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MYSTERY
OF STONE STRUCTURES IN AMERICA EXPLORED BY ANDREW ROTHOVIUS [Contacts] For years it has been widely assumed
that Bronze Age megalithic people from the British Isles crossed the Atlantic
around 1200 B.C. and established a short-lived colony in New England. Now it may be that it might have been the
other way around—that is, that the stone-building culture which bloomed into
Europe’s first civilization had its origins in Salem, New Hampshire about 4000 years
ago. In the May 1964 issue of Yankee, A.
E. Rothovius reviewed the status of what were then termed the Great Stone
Mysteries of New England. These are
scores of enigmatic dry-stone constructions in may parts of Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine (Scan Photos). These structures were similar to those in
the stone village at Mystery Hill in
North Salem, New Hampshire, which since the 1930s had been a focus of
archeological dispute and speculation.
It was not yet possible in 1964 to offer hard facts to account for
these puzzling structures, beyond pointing out that while most were locally
known as root cellars, there was little real evidence that they had ever been
used as such. The majority has a
strong resemblance to the megalithic (= “big stone”) constructions of the
Neolithic and Bronze Ages in the British Isles and Western Europe, where they
are variously called dolmens and cromlechs. There has been much light shown on
revealing the origin of these stone structures even though some mysteries
still remain. It can be stated with
some assurance that the central site, Mystery Hill, is of
great antiquity, dating back to at least 2000 B.C. More importantly, the stone structures have astronomical
alignments that are potentially as significant as those of Stonehenge, which
is almost as old. The work of Dr.
Colon Renfrew at Sheffield University in England during the 1960s has shown
that the European megalithic civilization was older than Egypt or Crete or
Mycenae, and also suggests that the antiquity and technical sophistication of
Mystery
Hill belong within the mainstream of the
prehistoric cultural development that laid the foundations of all succeeding
civilizations. The New England Antiquities Research
Association, a group of amateur archeologists who in the late 1950s and early
1960s became interested in locating and studying New England stone
constructions, deserves much of the credit for resolving the Great Stone
Mysteries of 1964. The president and
moving spirit of NEARA was Robert E. Stone of Derry, New Hampshire, owner of Mystery
Hill, who has devoted many years of effort to
finding an answer to the puzzle of New England megaliths. For the first few years, until about
1967 or 1968. the NEARA researchers concentrated on locating as many of the
stone constructions as possible. More
than 200 were recorded, the majority still intact, a few fallen into ruin or
recently bulldozed away. There are
certain areas where the sites are clustered, e.g., the eastern Berkshires
around Shutesbury, Massachusetts; in central Vermont, around Royalton and
Woodstock; in southeastern Connecticut, where a site with stonework second
only to Mystery Hill was
found near the Gungywamp marsh in Groton; and just outside New England, on
both sides of the Hudson River in lower New York State (Scan Photos).
Most extraordinary of all were the standing stones or “monoliths”
discovered on a mountaintop in the northwestern Berkshires; the exact
location is not being publicized for fear that vandals may damage the
site. However, the site appears to be
aligned on the Pole Star, and has close similarities to standing stone
configurations in the British Isles that were used by Bronze Age people for
observing the motions of the stars and planets and the rising and settings of
the sun and the moon. Some of the over 200 structures
turned out to be of colonial origin; they were used for various purposes from
gunpowder storage to settings for hunters’ traps. For instance, the stone “beehives” on Kennedy Hill in Acworth,
New Hampshire, seem to fall into this latter category. But, by far the greater number were found
to predate colonial times; their similarity to West European megalithic
constructions indicated they were of equal antiquity. None of these, however, except those
at Groton, Connecticut were grouped into an entire settlement complex such as
that at Mystery Hill (Scan Photos). Rather than disperse the investigation
over a number of widely scattered sites, the group decided to concentrate on Mystery
Hill, the site that was apparently central to
all others, and with the greatest potential for significant results. The NEARA workers searched for places
where radioactive carbon dating might be applied to determine the age of
material found. There was a small
area in the center of the complex of 22 stone structures where the thin
topsoil covering the granite bedrock of the hilltop had been less severely
disturbed by previous diggers. An
effort was concentrated here and each spoonful of earth was carefully sifted
for any organic remains that could be carbon dated. In 1967 a piece of pine root was
obtained from the walls of one of the structures. It yielded a radiocarbon date of about 1690 A.D. (a century and
