some stone wall stats/ insights
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mickey
Greetings MarathonTmatt,
If those canals turn out to be spaces between walls, it would confirm to me that this land is where Atlantis existed. Walls that could have been used for military protection or for the purpose of retaining/redirecting water during times of deluge. More needs to be looked at.
mickey
Hi mickey-
according to a survey done in the late 19th century there is over a quarter of a million miles worth of stone walls in the new england area, meandering around the land-scape, up ledges, retaining wet-land and water-works, etc. if these meandering walls were combined into one continuous wall, it would go around the circumference of the globe (ie the earth) more than 10 times.
it is a statistical imposiibility that most of these walls were built in the colonial era, within 200 year time frame. colonists did build some stone walls, but compared to the already exisitng indigenous walls is minute in comparison. colonists also used wood more as a resource/ fence-making. i also know how to tell the difference as these two wall building traditions are different building styles.
alot of the walls, of ancient origin (native, etc.) i examine usually have serpent and/ or bird efiigy's/ motiffs incorporated into the design elements. also stone altars are frequently incorportaed into the walls with little statuette stone idols still in place on top of these altars (birds, turtles, snakes, panthers, etc.), and the walls are usually found in context to many other ancient types of stone works. also i did notice some of these walls are either-
a) fortifying village and/or ceremonial sites
b) retaining water from brooks, swamps, wetlands. sometimes even terraced in multiple levels (lower level to retain the water at the edge of the stream, upper level fortifying the hillside). things like that.
if anyone in general is curious i have featured some wall examples in this thread before & will probably post more soon. these are pre-colonial feats (who knows how old some of this is) of engineering.
these walls indicate a stone-wall building tradition by native people over thousands of generations, given the sheer volume of stone-work. also, in colonial records, land deeds that refer to "indian fences" or "olde indian fences" are referring to stone walls of pre-colonial origin. alot of walls i have looked at run up steep rocky ledges, which from a colonial farming perspective makes no sense, as those grounds were never farmed or maintained by farmers, it would have been designated and classified as "wasteland." however, alot of these archaic-looking walls, thousands of years ago, would have been capping off and retaining the sides of beautiful river valleys.
Echo Lake Stone Lodge Re-Visited
Since I did a shotty job of covering this very important site, I am going to cover it again.
Echo Lake is in Hopkinton/ Milford MA. and is the headwaters of the Charles (flows into Boston Harbor), Blackstone (flows into Narragansett Bay RI) and Sudbury (flows into other rivers that dump into the Merrimack/Atlantic in NH) Rivers. To Native people such areas were important meeting spots- the confluence of rivers. I first started hiking that area with Massachusetts state archaelogist and anthropologist Curt Hoffman, who I first met when hiking a group up to another site I found, the stone shrine with the winter solstice alignment (first post on this thread.)
Curt wanted to see if there was anything important to be found in the Echo Lake area. We found some cairns on a hillside the first time we went in. It is a relatively in-accessible place with alot of rock ledges/ under-brush. I went back and found the Stone Lodge/ Shrine. There are also stone altars surrounding the Stone Lodge, as well as a ceremonial stone circle at the foot of the lodge.
The three stone altars-
This is the closest stone altar to the Stone Lodge. I imagine somebody placing an offering on this stone slab before entering the main vicinity of the site, over-looking the site-
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mUlNhyMevn...1600/ech8A.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fjukpxghec...s1600/ech8.jpg
Stone Altar #2, incorporates a stone fish effigy-
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-02RkJYv8pE...s1600/ech5.jpg
Stone Altar #3, stone ring petro-form and stone slab-
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YGmQGhJaQs...600/ech7OB.jpg
The ceremonial stone ring at the foot of the stone lodge (partly buried)-
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1c5gxokxm1...1600/ech7B.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rAOwKTigA-...600/ech7OA.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qi3t8iGHv2...600/ech7BC.jpg
The Stone Lodge itself. Archeo-astronomy still needs to be done at this site, I am the only one to see this site in person for research so far-
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YgCSzE9hwD...600/ech7JA.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UsBkt5zT5a...600/ech7CA.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v9qEtPG5fu...s1600/ech7.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sHdD_yVXgj...600/ech7KC.jpg
back of the structure. I am concerned that these trees are ruining the back of the structure. also the stone work the trees are messing up seems to indicate more elaborate design elements buried in the back of the structure-
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TLenv5d1N9...1600/ech7A.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ikOwAw-127...1600/ech7G.jpg
Close- up of the roof slabs from climbing on top of the structure. Notice the lichen has built up, which takes thousands of years to do-
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eoQgRWzLsy...1600/ech7O.jpg
There are no quarry marks or drill marks on any of the stone slabs. This, as well as the context of the stone altars and ring around the Stone Lodge puts this structure in the context of being ancient.
