Set in a landscape surrounded by neolithic monuments, Ring of Brodgar, Stones of Stenness and the amazing Ness of Brodgar (still being excavated). All within a mile of each other. One of many stunning sites within Orkney.
@andrewandres148 It faces west, to the midwinter setting sun. Perhaps one celebrating birth, awakening on earth, the other celebrating death and passage to the beyond.
@@lapsedluddite3381 Interesting that it aligns with midwinter setting sun VS rising sun in Ireland... Does it only reach the inner chamber only on winter solstice sunset, or more like a few days or more around midwinter? thanks for the info... Did it have stones with circular water type representations carved in them, near the enterance?
The technology of 5000 years ago, to build such a precise structure is incomprehensible, they were certainly very smart people. And that beautiful curved entrance! I visited it about 40 years ago, an indelible memory.
It always amazes me what our ancestors were able to accomplish without anything other than manual labour! And Thousands of years later they’re still standing!
@@CazPeaI mean the pyramids were stolen from even in the days of the ancients and romans stripped metal and gold from tombs and structures of Rome to send to Byzantium
What a magnificent building! I had no idea it was there. I really would be very interested in learning more about it. And, it is in incredible shape! The circular surroundings are beautiful, too.
I have a guitar pedal that captures the reverb of spaces. You record a sharp sound in the space, like a hand clap or a popped balloon, USB the wave file into the pedal and like magic, the pedal creates the reverberations associated with the space. This cairn in Orkney is one of the IR captures included in the pedal. The pedal is pre-loaded with many caves, churches, rooms and vintage reverb devices, it's called the Poly Verbs. That ancient cairn has some interesting acoustic properties that sound really good with a flute or guitar. Pretty neat, eh? - I thought so. - the picture of the cairn was included in the directions pamphlet, I recognized it in this video thumbnail and had to watch the video to see the actual space! Amazing!
Very interesting video. The type of story that can launch a lifetime of learning and exploration (rather than shopping for disposable clothes on one phone)
A good video - a pity it wasn't longer. But, why are the entrance tunnels on just about all these pyramids, mounds, etc, so narrow and low? It seems to be a universal feature.
My take: The low tunnel represents the birth canal - entering it and moving into the tomb represents the birth process in reverse (were the people at that time a matriarchal society?). We come from the earth and return to it.
You are probably right about it being about children, grounding perspective and experience before conceiving of death and the dead so you dont look down or seperate yourself from it/them, majority of death was of young mothers and babies for sure, old age is a modern luxury.
I checked. There is an article in The Scottish Sun with the headline that it could have been built to ‘to defend Scots against alien invasion’. There's always an alien theory!😅
a reincarnation type of ceremonial building to represent the rebirth of the old into the new, a long narrow passage like that could very well represent the birth canal. This type of passage ceremony is more common than not among Human tribes of then and now.
The structure is almost womb like, I wonder if the people of that time had a belief system that incorporated ideas of rebirth to an afterlife? Especially considering the passageway is aimed at the midwinter setting sun. Many cultures considered the west to be the direction the soul traveled to the beyond.
It would be interesting to do a 3D modeling of the structure itself, without the mound of soil piled on top of it; this way we could have a better idea of the form from the dry stone architecture.
Up front I claim ignorance but, every time we are shown these sorts of structures my brain goes to "defensible position", but we are often told they were for ritual or religious purposes. This goes for Stone Henge as well. What about multiple purpose and eventually re-purpose? Everything we get about ancient people is filtered through societal values constructed around more recent religious prejudice that seems to lower the bar for the ancients. If life is a "survival story", why would you spend your time and effort building monuments to myth and crypts? Was life so easy there they had spare time to build a folly?
Early peoples were not necessarily as warlike as more modern peoples. When the human populations were small there was really no need to compete over resources or desirable territory - there was enough for everyone. As populations increased competition (I e. war) became the order of the day.
Narrow , low entrance is a lot easier to defend. So, you might be right. If time travel is ever possible, I am going to travel back to when sites like this where built and see how right or wrong the experts of today are.
