New England has numerous dolmens (boulders placed on standing rocks), monoliths that are standing, and megalithic subterranean and above-ground chambers. Some sites have been recognized by county governments or the federal government.
I rule out the likelihood that they were made by Bronze Age peoples. Those would have left behind bronze age tools like bronze shields for us to find. Or they would have fired up bricks or left other such signs for us.
A more likely possibility is Europeans from the stone age coming across the North Atlantic ice shelf in eg. 20,000 BC. But this version has its problems too. The people following the ice shelf would have to rely on fishing for food and either walking a long way only on ice or else sailing a long distance. The inuits can do it, but it just seems much easier for them to have crossed the Bering Strait. Another issue is the fact that Amerindians and Europeans do share R1 and X DNA, but the European R1 DNA is considered a much more recent arrival in North-Western Europe, like 5,000 BC. At least, it wasn't nearly as common as other DNA groups were there like G and I in Paleolithic times.
Here is a map of R1 DNA:
In any case, the inhabitants of New England look to be basically Algonquin speakers even for centuries before Columbus and the Vikings. Here is their map of Algonquin speakers, although there is a patch in California too:
Some major supposed megalithic pre-columbian sites in New England include Mystery Hill / Stonehenge USA, Pratt's Hill and Gungywamp, the Upton Chamber, Foxboro Stone piles, Turner's Falls' stones, "Druid's Hill", and "Calendar I" and Calendar II" as well as a chamber in Montville, Conn. the Goshen Chamber, and artefacts from a cairn in Andover (supposedly carbon dated to 2000 BC). Some studies have been done showing carbon dated remains like charcoal from 4000-100 BC and later. But my question is whether mainstream scholars have done archaeology on these major sites?
The Megalithic UK portal says about Mystery Hill, NH:
Running across the 30 acres of hillside are a series of
low walls, cave-like primitive buildings, and tunnels that are spread
about with, according to one archaeologist, "gigantic confusion and
childish disorder, deep cunning and rude naivety." [It] has been found to have astronomical alignments including summer solstice. ... . One of the main features of the site is an enormous
flat stone, like a great table, resting above the ground on four legs.
Around the edge of the table runs a groove that leads to a spout. This
great slab has been named the "Sacrificial Stone" and certainly may have
served such a function.
Underneath the Sacrificial Stone is a shaft eight feet
long leading to an underground chamber. It seems reasonable that this
allowed a priest concealed in the chamber to speak as the voice of an
oracle.
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=10510
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I will say about the
"sacrificial stone" that it looks allot like a lye stone used by
colonists in the 18th c. for making lye. One theory is that this site
has many major objects from colonists.
The Megalithic portal says about the Turner Falls stones:
Standing Stones in Franklin County, Massachusetts. American
Indians from the Narragansett, Aquinnah-Wampanoag and Mashpee-Wampanoag
tribes said the site was a collection of sacred stones. There are four stone piles atop the hill, and a row of stacked stones that extends to the southwest.
The US National Register of Historic Places council has
ruled a group of stones discovered in the path of the planned runway
expansion at the Turners Falls Municipal Airport is a ''sacred
ceremonial hill'' and eligible for inclusion on the National Register of
Historic Places." http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=23016 |
Paul Angel writes about Mystery Hill in "The Mysterious Megaliths of New England":
The “Oracle Chamber” is one of the most interesting
and important structures located at Mystery Hill—or anywhere for
that matter. It is significantly larger than any other chamber found
at the site and contains unique characteristics found nowhere else
in any of the other megalithic sites in New England.
A 4 inch by 6 inch shaft, lined with thin facing stones, runs
from the exterior and enters through the interior wall at about chin
level. The “Speaking Tube,” as it is called, emerges above
ground, yet concealed underneath a sacrificial altar with runnels.
It would seem that the speakers within the Oracle Chamber could talk
into the tube, their voices warped and amplified, carrying up to the
altar above and creating quite an impressive sound to a group of worshippers
who might be gathered around the altar—in effect making the altar
talk.
Also found across the Mystery Hill site are huge monolithic standing
stones (some now fallen) all of which line up to sun, moon or star
alignments as seen from a central viewing slab located by one of the
earlier researchers at the site. From this slab, monoliths align to
the Midwinter solstice sunrise and sunset, the November one sunrise
and sunset, the Spring and Fall Equinox sunrises and sunsets, the May
one sunrise and sunset, the Midsummer solstice sunrise and sunset,
the August one sunrise and sunset and true north (this stone is aligned
to the star Thuban, the pole star of 2,000 B.C.). On these days the
sun will either rise or set above worked monolith stones. Exact alignments
coincide, according to scholars and astronomers, with a date of 2499
B.C. to 1900 B.C.
http://planetvermont.com/pvq/v9n1/megaliths.html
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Let me make a few notes here: Like I said, this table in the photo looks a lot to me like a colonial lye stone, based on the frame cut into the edge as a square. Also, the past owners I heard moved stones around the site to match what they thought the "correct" alignment was, so orientations of a few stones does not seem reliable to me. Also, in case writers will claim at one point that stones line up with stars or the sun and then other writers say that the stones line up with stars as they were in 2000 BC, it seems like a conflict of claims. He writes about carbon dating and about some other kinds of structures:
it was carbon dating,
carried out under the supervision of respected scientists from Geochron
Laboratories in 1971 that supported the disputed claims of researchers
who were being ridiculed for insisting that Mystery Hill was a site
of extreme antiquity. Carbon tests conducted on charcoal found alongside
a stone pick and a hammer stone unearthed at an excavation near one
of the underground chambers reveal a date of 2,000 B.C. The artifacts
were clearly related to Neolithic pieces of the same era in the British
Isles and Iberia. The excavation pit carbon tested had been undisturbed
before digging and layers of strata above were perfectly intact. ....
