simply taking a length of twine to an uneven location and laying it out or holding it taut between the sites, as this would make them not equidistant when surveyed and measured on a map.

tiompan wrote:
People who are interested in monuments often notice similar features about the siting of moorland/upland monuments , not in the obvious spot but at a point where it might be visible from certain points lower down , relationships to water , direction of valleys etc , they crop up time and again and appear intentional as opposed to the pot luck of a siting imposed on it by the fiat of equidistance .
That's what I think, purely from site visits. But I've never measured anything to test it out!
In the end, however - unless we are accusing Mr Leighton's measurements of being incorrect (which, having ratified many of his fieldnotes myself over the years, I certainly am not) - it surely again all comes down to what are the odds of this occuring without intent? Do we honestly believe BA engineers did not possess the skill required to accurately survey the landscape? Really? Furthermore it appears there is no well known standard for calculating such odds, so would not a 'probably.... possibly, even... although impossible to prove' caveat be more appropriate than 'nonsense?' Unless a coherent explanation can be given as to why these monuments are arranged just so - but nevertheless do not form an associated grouping - other than through sheer random placement (in my view very unlikely) I would have to ask, well, prove they are not.

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