And it was built long before the Romans invaded. So much for the savages who the Romans thought they had to civilise. The people of Britain were very civilised
The small passage way may also involve the architectural technique Frank Loyd Wright used of moving the person coming into a structure through a restrictive, non-awe inspiring entrance hall to exit out for the big reveal.
This is amazing. I love visiting Roman and iron age sites in the UK but these are mainly ruins and are still vitually new build compared to Maeshowe. They don't make em like the used to!
The most ancient faiths tended to be goddess based, as in "Mother Earth" being the supreme being. The concept of a male god being supreme came with later, more aggressive tribes, possibly as populations increased creating competition for resources.
It definitely sets us thinking. A lot of men see it as something to enter, invade & explore, but on exiting more maternal thoughts come to mind ie. birth canals & an entrance into the world from the darker cacoon of the Mother! It is + can be whatever we imagine it to be but 1 thing is for sure that to a clan of people around 5,000 yrs ago the manpower to build it was diverted from other day to day struggles of their lives. That clearly shows the importance of this sacred structure or womb. Bye.
0:20 Runes carved in to the wall. I can't translate it as the picture is too blurry, and thusly are uncertain what all the runes are. But I think it says from what i can see "Þ? ehahÞina" I'm unsure about a few of the runes due to the picture being blurry and if some of the marks are natural marks in the stone of if it's carved. IF i'm correct about atleast the 4 last runes (Þina) then that atleast mean "your or your's". The runes used was used up untill the year 1000, so it was most likely carved during the scandinavian conquest of England (Medowland).
I suppose this is just a clip from a longer video of the site, but it would have been better if the camera did swing up to catch the corbel ceiling & to get a sense of height in the chamber. Also, where is all the light coming from? DUNNO!
Amazing contraction, but why do people today, always thinks is is build for ceremonial purpose..or build for the dead…it is amazing that the people in that time were able to build these structures, that still exists today…just like it surrounded objects like the stone objects, but all over Scotland, Engeland, Wales, Ireland even even in French, we see stone building like this, we really don’t know, why they built them, for what reason, but one thing their were very clever and intelligent, but sadly their history is gone, the only footprint they left are these mystery stone object, fascinated by so many people…
This is a pyramid and they were used as the pyramids in Egypt and other places, they are frequency modulators, for balancing Earth. When there have been many cataclysmic events there were knowledge how to balance out this planet. The chambers are more for balancing the four elements. They still work, they are still active, many are not dug out, many are still under Earths surface but they still do what they were built for to some degree, especially when it comes to balancing out Earth. They are built on certain leylines, it is like acupuncture spots on and for our planet. Those that built all of the Pyramids had greater knowledge from us. Some of those pyramids built were to the detriment of the planet, those at sea floor of Bermuda, they were placed incorrectly and caused a lot of damage. It is all the same, if you build something without taking into account the impact on the environment, then you get issues. Same goes for today, if we build buildings incorrectly they will not last. The day we awaken in the best possible way, we will know what the full scope of those hillsides/pyramids were for, not before. x
.......how they got a perfect circle........I know stonehenge is roughly circular, but it's not like that.......there's a single standing stone in north-west England, near a village called Shap........it's at the centre of an absolutely perfect circle, & I think archaeologists are thought to have said "How absolutely perfect it is, is puzzling"......4,000 years old. Like a giant pair of compasses made it.
Why didn't we learn about any of this stuff in school? There's all this amazing archeology all over the world and all we learned about was the pyramids in Egypt and Central America... or so it seemed.
No, they are not referred to as « the Orkneys », the archipelago is called Orkney, or the Orkney Islands. I have seen Orcadians cringe when it is called the Orkneys.
@@neilgordon8145 the apostrophe surely didn’t go unnoticed? Horrendous English. But anyway, I’ve always used the contraction ‘the Orkneys’ instead of ‘the Orkney islands’. Thanks for pointing out this massive faux pas, I’d love to go there one day (currently addicted to the Outer Hebrides) and would hate to offend 👍
Odd that they didn't angle the camera upward since they were praising the stone arch ceiling construction. I suppose at some point the ceiling may have collapsed, or even been damaged during an early excavation, but still, I would have liked to seen whatever is above. If that bit was reconstructed, they could have stated so.