a half before the time of Jonathan Pattee, who had build a house at the site
and was credited by skeptics with having built the site itself, for some
eccentric Yankee purpose, even though Pattee was a reputable citizen and
definitely not eccentric). The stone
structure penetrated by the pine root had to have been in place before the
tree grew large enough to send out such a root, and thus this dating demolished
once and for all the myth that Pattee was the architect of Mystery
Hill. But, 1690 was well within the
colonial era. The dating did not
disprove the possibility that the early colonists might have constructed the
site. Therefore, the search continued
for additional datable material. In 1968 some charcoal was recovered
from a stump pit at the northern exit of one of the rock-cut drains, and it
yielded a date of 1540 A.D. This was
almost a century before the landing of the Pilgrims; and since there was
reason to believe that drainage from the Pattee house had contaminated the
charcoal, its actual age was probably much greater. The researchers resumed their search
in the central area, and on May 17, 1969 they discovered almost directly
below where the pine root had been found, some charcoal only 2-4 inches above
bedrock and along with small granite chunks from the working of that
bedrock. This charcoal had to be
contemporary with the construction of at least that part of the site. The Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge,
Massachusetts dated it at 1045 B.C., or about the time that the era of the
European megalith builders had come to its close. Then in 1971 another specimen of
charcoal was obtained from the pine-root area, even closer to the
bedrock. It was radiocarbon dated at
1525 B.C., contemporary with the later stages of the construction of
Stonehenge. There could no longer be
any doubt that Mystery Hill (and
by implication, most of the other New England megaliths as well) and the
European Bronze Age were linked. In 1969 the swampy area to the left
of the Mystery Hill entrance
was investigated and was found to contain a large deposit of clay that had
been worked for pottery material.
Just to the right, researchers uncovered a very large fire-pit where
the pottery had been fired; charcoal here was badly contaminated by swamp
seepage, and yielded no consistent dates.
However, this excavation had found the source of the clay for the
peculiar soft yellowish pottery shards that have been found at the site, and
which resemble Mediterranean ware of Bronze Age times, rather than native
American Indian pottery. Later refinements in the field of
radiocarbon dating gave Mystery Hill an even greater antiquity, and at the same
time proved that its megalithic counterparts in Western Europe were older
than the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations (from which they had previously
been thought to be derived). Dr. Hans
E. Suess of the University of California at La Jolla, working with the
tree-rings of the bristlecone pines of the Sierra Nevada Mountains,
established that there had been fluctuations in the solar radiation affecting
organic carbon, and that for several centuries before 1000 B.C. the radiation
had been so much more intense that all radiocarbon datings for that period
had to be radically revised in the direction of greater age. The recalibrated date for the original
1525 B.C. reading from the Mystery Hill charcoal found in 1971 is now 2000 B.C.,
and contemporary with the earliest stages of Stonehenge. Mystery Hill
contains numerous astronomical alignments similar to those in may of the
British and French megalithic sites.
From a point just to the north of the grooved stone platform popularly
known as the Sacrificial Stone, but whose real function has yet to be
determined, several lines can be drawn outward to stones that indicate the
key points on the horizon of the astronomical year. To the southwest, the sun sets behind a triangular monolith on
the year’s shortest day, December 21st. To the west and east are other stones marking the sunrise and
sunset points on the dates of the spring and autumn equinoxes, march 21 and
September 22. To the northwest
another triangular monolith marks the setting point of the sun on the year’s
longest day, June 21st.
Due north is a monolith situated directly in line with the celestial
North Pole (now located in the heavens by the current Pole Star, Polaris, but
in 2000 B.C. by the star Thuban in the constellation Draco). In the northeast is a fallen monolith that
appears to indicate the point of the longest day’s sunrise on June 21st. To have laid out these lines of
sighting and to have erected the marking stones at the correct locations, the
builders of Mystery Hill must
have possessed observational, surveying and measuring skills of the highest
order. The determination of the existence of
these astronomical alignments at Mystery Hill has required several years of clearing of
trees and brush that hid the sighting lines, and a survey of the entire site. It has been generally believed by
archeologists that the megalithic culture in Western Europe had flourished
from around 1750 to 1000 B.C., and that it had been inspired by the great
early civilizations of the Mediterranean:
Egypt, Minoan Crete and Myceneae.
