Chamber pillar a fossil tree trunk? | Forum

M

megadread May 12, 2009 13:21:49

Replying to Michael Bott

Weird. !
The only other site i can think of with a "tree" in the centre is Seahenge.

G

goffik May 12, 2009 13:37:06

Replying to Michael Bott

Hi Michael

As I'm not a geologist or owt, I can't offer any expert advice, but have been thinking about this a fair bit recently...

I was trying to dig out a nice photo for the monthly wallpaper over at the Heritage Action website (http://www.heritageaction.org) when I came across our photos of Bryn Celli Ddu - I remembered a discussion on this from last year and lo and behold, some photos of the very stone in my collection!

I was unaware of the discussion on my visit, and only discovered it afterwards. Looking at the photos though, and with the benefit of hindsight, I'm absolutely convinced you're right on this one! It looks exactly like a tree trunk. Astonishing, as you say, that nobody's picked up on it previously!

Hopefully one of our resident geologists will be able to shed some more "official" light on this, cos it'd be great to know for sure :)

G x

P

Pete G May 12, 2009 16:56:31

Replying to Michael Bott

Try asking Dr Rob Ixer ([email protected])
He should be able to tell you,
PeteG

T

tjj May 12, 2009 19:36:30

Replying to Michael Bott

Just watched the video clip twice, extremely interesting indeed. At first, when it was said that wood can petrify (in certain circumstances) in a century I started to wonder about the monolith being a wooden support used in the construction of the barrow.

When I looked at it the second time, I wondered what type of stone it is (or is meant to be) excuse my ignorance on this as I have not yet been to Angelsey (its on my list). In a north Wilthsire town there are loads of large stones lying around, some of them are sarsens but a significant number are sandstone which tend to have a rougher surface; it is also much softer in terms of 'working it'.

I do have a piece of fossilized wood; it is very irregular in both colour and texture.

P

Pete G May 12, 2009 20:57:38

Replying to Michael Bott

The Ragged Rascals had done some great spherical panos of the inside which shows the stone very well,
http://www.megalithics.com/wales/brynceli/celipjs.htm
Pete

P

Pete G May 13, 2009 01:16:28

Replying to Michael Bott

other fossillised tree's

http://www.infobritain.co.uk/Fossilised_Tree.JPG

http://www.yourlocalweb.co.uk/images/pictures/15/77/fossil-trees-155357.jpg

http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks-petrified-tree.jpg

http://www.geneticarchaeology.com/Images/Fossilised_Tree_Mystery_Solved_1.JPG

http://www.foxysislandwalks.com/Lesvos/Petrified-Forest04.jpg

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/images/070731-fossilized-trees_big.jpg

not very similar are they?
PeteG

M

moss May 13, 2009 08:58:22

Replying to Michael Bott

Okay leaving the practical aside for one moment and exploring another avenue... if this is a fossilised tree/stone? Why is it here within a tomb... first of all is'nt it near the route of the Irish into Wales, colonists as well, and of course the 'sacred' tree that sits at the heart of the celtic settlements. There's a big time gap, but mythology floats down through the ages and if other tombs were decorated in particular fashions you may have the People of the Tree, like you have the People of the Sun/ammonite at Stoney Littleton.. there is another named stone at Lough Gur, which had at one time resided at the bottom of the lake there..Michael Dames - Sacred Ireland has the story...

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/2259/stone_of_the_tree.html

S

StoneGloves May 13, 2009 12:43:07

Replying to Michael Bott

I've a computer in pieces - so just an intermittent connection - I've consequently only skimmed this topic.

There weren't trees around to fossilise - not as we know them. They were ferns - and are known as tree ferns. They produced the coal deposits which underlie northern england. They look like trees, as fossils. Ancient people knew about them and we have speculated here previosly as to what their beliefs may have cartegorised them as. I've a broken axe head that has been chipped from a fossilised bit of tree fern, which is recorded, so it's nothing new. Just a different scale. An amber is technically a fossil too - we know that was made into beads.

Getting conventional archaeologists to accept anything different is a task for masochists, perhaps.