You’re small when you go in, but in death you become bigger than life. OR The outside keeps you down but you expand when dead or mourning/celebrating the dead. OR Rebirth, going through the birth canal, which is small and tight, to or from the womb.
They were usually the most important, thus also the most well-built structures. When the Ancient Egyptian kings began building most of the temples with stone, their palaces were still mud brick. The former - and the tombs - were meant for eternity, but even royal homes were meant for a few generations, temporary.
Tombs that had libraries in them... every ancient structure was a tomb... catacombs couldn't hold enough bones. Decorated churches with your bones, made chandeliers from your bones, lived in adobe homes or shanty homes, built giant stone 'tombs'. Makes perfect sense, why would they build themselves nice homes of giant block construction? Nice housing for the dead, shacks for the living. Progress!!
They were recreating the passage from the womb to the outside world that occurs during birth and equating that with the passage into death. That is why the people had to crawl through a small opening to get in and out.
Why is that they always say it's a burial tomb and not a fortified bunker home? Sunk in living room so small critters and snakes can't get to the 3 bedrooms. A wall fencing of the dwelling.
Not a tomb, I'm going to education. It's a teach room for small groups. Larger groups in the open air (ie the ditch sections built at Stonehenge, at the same time, circa 3,000, BCE). Method of Ioci (Loci) University.
Imagine telling the people back then, that 5000 years later, other people watch their stuff on little devices that can receive signals from objects that orbit the earth or from cables that cross the oceans.
Just an aside. It’s likely a liminal point of transition symbolically between the original physical mothers womb of the person to be interred within who likely belonged to the prestigious lineage to which the tumuli belonged. In death one follows the deceased family member through the low ‘birth-canal’ back into the dark primordial tomb/ womb in the inner chambers. The high people accompany the dead into the tomb/womb of their ancestors and they return to the world of the living of light through that same ‘birth canal’ emerging into the world of life and back to the natural cycle. They are symbolically then reborn/cleansed/sanctified, particularly if high status chiefly war chiefs or priests or priestesses. Descent and return of only certain people to the underworld across all traditional cultures is always the sign of the exceptional, the valorous, the highborn etc…the tumuli lies redolent like a pregnant woman’s ventre on the female body of the land/landscape. They were likely associated therefore with not just death ceremonies but fertility rites, first fruits ceremonies/offerings etc..
Orkney has dozens of amazing neolithic sites like this, some are still in the process of being excavated. My favourite when I visited was the Tomb of the Eagles. It's a barrow like Maeshowe, but it's smaller and in slightly worse condition, but the great thing about it is that there's no visitor centre or anything. When I went a few years ago you just turned up and crawled in with a skateboard on a rope, with no fees or anyone else in sight, you had it all to yourself. It got it's name from the remains of dozens of eagles found inside, along with thousands of human bones. Unfortunately since covid it's been closed to visitors because it's owned by a private landowner who's struggled with the upkeep.
I have occasionally heard/read commentators who suggest the obvious regarding passage graves in general and even later crouched inhumations as a returning of the dead to the womb of mother earth. Although the woo surrounding modern attempts at paganism have rather spoilt the idea for more pragmatic folk like me. It does seem that the difficulty of the post life journey mirrors the pre life one to that first bawling breath of a newborn infant as it fills its little lungs.
You are stooped and compressed by the entrance passage in an echo or reversal of the birth experience. You're leaving one realm and entering the mother earth/a womb-like chamber. I think that's pretty strongly implied in the structure.