A recalibration of radiocarbon dates now shows that the megalithic
culture goes back to before 4000 B.C. and that it peaked before 2000
B.C. The great megalithic complex of
New Grange in Ireland is now dated at 3300 B.C., 700 years earlier than the
Great Pyramid of Egypt and 1800 years before the Minoan sea-kings ruled in
Crete. Stonehenge, built between 2200
and 1700 B.C., is now viewed as representing a late and declining stage of the
megalithic civilization. But if the megalith builders of
Western Europe were neither migrants from the Mediterranean, nor inspired by
the early Mediterranean civilizations, then where did they come from ,and
what was the origin of their stonework technique? A suggestion, heretical to earlier
archeologists, is that North America was where it all began. For evidence, the oldest megalithic sites
so far dated in Ireland are in the northwest of that island, and have an age
of around 4000 B.C.. Progressing
southeastward toward New Grange, the sites are gradually younger and show an
advance in quality of workmanship that culminates in the artistry of New
Grange. Then a Neolithic settlement
on the island of Harris in the Hebrides off northwest Scotland ahs been dated
at 4300 B.C., with similar and progressively less primitive sites being found
southward along the Scottish coast. As a third argument, there is the
evidence of human blood groups as determined by noted serologist A.E. Mourant
in his work of the 1950s. There are
three main blood groups, for convenience noted as Type A, B. and O. Type A is most common in Central and East
European inhabitants; Type B in Asians and Type O in American Amerindians as
well as in the Irish and the Scots! Rothovius had noted in 1964 that
there was a possibility that the New England megaliths were built by a native
American culture, of which the crude stone constructions found in the
Appalachians represented an early phase and Mystery Hill was an advanced phase. At that time it was believed that Bronze
Age Magalithic people from the British Isles had crossed the Atlantic by the
northern island-hopping route during the period of milder and less stormy
climate that ended about 1200 B.C. [see Climate]; and that they had established a
short-lived colony there, of which Mystery Hill and
the new England megaliths remained as witness. Now it appears as if the crossing may
have been in the other direction, from America to Europe or there may have
been crossings both ways. Whatever
the details prove to be, the following scenario is beginning to emerge:
Sometime around 4000 B.C., a still unknown group of early American indegenous
people in the Appalachian area started to build crudely in stone. Gradually the technique spread northward,
improving in quality and dimensions.
Finally some of these stone builders from new England were carried
across the Atlantic in their skin boats, possibly caught in a strong westerly
gale. Landing in northwest Ireland
and the Hebrides, they communicated their skill to the Neolithic peoples
there. The stone-building culture
thus initiated bloomed into Europe’s first civilization, between 3500 and
2000 B.C. This culture was strongly
oriented to the heavens, from whose movements it social rituals and rhythms
were derived. In the mild North
Atlantic climates of that age, there could have been voyages back to the
ancestral shores of New England; and by
2000 B.C. [see Climate]. Mystery Hill was built as a center of ritual
incorporating the astronomical knowledge attained by the megalith builders
across the ocean. America. A prevailing obstacle to verifying Bronze
Age voyages from Europe to America is the absence of bronze tools among the
American artifacts. (Please see Bronze Age Tools). Then, typical to human history, the
Magalithic civilization faded and vanished.
Essentially unwarlike, in Europe it was supplanted by the warrior
culture of the Battle-Axe peoples from the steppes of the East, ancestors of
the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons and Slavs. In America, the stone-building culture had perhaps flowered
only at Mystery Hill and
one or two other places. It declined
when the Atlantic climate became more severe and terminated access to Europe;
and it finally relapsed into the general barbarism of northeastern America
around 1000 B.C. Continued work on Mystery
Hill and other great stone mysteries of New
England will either confirm this picture and fill in the gaps, or derive an
even more startling explanation. --------------------------- Reference: Rothovius, Andrew E. 1975. The new thing at Mystery
Hill is
4000 years old. Yankee. September 1975. |