7 ms·

Drought Has Revealed Spain's Long-Submerged 'Stonehenge'

135 points by prostoalex 7y ago

dr_dshiv 7y ago
I wish more people saw how fragile our grasp on the past is -- and how much we still don't understand about our emergence at a basic, basic level...
- ianai 7y ago
  I wish society as a whole had a better memory. Even events from 4 years ago are lost easily from the collective mindset.
  - oh_sigh 7y ago
    Can you give an example of an important event in 2015 that has been lost in the collective consciousness?
    - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
      Disclaimer: I cheated by googling, but that's the point - I forgot about these events because they were no longer in the collective consciousness. Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris - dunno what happened with this. Overshadowed by: Paris terrorist attack on stadium and club - 130 people died Charleston Church shooting - Replaced by more shootings that happened afterwards (in that year alone: Roseburg, Lafayette, Chattanooga, Planned Parenthood, San Bernardino). Thoughts, prayers, and calls for gun control even if neither of those fix the underlying issues. European Refugee crisis - Agreements with Turkey and Libya have turned this 'crisis' around, but, more boats are arriving in Greece lately. Just a few examples I blatantly copied off of a website. Nobody talks about these things anymore because Trump used a sharpie.
      - ianai 7y ago
        US presidential history is seemingly rich of examples. Not holding myself to the 4 year framing: All the accusations Bush 43 made against the democrats for being Russian-leaning communists contradicts today’s politics badly. The stimulus checks to stabilize the economy during descent into the Great Recession. The interruption of Pres Obamas first state of the union. Just how abnormal that was seems to have simultaneously led to today’s lack of governmental progress and yet been not just forgiven but embraced and promulgated.
        WaltPurvis 7y ago
        > All the accusations Bush 43 made against the democrats for being Russian-leaning communists I don't recall Bush 43 accusing Democrats of being "Russian-leaning communists" even one single time, let alone so often you could talk about "all" the times he did it. I loathed nearly everything about Bush 43 and his administration, but can you cite an example or two (more would be better) where this actually happened? I don't know if it's my memory that's faulty or yours, but you're the one lamenting our poor memory of recent events and I don't believe these particular recent events even happened.
        ianai 7y ago
        I think it was during press briefings. Particularly when he would discuss the previous administration or working “across the isle.”
        derp_dee_derp 7y ago
        how about linking to a cspan recording, or an archived news article, or perhaps even the presidential archives and actually providing evidence instead of just more anecdotes that you "think" happened.
        strgcmc 7y ago
        Here is an NPR article [1] summarizing US-Russia relations during the GWB era, and describing GWB's attacks during his first campaign, on Bill Clinton for being too chummy with Russia... I think it would be fair to say this represented a general feeling on the right (around the early 2000s), that Democrats under Clinton had been too friendly with Russia (since GWB was able to make this into a campaign issue): > At the time, George W. Bush was campaigning for the presidency, lambasting President Clinton's chummy relationship with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Bush promised to end personal favoritism and protect American national security. Taking office the following year, he began by expelling 50 Russian diplomats from Washington for alleged spying. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld snubbed the Russian defense minister soon after by refusing to meet him on the sidelines of a NATO conference. [1] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11473661 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114736...
trhway 7y ago
"7,000-year-old Dolmen of Guadalperal" "While the Dolmen of Guadalperal has widely been compared to Stonehenge—and rightly so—the Spanish example was once an entirely enclosed space. And it could also be around 2,000 years older." kind of dovetails to https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/celts-descended-from-spanish-fishermen-study-finds-416727.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/celts-des... " A team from Oxford University has discovered that the Celts, Britain's indigenous people, are descended from a tribe of Iberian fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago."
- mikhailfranco 7y ago
  Of course you contradict yourself, the Celts cannot be Britain's indigenous people according to the article itself. There were movements of people, and movements of culture, which could be separate, but Celts are late Indo-European arrivals to the British Isles, either directly from the Celtic heartland in Germany, or indirectly along the western coasts from Spain. The Celts just happened to be the culture in place when the first accounts were written by the Greeks and Romans. So they have self-appointed themselves to be poor down-trodden invaded brutalized indigenous people - but they were just the previous wave of ruthless invaders! There were people in the British Isles 10s and 100s of thousands of years ago. Britain was wiped clean by ice ages and repopulated. Britain was connected to Europe by a land bridge, etc. etc. All this long before the Celts turned up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Britain There is no Celtic presence in Britain before about 500 BC. Stonehenge and Guadalperal are much, much too old to have been built by the Celts. Celtic druids did not build Stonehenge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts
DoctorOetker 7y ago
they look like the proposals for ominous landmarks of radioactive waste burial sites, which makes zero sense of course!
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Yeah I've seen numerous links to that pointed to from HN over time. The problem with all of those proposals is that to an ignorant archeologist from, say, a hundred years ago, any visible sign, warning or construction will only pique the curiosity. I mean Tutankhamun's tomb had plenty of warnings inscribed on it, but they were dismissed as silly curses and there's no such thing as curses. The same will happen with nuclear storage sites that are 'protected' like that. Better to put it away very deep, where erosion and tectonic shifts won't expose it for a million years and just forget about it. I read something about putting it in deep boreholes the other day.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    There was a discussion of how to permanently (100.000 years or more) mark a dangerous site. Creative solutions abounded. I like the one where it kills you quickly, so it stays obvious that the site is dangerous. Better than killing thousands slowly over many years!
dalbasal 7y ago
Wow! I have to say, I am totally with the zeitgeist in terms of recent interest in the early neolithic and late paleolithic. These are fascinating to me. It's particularly fascinating how widespread (both time and place) the motifs are, structural and functional/symbolic. Celestial-solar calendars. There are similarities to British henges and Irish granges. I'm sure there are (the BTB...Are they really going to re-submerge this site (or move it)?!! It seems insane.
- arethuza 7y ago
  I think the similarly to henges might be a coincidence as the rings of stones in this case were the inner and outer walls of a construction that was originally covered with a mound of soil (so more like chambered tombs like Maes Howe).
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  I didn't know the interest in neolithic is also a Zeitgeist phenomen. I mean, I am interested and my circle of people, but is it really more widespread?
  - dalbasal 7y ago
    ..maybe not lady gaga level zeitgeist.. nonfiction book sales and such.
    - hutzlibu 7y ago
      Do you maybe have some recommendations about good books on the topic? (english or german)
erjavicdb 7y ago
nice!
kuu 7y ago
We (Spain) have a similar story but with a more recent church: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sant-roma-de-sau https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sant-roma-de-sau
- mmsimanga 7y ago
  In the Western Cape in South Africa ours is not quite as dramatic but grape vines from farm that was active 35 years ago became visible during the recent drought. The vines and farm usually submerged. https://www.traveller24.com/Explore/watch-ghostly-vineyard-hidden-beneath-the-theewaterskloof-dam-20170603 https://www.traveller24.com/Explore/watch-ghostly-vineyard-h...
- davidw 7y ago
  There's a similar one in Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reschensee#/media/File:Reschensee_with_Graun_Church_tower_and_boat.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reschensee#/media/File:Reschen...
seax 7y ago
It's really a shame that we are destroying or have destroyed so many sites like these for (relatively) short sighted dam building.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Pretty much any place you build in Europe, you would have to disturb a historical site. We can abandon the earth to its past, or move on. As population grows, we don't have much choice?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
newsreview1 7y ago
Obermier, who discovered and preserved this site did fantastic work at the the cave of Altamira in the 1920's. He deserves more credit. His work at the Dolmen of Guadalperal wasn't even known about until 40 years later.

