Anglesey Standing Stones:
09/03/09: An area of historical curiosity for me is standing stones. Living on Anglesey in North Wales means I'm practically surrounded by them and it has certainly broadened my awareness of their presence throughout Wales and to Scotland. The maps to the left show my main areas of interest. Other sites are talked about further down this page.

I don't think there is any proof to the purpose of standing stones (I'm talking about the individual and lone megaliths seemingly dotted about at random), but this does stop me or others from wondering. I believe you have to look at standing stones with an open mind and objectively. That's the easy part because the not so easy part is to visualise what their surrounding landscape was like at the time they were erected.

Much of the greenery of Anglesey has long been stripped away and the land (where it's not too hilly with rocky outcrops) is now used for farming and housing, but how did the prehistoric residents live? (And were they druids?) I suppose the residents, whoever they were, lived in small groups of wooden or mud huts in various locations. I also suppose the land was more covered in woodland than it is today, although the island is quite exposed to westerly winds coming in from the Irish Sea. Some standing stones are quite prominent in their location and I wonder therefore if they were as visible at the time of their erection or were they instead in private and secluded locations.

Anglesey has its roads that criss-cross the surface and even a dual carriage-way that cuts through the landscape from Bangor on the mainland to Holyhead, but what of the ancient pathways and tracks? I suspect most of these have been lost beneath tarmac and essentially grown over time to no longer carry individuals or small groups of travellers from place to place with or without the assistance of animals but cars and HGVs. Were there ancient pathways that lead to and from key places or dwellings and are standing stones in such a place to have aided travellers, like signposts or beacons in a time when there weren't maps and the landscape was just that, landscape? Cycling along some roads (main or narrow country tracks) there are a few standing stones that I come across that seem to be in an ideal location to be utilised as sign posts at a junction - do these routes and junctions exist from ancient times?

Those are some of the plausible questions I have, but there are also some ideas which could be considered farfetched and even preposterous by many. Myths relating to standing stones paint a picture of giants throwing the stones to earth. I believe all myths begin somewhere, so who were these giants? Were the standing stones erected by aliens and not humans? As daft as it may seem, this idea I believe fits in well with the equally imagination-stretching ideas relating to other sites around the world, such as the pyramids of Egypt which also receive similar claims. I have read of claims that the pyramids were landing pads for alien craft (like in the film Stargate).

Some believe the pyramids were built to harness the Earth's energy, such as that created by its magnetic field. Some also believe standing stones were used in a similar way or in fact still do as they are clamed to be positioned on leylines. Some go further and claim a conspiracy is in place involving the construction of large buildings at or near these sites, such as power stations to either disrupt this energy harnessing process - Wylfa Nuclear Power Station is located on Anglesey.

I recently came across information about the Theremin device which measures changes in electrical fields and a musical instrument involving a similar process with changing notes being created by the player moving their hands around the device. This consisted of a metal rod and I thought maybe these devices aren't all that dissimilar to standing stones which maybe could have been used as a sort of radar to track incoming "alien" craft. I say "alien" because I can only imagine other-worldly intelligent beings using tools.
 

UFOs are back:
15/05/08: "UFO Expert" Timothy Good appeared on the BBCs Breakfast on 14/05/08 to talk about UFOs, as the Ministry Of Defence's (MoD) records of real life UFO sightings for the past thirty years have been made public for the first time. For those interested in UFOs, aliens and government conspiracies (like me) will be keen to find out what transpires. For those not clued up on UFOs they can be forgiven for not taking the issue seriously and responding with a sense of humour. This was sort of how Timothy Good was spoken to on Breakfast but I thoroughly respected his character - smartly dressed, well dressed and educated - no anorak or dark-rimmed glasses in sight! When questions were put to him his responses were very credible and I found it interesting when he said there was nothing new in the documents he had read so far, but there are other documents that still won't be made public such as the above top secret material.

I had been feeling recently that the topic of UFOs had gone pretty quiet over recent years, although Timothy Good did reveal that global sightings were still occurring. I thought maybe there would be more coverage of these MoD papers and what they contain in an edition of the UFO Magazine, but I'm not sure if it's still going (my local newsagents doesn't stock it) and their old website address doesn't seem to be maintained by the magazine any more?

Timothy Good is also an author on the topic and back in 2003 I read his book Alien Base, in which he talked about Earth's encounters with extraterrestrials click here for my brief review. He has written more recently, but I can't find anything on Amazon that he may have released or will be releasing this year.

Stonehenge and Egypt:
22/03/07: Some believe Stonehenge and other megalithic sites were used to calculate/predict eclipses... the people who did this must have been astronomers and scientists. In a book I read, the author believed that the ancient Egyptians were getting in a bit of a pickle when their calculations of the eclipses (probably based on observations made by an older race such as the Atlanteans) were becoming 'out of sync' and they were struggling to maintain the order of the people who were expected to give offerings/sacrifices to the gods. So, the pharaohs sent off their high priests/scientists to sort out the problem which involved venturing north and building 'stone circles'. These were their astronomical computers of the day, which have been through many alterations/upgrades since their original construction.

Some scientists dispute that these sites were constructed as scientific instruments. People at this time were simply cave-men. However, the natives of Britain may well have been "simple-folk" but that is not to say that these sites weren't constructed/designed by a visiting race. This idea also avoids the conclusion by some that these sites were built by aliens from another world altogether.