The dolmen usually was erected to commemorate the death of a chieftain
or an historical event of great importance and scriptural incisions
usually accompany the dolmen on stone markers. Some experts believe
that the dolmen was actually a tomb that was then covered in huge amounts
of earth—in effect a tumulous tomb in which the earth has been
eroded away. Dolmens are frequently occurring structures in the American
northeast. There are in fact over 200 examples of dolmens in New England
alone and some very impressive examples can be found in our country
as far away as California.
Another frequently occurring megalithic structure familiar to
all readers is the stone circle. We know of the great Stonehenge complex
in England with its huge stones found there and the many calendrical
alignments they delineate. But there are ancient stone circles in New
England as well.
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One criticism I heard was that just because we find carbon dated remains from the site does not tell us what other parts of the site should be dated to.
Next, he talks about another site:
Besides containing beehive chambers and petroglyphs,
the Gungywamp site has a double circle of stones near its center, just
north of two stone chambers. Two concentric circles of large quarried
stones large slabs laid end to end—are at the center of the site.
Extensive fire burning on some of the slabs is apparent which leads
many to believe it was an ancient altar. Nearby there are several large
pillar stones and one boulder slab that have been carefully positioned
along astronomical site lines.
Visiting the Gungywamp site on the afternoon of September 21st,
Dave Barron, the head of the Gungywamp Society, saw a sight that he
would never forget. He said, “The setting sun had cast a beam
of light through the vent shaft at the back of the chamber. This beam
of light slowly moved down the east wall and spotlighted into the small
beehive crypt near the entrance. This stone-lined tube was designed
precisely to permit the Equinoctical sunset to fully penetrate the
chamber’s dark interior on only two days during the year—March
22nd and September 21. The high density of garnet in the stones magnified
the intensity of the sunlight entering the chamber. It certainly acts
as a predictable calendar. The Gungywamp site has been carbon dated
to 600 A.D.” http://planetvermont.com/pvq/v9n1/megaliths.html#3 - 3 |
http://planetvermont.com/pvq/v9n1/megaliths.html
Cori Urban writes:
Many New England communities have within them dirt-covered stone
“mounds,” dug into the earth and meticulously lined and covered with
stones; some of the stones that cover the tops weigh tons. ... James E. Vieira, a stonemason, writer and http://www.neara.org/ - Northeast Antiquities Research Association
member, believes there is ample evidence that Ancient America was a
melting pot of races from other lands, noting that other parts of the
country have ancient stone ruins. He says the mound builders may be
behind stone construction in the Northeast because their skeletal
remains with anatomical abnormalities are found here just are like the
skeletal remains in other earthen mounds.
Mound builders are believed to have been prehistoric inhabitants of
North America who, during a 5,000-year period, constructed various
styles of earthen mounds for religious, ceremonial, burial and elite
residential purposes. ...
Some mounds [in America] have been opened and in them found artifacts of antiquity: tools, pipes, carvings, tablets and jewelry.
[Inside of Goshen Chamber]
http://www.masslive.com/living/index.ssf/2012/08/stonemason_james_e_vieira_of_ashfield_studies_mound_builders_ancient_stonework.html
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Have any New England mounds been opened? Cori continues:
His presentation included a power point of local sites, including stone
chambers, turtle effigies, serpent walls and cairn fields in Franklin
and Hampshire counties. ...
In Montville, Conn., there is a 38-foot stone chamber. “I don’t know
what it is, but I can tell you what it’s not,” he said, adding that
another chamber in Upton, Mass., has a 14-foot tunnel. One 25-by-25-foot
mound in Putney, Vt., had carbon-dates remains from 492 A.D. “At the
Putney chamber, you have to enter through the roof down seven feet,”
Vieira said.
One cairn in Andover contained artifacts like an ax, javelin and hammer that were carbon dated to 2000 B.C., he said. |
http://www.masslive.com/living/index.ssf/2012/08/stonemason_james_e_vieira_of_ashfield_studies_mound_builders_ancient_stonework.html
This is impressive if true.
But Viera's credibility is really damaged, I think, when the author adds:
These “giants” were seven to 12 feet tall, and Vieira has uncovered more
than 2,000 accounts of them, what he called “a forgotten race.” Some
accounts—from Smithsonian reports, magazines, newspapers and town
histories—reveal the skeletal remains had double rows of teeth or other
anatomical abnormalities. ... Vieira contends that there were races in New England as well as Native
Americans who created ancient stonework. “Native American oral history
all around the country clearly speaks of a race of giants that existed
in the lands when their tribes arrived,” he said. http://www.masslive.com/living/index.ssf/2012/08/stonemason_james_e_vieira_of_ashfield_studies_mound_builders_ancient_stonework.html |
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