135 points by prostoalex 7y ago

I wish more people saw how fragile our grasp on the past is -- and how much we still don't understand about our emergence at a basic, basic level...

ianai 7y ago
I wish society as a whole had a better memory. Even events from 4 years ago are lost easily from the collective mindset.
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  Can you give an example of an important event in 2015 that has been lost in the collective consciousness?
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Disclaimer: I cheated by googling, but that's the point - I forgot about these events because they were no longer in the collective consciousness. Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris - dunno what happened with this. Overshadowed by: Paris terrorist attack on stadium and club - 130 people died Charleston Church shooting - Replaced by more shootings that happened afterwards (in that year alone: Roseburg, Lafayette, Chattanooga, Planned Parenthood, San Bernardino). Thoughts, prayers, and calls for gun control even if neither of those fix the underlying issues. European Refugee crisis - Agreements with Turkey and Libya have turned this 'crisis' around, but, more boats are arriving in Greece lately. Just a few examples I blatantly copied off of a website. Nobody talks about these things anymore because Trump used a sharpie.
    - ianai 7y ago
      US presidential history is seemingly rich of examples. Not holding myself to the 4 year framing: All the accusations Bush 43 made against the democrats for being Russian-leaning communists contradicts today’s politics badly. The stimulus checks to stabilize the economy during descent into the Great Recession. The interruption of Pres Obamas first state of the union. Just how abnormal that was seems to have simultaneously led to today’s lack of governmental progress and yet been not just forgiven but embraced and promulgated.
      - WaltPurvis 7y ago
        > All the accusations Bush 43 made against the democrats for being Russian-leaning communists I don't recall Bush 43 accusing Democrats of being "Russian-leaning communists" even one single time, let alone so often you could talk about "all" the times he did it. I loathed nearly everything about Bush 43 and his administration, but can you cite an example or two (more would be better) where this actually happened? I don't know if it's my memory that's faulty or yours, but you're the one lamenting our poor memory of recent events and I don't believe these particular recent events even happened.
        ianai 7y ago
        I think it was during press briefings. Particularly when he would discuss the previous administration or working “across the isle.”
        derp_dee_derp 7y ago
        how about linking to a cspan recording, or an archived news article, or perhaps even the presidential archives and actually providing evidence instead of just more anecdotes that you "think" happened.
        strgcmc 7y ago
        Here is an NPR article [1] summarizing US-Russia relations during the GWB era, and describing GWB's attacks during his first campaign, on Bill Clinton for being too chummy with Russia... I think it would be fair to say this represented a general feeling on the right (around the early 2000s), that Democrats under Clinton had been too friendly with Russia (since GWB was able to make this into a campaign issue): > At the time, George W. Bush was campaigning for the presidency, lambasting President Clinton's chummy relationship with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Bush promised to end personal favoritism and protect American national security. Taking office the following year, he began by expelling 50 Russian diplomats from Washington for alleged spying. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld snubbed the Russian defense minister soon after by refusing to meet him on the sidelines of a NATO conference. [1] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11473661 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114736...

