Crop Circle Connector

Odd thing for JM to say. I'm sure he had very good reason to say so. It archaeology really that presumptious?

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Sorry, I should have been clearer. It wasn't John's quote it was by Dr Glyn Daniel, in Antiquity, December 1961. (And it's 'in' not 'with' - the problem in archaeology...) Oh I think JM's 'good reason' was a good sense of humour.
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JM didn't say it. It is a quotation from an editorial in Antiquity by Glyn Daniel, who was described in JM's obituary in The Times as "his old adversary".

Here's another of Glyn Daniel's notable sayings: "“Nowhere, alas, does bullshit and bang-me-arse archaeology flourish so well these days as in America where foolish fantasies pour from the press every month and sell like hotcakes.”

http://artoftheprank.com/2010/01/08/lit ... more-10134

Edited to say: sorry, I took so long to post the above that by the time I did, jak had already clarified...

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Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ~ André Gide

Maybe he was referring to the growing popularity on the 'alternative' circuit of the type of pseudo-scientific bunk peddled by Hindu creationists masquerading as 'alternative archaeologists':

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/lepper.html

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I think the bang-me-arse archaeology to which Dr.Daniel had been referring in that editorial was the craze for ley-lines. He wasn't impressed. He was equally unimpressed with Prof.Gerald Hawkins' book Stonehenge Decoded. However he may have taken a different view had the original builders of the monument sited some of the stones where Hawkins had supposed them to be, rather than where they had actually wanted to put them. That book was a classic case of people investing their faith in higher authority, though. The higher authority was not, as you might imagine in this case Prof.Hawkins himself, rather it was Harvard University's "Supercomputer". An early example of "the computer says so, so it must be right", GIGO not yet having found its way into the language.

That doesn't stop archaeology from being presumptuous though Doozles. It really can have its moments.

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Just read this in one of Prof Hawkins' obits.

"Re-reading Stonehenge Decoded today, one is struck by how much it captures and expresses that optimistic attitude to technology so characteristic of its time, the early 1960s. As it enthusiastically told the story, the key work was done in 1961, not by Hawkins with pencil and paper, but by 40 seconds of machine time on the Harvard-Smithsonian IBM 740 computer, helped by its friend Oscar, the automatic plotting machine. Their human assistants fed in the data on punched cards, set the program running, and - astonished - then heard its astounding answer. Machine had spoken to machine, computer to computer, so that Stonehenge was decoded and enabled to speak to us through the translating intelligence of its fellow IBM, after an uncomprehending silence of 40 centuries when it had been an insoluble mystery."

"But that mighty IBM 740, as Hawkins himself immediately reported, was already "as obsolete as the hand-crank telephone" when Stonehenge Decoded came out. A cheap mobile phone now has more computing power."

I enjoyed this bit too. It reminded me of the McDonalds and the Leylines scenario somebody outlined on an old thread here.

"For Stonehenge, the Cambridge astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle produced his own scheme of what was observed there and how eclipses could be predicted by manipulating features of it. By degrees, a profound problem of method emerged which to this day undermines, perhaps fatally, studies of prehistoric astronomy: the fact that a skilled and knowledgeable astronomer today, equipped with all elaborations of modern understanding, can devise a way to use Stonehenge as an observatory or calculator does not in itself prove that was its original use and purpose. Stonehenge, if you made the right observations or moved the stones about in the right way, could be used nowadays to predict the opening hours at Salisbury Museum, or of Sainsbury's in Swindon."

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So long and thanks for all the fish.

email: thepsychoclown@googlemail.com

Hi
Anybody know the exact size of this formation????

JN

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It was reported as being 150 ft long, jonny. I'm not sure about its width but that should not be difficult to estimate from looking at the aerial shots. 150 ft. was not particularly large compared with other formations from 2009.

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Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ~ André Gide

This has a fascinating connection with the constellation of Aquila......anyone?

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The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced......