Conundrum 5 – Craig Rhos-Y-Felin

Book Extract…………………………………………………… (The Great Stonehenge Hoax)

Archaeology’s inconvenient truth

The Problem

A recent paper by the University of London, Southampton, and Manchester; about the discovery of the Quarry that provided the ‘bluestones’ for Stonehenge at Craig Rhos-y-Felin caught the eye of the world by archaeologists announced that Stonehenge was initially built in Wales and was then transferred to Salisbury Plain 500 years later.  This amazing claim came about as only two of the Carbon Dates found on the site were within one thousand years of the Antler Pick dates that English Heritage holds so dear as the construction date.

The Solution

The ‘Craig Rhos-y-Felin: a Welsh bluestone megalith quarry for Stonehenge was a report published in December’s Edition of Antiquity Magazine 2016; it stated that a series of radiocarbon dates were found on the site next to a 4m long monolith (ready for transportation) made of a rock which was microscopically identified as the same Bluestone as the rocks that surround the existing Stonehenge site.  Moreover, the report’s authors had decided that just two random sample dates (the two closest to their well-publicised hypothesis on Stonehenge’s construction date) would be headlined and advertised to the mass media.

Despite these ‘limited’ published radiocarbon dates, the archaeologists still had an obvious problem, as the dates were still 500 years older than the proof they were hoping to find.  So, they had to invent a new ‘story’ to compensate for this ‘poor science’ and so stated the speculation, in their report, that the monument was initially built in Wales and then moved at a later date.  This was followed by stories over the last ten years (archaeologists love to do the lucrative lecture tours on limited ‘titbits’ of information), finding remains of a few small bluestones within other stone circles, claiming them as evidence of the original Stonehenge site – followed by more lucrative lectures and documentaries.

Nevertheless, if we take an unbiased and more analytical view of the report, we find something very different from the media claims and much more scientifically interesting. 

What was contained in detail within the report but overlooked was the fact that a considerable number of Mesolithic carbon dates (fourteen compared to just two Neolithic dates the report headlined) were obtained from actual human-made hearths which were much, much earlier in history compared to two random nutshells found randomly within an ‘occupation area’ – which could have been scattered by animals or even the weather?

These earlier and more frequent dates are from hearths rather than just random nutshells and were entirely overlooked by the team, as it was ‘perceived’ to be too early to have a connection to Stonehenge.  Nevertheless, this connection was well established some fifty years ago and was reported in a press release I released in August 2011 – entitled ‘The Stonehenge Enigma; an inconvenient truth’:

The article shows that English Heritage did its utmost to conceal the truth about Stonehenge’s actual ‘probable’ date being 5,000 years earlier than their current position.  This scientific evidence was based on radiocarbon dating of the three giant post holes in the visitor’s car park during its construction in 1966.

At the time the wooden charcoal remains of the posts (found at the bottom of the post holes) were labelled Neolithic in origin to support the accepted antler pick dating hypothesis and were placed on a shelf probably for eternity.

The report from the 1966 excavation reads: “It is unfortunate that no dating evidence was obtainable from the three holes in the form of pottery.  Certainly, the holes themselves would appear to be Neolithic in character, very similar to others excavated of this period….. comparable traces of posts have been found in a Neolithic context… such as King Barrow Wood” Lance and Faith Vatcher. 

Moreover, the charcoal deposits were sent to their laboratory, and the results were: “It is surprising, in the view of the chalkland environment, that most of the charcoal should be pine.  Pine has, however, been found at other sites where it would not be expected, notably Woodhenge” – but even so, these samples were not requested to be carbon dated.

Fortunately, some years later, an inquisitive PhD student writing a thesis on the Stonehenge environment found these samples and concluded that they could not be Neolithic, as claimed by the archaeological community, as they were from pine trees which modern pollen analysis had concluded were ‘extinct’ in this area at this time of Stonehenge’s supposed construction.

The officials (of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission, which was later renamed English Heritage) were dismayed when they found out that their ‘experts’ were wrong, and the student was correct in her assumption (yet sadly, they never gave her a deserved job and she went off for a city career!) as the carbon dating placed them at the start of the Mesolithic of 8860 to 6590 BCE just after the last ice age.  Furthermore, what happened to the pine Woodhenge samples as indicated in the lab report of 1966 – which to date have not been carbon dated, are they also Mesolithic and not Neolithic as their original unscientific estimation, and if so, what is the actual age of Woodhenge?

Consequently, rather than then admitting their fundamental error and re-opening the site to look for more holes and dates to get to the bottom of this unique mystery (which would have been the case for most credible scientific disciplines), they came up with a remarkable and unproven story that these were random ‘totem poles’ placed by wandering ‘hunter-gatherers’ which did not relate to the Stonehenge site just 50m away.  But it was a sheer coincidence, which should be totally ignored.

If the missed carbon dating of these Mesolithic posts didn’t spark an enquiry into the dating of Stonehenge, then another similar discovery three years later in 1988-89 should have done, as Wessex Archaeology were employed to investigate the area next to the Old Car Park and the construction of the Visitors Centre, opposite Stonehenge.  They reported a series of stripes under the surface (they thought periglacial) and a single pit WA9580 on the line of the other posts found in 1966 in the old ticket office……………………………………….

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