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New England (United States) has miles and miles of ancient and undocumented rock walls which rival the ancient walls of Ireland and are largely ignored by scien

by foxhop 8y ago

New England (United States) has miles and miles of ancient and undocumented rock walls which rival the ancient walls of Ireland and are largely ignored by scientist.

e40 8y ago
Would love to read more about this, if you have references...
- foxhop 8y ago
  Most of the literature attributes the walls to early settlers and colonists. The vast amount of walls especially in places that were never settled makes this hypothesis wrong and outright misleading. Some walls were created by colonists but you would need millions and millions to make all the walls in this region. The early colonists were substitance farmers and there are no journals or diaries or documents which talk about building walls. They do have diaries of farming and painting and all other topics but not building walls up mountains and sprawling over legde and landscapes.
  - jshevek 8y ago
    I'm also interested in learning more if you have references/links you'd like to recommend.
    - foxhop 8y ago
      Additionally the Native Americans never laid claim to making any of the rock walls in this region. Search up liDAR and New England. The region is still being scanned but each time they scan more and more walls are illuminated. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/crowdsourcing-to-map-the-stone-walls-of-new-hampshire https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/crowdsourcing-to-map-t... https://nhdes.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=f4d57ec1a6b8414190ca0662456dffb0 https://nhdes.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?i...
  - igouy 8y ago
    What if there were people in the Americas before the colonists! What if the colonists occupied the land those people had farmed!
- freehunter 8y ago
  I was curious so I did some digging. Turns out there a few I was able to find that can be reasonably attributed to ancient humans. I found this site [1] that mentioned a name which turns out has a Wikipedia page [2] that talks about a stone chamber that was likely built in 2000-770 BC as an astronomical calendar. [1] http://planetvermont.com/pvq/v9n1/megaliths.html http://planetvermont.com/pvq/v9n1/megaliths.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gungywamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gungywamp
joemi 8y ago
I'm from New England and this is something I've never heard of before. It seems like it should be fairly easy to tell whether a stone wall is ancient or just from the time of the settlers, so without further references I'm fairly skeptical.
sushisushisushi 8y ago
The stone walls in New England are not ancient, they're from early settlers who cut down the forests and created pastures and farmland. The soil in New England is very rocky, so tilling it produced lots of rocks. The rocks were used to create walls to demarcate property lines. Now that the forests have regrown, there are many forgotten/disused stone walls deep in the woods, but they were originally put there by farmers. Edit: I'd add that these stone walls are still used by surveyors, especially when the historical records may be spotty, but also just because they in many cases happen to still fall along existing property lines. There _are_ a few "ancient" stone sites in New England of disputed origin, including "Mystery Hill" (also known as "America's Stonehenge"). But there is a strong argument to be made that these were constructed by modern Americans as hoaxes.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- foxhop 8y ago
  Most of the literature attributes the walls to early settlers and colonists. The vast amount of walls especially in places that were never settled makes this hypothesis wrong and outright misleading. Some walls were created by colonists but you would need millions and millions to make _all_ the walls in this region with in a time span of 150-300 years. It's simply impossible for the farmers to have built all the walls, even if thats all they did was build walls all day every day for generations. The early colonists were sustenance farmers and there are no journals or diaries or documents which talk about them building walls.
  - wirrbel 8y ago
    I don't write that much about making excel spreadsheets. I'd assume that when they stumbled over a rock they put it on the side of their field, arranging it to a wall. They might have just wrote down "field work" in diaries (if they had the time to write).
    - foxhop 8y ago
      You don't write about spreadsheets, but if we look at the library or the internet we can see that at least one person writes about spreadsheets. There is not one piece of written evidence that the colonists created all the walls. There is not one piece of written evidence that the native Americans built the walls. We don't know who built the walls.

by foxhop 8y ago

New England (United States) has miles and miles of ancient and undocumented rock walls which rival the ancient walls of Ireland and are largely ignored by scientist.

e40 8y ago

Would love to read more about this, if you have references...

foxhop 8y ago
Most of the literature attributes the walls to early settlers and colonists. The vast amount of walls especially in places that were never settled makes this hypothesis wrong and outright misleading. Some walls were created by colonists but you would need millions and millions to make all the walls in this region. The early colonists were substitance farmers and there are no journals or diaries or documents which talk about building walls. They do have diaries of farming and painting and all other topics but not building walls up mountains and sprawling over legde and landscapes.
- jshevek 8y ago
  I'm also interested in learning more if you have references/links you'd like to recommend.
  - foxhop 8y ago
    Additionally the Native Americans never laid claim to making any of the rock walls in this region. Search up liDAR and New England. The region is still being scanned but each time they scan more and more walls are illuminated. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/crowdsourcing-to-map-the-stone-walls-of-new-hampshire https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/crowdsourcing-to-map-t... https://nhdes.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=f4d57ec1a6b8414190ca0662456dffb0 https://nhdes.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?i...
- igouy 8y ago
  What if there were people in the Americas before the colonists! What if the colonists occupied the land those people had farmed!
freehunter 8y ago
I was curious so I did some digging. Turns out there a few I was able to find that can be reasonably attributed to ancient humans. I found this site [1] that mentioned a name which turns out has a Wikipedia page [2] that talks about a stone chamber that was likely built in 2000-770 BC as an astronomical calendar. [1] http://planetvermont.com/pvq/v9n1/megaliths.html http://planetvermont.com/pvq/v9n1/megaliths.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gungywamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gungywamp

joemi 8y ago

I'm from New England and this is something I've never heard of before. It seems like it should be fairly easy to tell whether a stone wall is ancient or just from the time of the settlers, so without further references I'm fairly skeptical.

sushisushisushi 8y ago

The stone walls in New England are not ancient, they're from early settlers who cut down the forests and created pastures and farmland. The soil in New England is very rocky, so tilling it produced lots of rocks. The rocks were used to create walls to demarcate property lines. Now that the forests have regrown, there are many forgotten/disused stone walls deep in the woods, but they were originally put there by farmers. Edit: I'd add that these stone walls are still used by surveyors, especially when the historical records may be spotty, but also just because they in many cases happen to still fall along existing property lines. There _are_ a few "ancient" stone sites in New England of disputed origin, including "Mystery Hill" (also known as "America's Stonehenge"). But there is a strong argument to be made that these were constructed by modern Americans as hoaxes.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
foxhop 8y ago
Most of the literature attributes the walls to early settlers and colonists. The vast amount of walls especially in places that were never settled makes this hypothesis wrong and outright misleading. Some walls were created by colonists but you would need millions and millions to make _all_ the walls in this region with in a time span of 150-300 years. It's simply impossible for the farmers to have built all the walls, even if thats all they did was build walls all day every day for generations. The early colonists were sustenance farmers and there are no journals or diaries or documents which talk about them building walls.
- wirrbel 8y ago
  I don't write that much about making excel spreadsheets. I'd assume that when they stumbled over a rock they put it on the side of their field, arranging it to a wall. They might have just wrote down "field work" in diaries (if they had the time to write).
  - foxhop 8y ago
    You don't write about spreadsheets, but if we look at the library or the internet we can see that at least one person writes about spreadsheets. There is not one piece of written evidence that the colonists created all the walls. There is not one piece of written evidence that the native Americans built the walls. We don't know who built the walls.