P

Pete G May 13, 2009 17:41:02

Replying to Michael Bott

I've heard from the ragged rascals, I hope they don't mine me posting these snippets
PeteG

"...it looked like igneous rock.

We have pics of one of the smaller stones in the passage (the
"betyles") when it was displaced:-
http://www.megalithics.com/wales/brynceli/celnicl.htm

We noticed the striated "bark-like" surface of this smaller stone had
similarities to the larger chamber stone. Given that these stones
were set as focal points, it is likely that were specially selected
for this appearance.

We also noticed that one of the stones in the wall of the passage
grave La Hougue Bie had a strange "organic" tree-like appearance, and
this stone was concealed in a strange unexplained three stone
"baffle" niche constucted in chamber. We have a pic of this stone on
our La Hougue Bie page:-

http://www.megalithics.com/europe/jersey/bie/biemain.htm

It's about halfway down, above the cup and ring diagram, obviously
not a fossil, but unusually shaped and specially placed with
restricted visibilty. Interestingly, La Hougue Bie also contains
betyle stones."

T

tjj Jun 14, 2009 14:16:58

Replying to Michael Bott

Michael Bott wrote:

Hi folks

long time since Rupert or I posted here but it just struck me that many of you will by now have seen our DVD 'Standing with Stones'. But there is one bit of it that hasn't really had a good airing, and maybe it should - that is Rupert's 'discovery' of the fossil tree trunk in the chamber at Bryn Celli Ddu. We really would like to get some feedback on this and see if anyone out there can either confirm our assertion or give an authoritative alternative explanation of the oddity of that free standing pillar. Let me explain what happened:

When filming 'Standing with Stones', during our second week away on our Wales/Ireland expedition, we came to Bryn Celli Ddu on Anglesey. As was our routine, we first took ourselves there to do our preliminary recce. I had been there before - for Rupert it was a first time. Those of you familiar with this site will know that it is a large passage grave with a large central burial chamber. In that chamber is unusually, a single monolith - a pillar of stone.

We were in the chamber - me quietly thinking about camera angles and Rupert mulling how he could present this wonderful complex site, when he suddenly spoke to me and drew my attention to something so ridiculous and yet once seen so blindingly obvious that we were both genuinly shocked. We were shocked because lord knows how many people have passed through that little chamber and yet what we were suddenly seeing has been completely missed by everybody. We have looked high and low through all the literature, books, websites and blogs that mention this site. Nobody has seen something right in front of their faces that just doesn’t make any sense.

We were so taken aback by the implications of what we’d seen that instead writing script to shoot the next day, we decided we needed time to mull over this anomaly and we took off to Ireland instead - planning to film the Bryn Celli Ddu sequence on our return.

Here is the clip on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IubRw2ko69U

There are also a couple of photos of us with the pillar here: http://standingstones.tv/2008/07/15/shoot-diary-bryn-celli-ddu/

You’ll notice in the clip that Rupert says that “He came here yesterday” which you now know is not true. But it makes the point and is more succinct than “I came here ten days ago and I’ve been on a round trip through Ireland since in order to work out what I’m going to say next”

There have not been any experts gone to check the pillar as yet and we’d really like an expert second opinion on our interpretation of this little conundrum.

Anybody?

Michael

I hope no one minds me bringing this thread back up ..... it sort of captured my imagination and I was wondering if any definite conclusion had been reached.

I saw an impressive fossilised tree trunk at the Pit Rivers museum in Oxford yesterday, taken from Jurassic forest in Madagascar and according to the brass plaque "the original wood has been replaced by silica (SiO2) which turned it into stone," it was 200,000,000 years old. However, the museum information didn't tell us how long the fossil had been a rock when it was found.

Such a time span is quite a hard concept to grasp and I mention it as there was some suggestion that in certain conditions wood could solidify in a much shorter time ...... (though I think I may have been somewhat naive in my own small contribution to this discussion).

tjj

B

baza Jul 15, 2017 17:30:39

Replying to Michael Bott

https://tinkinswoodarchaeology.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/the-blueschist-stone-pillar-inside-bryn-celli-ddu/