Harriet Vered has written a book trying to explain the ancient mystery of how huge amounts of building substances were transported
advertisement
Author Harriet Vered tackles ancient mysteries in new book
By Julie SpencerSeptember 17, 2012
How did Ancient Britons move goods across the country without maps or signposts?
How did tin from a Cornish mine find its way to a bronze foundry in Birmingham?
The answer is that nobody knows, but a Wokingham author has put together a theory that pre-literate Megalithic man relied on an elaborate transport network linked by stone circles.
Harriet Vered and her co-author Mick Harper’s The Megalithic Empire seeks to explain how materials and products were moved around on a huge scale using menhirs, obelisks, chalk figures and other ancient landmarks as signposts.
Mrs Vered, who lives in Goodings Close, concedes that their theory will be seen as controversial, particularly by geologists who maintain that features on Dartmoor, for example, are naturally occurring.
She says: “The tors could have been man made and that is quite controversial. The hypothesis is that the Cornish man leaves his mine and navigates through Cornwall using stone circles and tors on Dartmoor to Avebury stone circle, which is a sort of depot.
“It is on the Ridgeway which can be reached by any people in Britain without having to cross water.”
The illustrated book also claims that V-shaped landscape features are often aligned with another feature such as a standing stone, making them important navigational points of the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Mrs Vered, who has a background in anthropology and languages and taught modern languages at Bracknell and Wokingham College, adds: “I don’t think that differences of opinion mean that people are right or wrong. A lot of these areas have been taken over by different schools of thought and I wish people would get together and pool their ideas.”
n The Megalithic Empire, published by Mr Harper’s publishing company Nathan Carmody, is available on Amazon.
Browse Sections