Some of the nearby hill-side cairns-
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Jwch4cJd5N...1600/ech16.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uvbKc5JS5V...600/ech16A.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kimwHxB8FL...600/ech16D.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pYmeVUTpOg...600/ech16E.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q6AurRPrO4...600/ech16G.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PCair3RcU9...1600/ech21.jpg
I also found that the Echo Lake Stone Lodge (my description) or Chamber, is very structurally similar to the Chamber found in Webster, MA. The landowner of the Webster MA. Chamber has done some restoration work to the Chamber on his property, older photos reveal it in a more decrepid state. Echo Lake structure is built into a boulder, while the Webster Chamber is dressed up with smaller stones-
Echo Lake-
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oz-lO-saHm...600/ech7CA.jpg
Webster, MA. Chamber-
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mMdwOaApQx...0/webster2.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B5fQdDMX-f...0/webster1.jpg
Webster Chamber opens up into a "P" shape where Echo Lake structure is a straight "l"
Temple/ Chamber along the Qinnebaug River (see earlier posts in thread). Incorporates being built into a boulder (such as by Echo Lake) and is dressed up in stone (as in Webster)-
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ObUVbJdsUZ...1600/cha1B.jpg (this is the chamber w/ the standing stones on the roof).
It looks like the builders worked with what was available as a resource in the natural area, therefore differences in building materials, but the structures are similar enough that there was uniformity as well.
Back to the Echo Lake area. Not only is this the headwaters of those 3 rivers, it is the highest point in the region, between Boston and Worcester, MA. It is located in a tract of land that was Indian Territory up through 1715, well into the colonial era and later than 1675/76, which was King Philip's War in the region, which broke the influence and power of the Native confederacies. Many survivors fled to Canada, were killed, or sold into slavery into the Carribean Islands. Yet a small remnant group of native people held on to some of this land, up through 1715 when it was aggresively purchased by trust funds and benefactors of Harvard University, such as Edward Hopkins, whom the town of Hopkinton, MA. is named after, the start of the Boston marathon. In the 1600's, there was a failed assasination attempt on Edward Hopkin's life by a native group in CT. He was playing groups of colonial and native alliances against each other. He was also a cabinet member of Oliver Cromwell.
Anyway, before Plymouth Colony in 1620 exploration of the New England area began in 1497. Explorers were told to look for Norumbega, a lost city of gold said to be in the region. Expoloeres like Giovanni de Verrazano in 1524 who explored Narragansett Bay and Samuel de Champlain in 1608 even placed different locations of Norumbega on their maps. Was this just to please the crowns of europe to fund their expolrations or is there something to this Norumbega? Dutch "fisher-men" were also all over this region in the 1500's and in 1609, the Bank of Amsterdam, the first Central Bank, was established.
Small amounts of gold were found in Hopkinton MA. in several places in the 19th century. If colonists who lived there for only 150 years could find it, Native people surely knew about it. Could it be that some of these structures, such as the Echo Lake Stone Lodge, were originally lined with Gold Leaf, plundered and stripped by early explorers and Dutch "fisher-men?" Hopkinton MA. also had/ has a mineral springs, which was a big ritzy tourist attraction in the 19th century. There is also a high concentration of Native ceremonial and stoneworks all through-out the towns of this area, what I refer to as "The Greater Echo Lake Area."