trhway 7y ago

"7,000-year-old Dolmen of Guadalperal" "While the Dolmen of Guadalperal has widely been compared to Stonehenge—and rightly so—the Spanish example was once an entirely enclosed space. And it could also be around 2,000 years older." kind of dovetails to https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/celts-descended-from-spanish-fishermen-study-finds-416727.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/celts-des... " A team from Oxford University has discovered that the Celts, Britain's indigenous people, are descended from a tribe of Iberian fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago."

mikhailfranco 7y ago
Of course you contradict yourself, the Celts cannot be Britain's indigenous people according to the article itself. There were movements of people, and movements of culture, which could be separate, but Celts are late Indo-European arrivals to the British Isles, either directly from the Celtic heartland in Germany, or indirectly along the western coasts from Spain. The Celts just happened to be the culture in place when the first accounts were written by the Greeks and Romans. So they have self-appointed themselves to be poor down-trodden invaded brutalized indigenous people - but they were just the previous wave of ruthless invaders! There were people in the British Isles 10s and 100s of thousands of years ago. Britain was wiped clean by ice ages and repopulated. Britain was connected to Europe by a land bridge, etc. etc. All this long before the Celts turned up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Britain There is no Celtic presence in Britain before about 500 BC. Stonehenge and Guadalperal are much, much too old to have been built by the Celts. Celtic druids did not build Stonehenge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

DoctorOetker 7y ago

they look like the proposals for ominous landmarks of radioactive waste burial sites, which makes zero sense of course!

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Yeah I've seen numerous links to that pointed to from HN over time. The problem with all of those proposals is that to an ignorant archeologist from, say, a hundred years ago, any visible sign, warning or construction will only pique the curiosity. I mean Tutankhamun's tomb had plenty of warnings inscribed on it, but they were dismissed as silly curses and there's no such thing as curses. The same will happen with nuclear storage sites that are 'protected' like that. Better to put it away very deep, where erosion and tectonic shifts won't expose it for a million years and just forget about it. I read something about putting it in deep boreholes the other day.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  There was a discussion of how to permanently (100.000 years or more) mark a dangerous site. Creative solutions abounded. I like the one where it kills you quickly, so it stays obvious that the site is dangerous. Better than killing thousands slowly over many years!

dalbasal 7y ago

Wow! I have to say, I am totally with the zeitgeist in terms of recent interest in the early neolithic and late paleolithic. These are fascinating to me. It's particularly fascinating how widespread (both time and place) the motifs are, structural and functional/symbolic. Celestial-solar calendars. There are similarities to British henges and Irish granges. I'm sure there are (the BTB...Are they really going to re-submerge this site (or move it)?!! It seems insane.

arethuza 7y ago
I think the similarly to henges might be a coincidence as the rings of stones in this case were the inner and outer walls of a construction that was originally covered with a mound of soil (so more like chambered tombs like Maes Howe).
hutzlibu 7y ago
I didn't know the interest in neolithic is also a Zeitgeist phenomen. I mean, I am interested and my circle of people, but is it really more widespread?
- dalbasal 7y ago
  ..maybe not lady gaga level zeitgeist.. nonfiction book sales and such.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    Do you maybe have some recommendations about good books on the topic? (english or german)

erjavicdb 7y ago

nice!

kuu 7y ago

We (Spain) have a similar story but with a more recent church: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sant-roma-de-sau https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sant-roma-de-sau

mmsimanga 7y ago
In the Western Cape in South Africa ours is not quite as dramatic but grape vines from farm that was active 35 years ago became visible during the recent drought. The vines and farm usually submerged. https://www.traveller24.com/Explore/watch-ghostly-vineyard-hidden-beneath-the-theewaterskloof-dam-20170603 https://www.traveller24.com/Explore/watch-ghostly-vineyard-h...
davidw 7y ago
There's a similar one in Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reschensee#/media/File:Reschensee_with_Graun_Church_tower_and_boat.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reschensee#/media/File:Reschen...

seax 7y ago

It's really a shame that we are destroying or have destroyed so many sites like these for (relatively) short sighted dam building.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Pretty much any place you build in Europe, you would have to disturb a historical site. We can abandon the earth to its past, or move on. As population grows, we don't have much choice?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

newsreview1 7y ago

Obermier, who discovered and preserved this site did fantastic work at the the cave of Altamira in the 1920's. He deserves more credit. His work at the Dolmen of Guadalperal wasn't even known about until 40 years later.