"Constructed of sheet iron, the helmet, once decorated with gold leaf, is the only one to have been found in Britain with its silver gilt plating intact." Source: Telegraph.
"The helmet features scenes of Roman military victory, including the bust of a woman flanked by lions, and a Roman Emperor on horseback with the goddess Victory flying behind and a cowering figure, possibly a native Briton, being trampled under his horse's hooves.
"The object is believed to have been buried in the years around Roman Emperor Claudius's invasion of Britain in AD43." More here.
"A piece of jawbone excavated from a prehistoric cave in England is the earliest evidence for modern humans in Europe, according to an international team of scientists. The bone first was believed to be about 35,000 years old, but the new research study shows it to be significantly older -- between 41,000 and 44,000 years old, according to the findings that will be published in the journal Nature. The new dating of the bone is expected to help scientists pin down how quickly the modern humans spread across Europe during the last Ice Age. It also helps confirm the much-debated theory that early humans coexisted with Neanderthals." Source: Science Daily Nov. 2, 2011.
"Archaeologists have created a 3D visualisation of a whole prehistoric landscape [~6000 BC] now submerged 20 metres under the English Channel, and 8 miles off the West Sussex coast." Source: Wessex Archaeology.
Most archaeologists believe that the stones at Stonehenge were transported there over long distances by the people who built the prehistoric monument. The only question is how they did it. There are other theories, of course, but none of them seem to have a lot of support.
I'm not sure why Brian John, the author of The Bluestone Enigma, calls the establishment view of how Stonehenge was built a "conspiracy," but he has an alternate theory about where the stones came from and whether Stonehenge was actually completed.
The "glacial transport" theory isn't anything new, however. For example, this History.com article says that the theory dates back to the Seventies:
"As early as the 1970s, geologists have been adding their voices to the debate over how Stonehenge came into being. Challenging the classic image of industrious Neolithic builders pushing, carting, rolling or hauling the craggy bluestones from faraway Wales, some scientists have suggested that glaciers, not humans, did most of the heavy lifting. The globe is dotted with giant rocks known as glacial erratics that were carried over long distances by moving ice floes. Perhaps Stonehenge’s mammoth slabs were snatched from the Preseli Hills by glaciers during one of the Ice Ages and deposited a stone’s throw away—at least comparatively—from Salisbury Plain.
"Most archaeologists have remained cool toward the glacial theory, wondering how the forces of nature could possibly have delivered the exact number of stones needed to complete the circle. It is also unclear whether ice sheets ever made it far enough south to cover land in Stonehenge’s vicinity."
Note the assumption that Stonehenge was actually completed (I'm assuming that's what is meant by "complete the circle"). John believes that the monument wasn't completed, so I suppose it's possible that the builders didn't have enough stones available to finish the job. In any case, I think his theory is interesting and at least as plausible as the idea that those massive stones were transported all the way from Wales. After all, if no one can figure out how the builders did it, maybe the answer is that they didn't do it.
"A chance discovery of coins has led to the bigger find of a Roman town, further west than it was previously thought Romans had settled in England," according to the BBC.
"The town was found under fields a number of miles west of Exeter, Devon.
"Nearly 100 Roman coins were initially uncovered there by two amateur archaeological enthusiasts.
"It had been thought that fierce resistance from local tribes to Roman culture stopped the Romans from moving so far into the county.
"Sam Moorhead, national finds adviser for Iron Age and Roman coins for the PAS at the British Museum, said it was one of the most significant Roman discoveries in the country for many decades."
"A human skull dated to about 2,684 years ago with an 'exceptionally preserved' human brain still inside of it was recently discovered in a waterlogged U.K. pit," according to Discovery News, citing a recent paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
"Archaeological work in advance of construction at a site on the edge of York, UK, yielded human remains of prehistoric to Romano-British date," according to the abstract of the original JAS paper. "Amongst these was a mandible and cranium, the intra-cranial space of which contained shrunken but macroscopically recognizable remains of a brain."
Ominous Planet News and commentary from the most ominous planet in the solar system.
Phase Four Now Available
My apocalyptic technothriller, Phase Four, is now available from Amazon and UK digital publisher, Blasted Heath. The novel can be downloaded in a variety of ebook formats, including Kindle format from Amazon. My Spinetingler Magazine article on Phase Four can be read here.