Reports like this are great, and sickening as well. Sickening because I know that when colonizers got to California, they destroyed similar installations. Here we called them shellmounds. They weren't trash heaps. They were places where ancestors were buried. And they were all destroyed. By colonizers. Kind of hard to get over it. especially when you know your family was in there.. 😞💔🤬
How about a granary/root cellar that doubles as a defensive position? Anybody coming down that hallway would be at a severe defensive position when they emerged, and a couple of archers firing down it could wreak havoc on any Raiders coming down. It seems like too much labor for burials, maybe the burials were later generations, after its primary purpose had been forgotten.
Tomb or mausoleum? Nonsense. An insult to the intelligence of the creator's of this magnificent megalithic construction. This was built to protect the living not the dead. The skill, effort and resources used in its construction show that it had a much more important purpose.
This deserves more than 3 minutes.
Yes it does!
At the beginning it says what programme it is from. It is but a mere snippet.
It's from Mystic Britain with Clive Anderson and Mary-Ann Ochota, a series from a few years ago.
Agree.
meh, this is super boring
Set in a landscape surrounded by neolithic monuments, Ring of Brodgar, Stones of Stenness and the amazing Ness of Brodgar (still being excavated). All within a mile of each other. One of many stunning sites within Orkney.
Does the entrance face east, to the winter solstice rising sun.... Like "Newgrange" in Ireland? Very similar to it....
@andrewandres148
It faces west, to the midwinter setting sun.
Perhaps one celebrating birth, awakening on earth, the other celebrating death and passage to the beyond.
@@lapsedluddite3381 Interesting that it aligns with midwinter setting sun VS rising sun in Ireland... Does it only reach the inner chamber only on winter solstice sunset, or more like a few days or more around midwinter? thanks for the info... Did it have stones with circular water type representations carved in them, near the enterance?
Isn’t this a type of Kurgan?
The technology of 5000 years ago, to build such a precise structure is incomprehensible, they were certainly very smart people. And that beautiful curved entrance! I visited it about 40 years ago, an indelible memory.
One thing ancient people had going for them ,they weren't lazy. No telly ,no phone ,get it done👍
@@kathywright6853 I’m sure they had other ways to avoid work.
@@12theotherandrew They knew how to make mead. So yes.
It always amazes me what our ancestors were able to accomplish without anything other than manual labour! And Thousands of years later they’re still standing!
@@gordbrown5075 In my fairly long life, I’ve seen not just new technologies appear, but old ones disappear as the masters die without apprentices.
The amazing thing is that it is still there and intact.
Maeshowe is absolutely stunning. The architecture, engineering, and execution of the construction are all magnificent.
❤
I've been to Maeshowe, it is a stunning construction.
Maeshowe = Micki maus hofe . 😂
Even the grandest people have to stoop to enter this other realm.
I suppose a restrictive entrance to the tombs is calculated to promote a humility in the visitor.
It does.
The thought has been provoked. ‘The past is like a foreign country. They do things differently there.’
Wow - it's spectacular.
Been there! It’s one of the Must See things when you visit the Orkney Islands!
Visited it a couple of years ago and was totally blown away by the experience.
For any viewer interested, this is a segment from a show called Mystic Britain.
Fascinating and beautiful!
Having a lower corridor in would make it harder for unwanted people to raid it, just a thought
Surprisingly, 5,000 years ago people actually respected the dead and to steal from them wasn’t a thing.
Exactly what I thought.
@@CazPeaI mean the pyramids were stolen from even in the days of the ancients and romans stripped metal and gold from tombs and structures of Rome to send to Byzantium
More reminiscent for me of Newgrange and the other tombs in the Boyne
Valley in Ireland rather than Stonehenge.
Brits have never heard of Newgrange!!
@@colors6692 I am British.
My thoughts too.
@@colors6692 Bit of a broad brush mate, the tombs of the Boyne Valley are known to "1 or 2" of us.
@@russell-di8js😂
What a magnificent building! I had no idea it was there. I really would be very interested in learning more about it. And, it is in incredible shape! The circular surroundings are beautiful, too.
Orkney is filled with neolithic monuments including an amazingly preserved village, with stone neolithic furniture.
I have a guitar pedal that captures the reverb of spaces. You record a sharp sound in the space, like a hand clap or a popped balloon, USB the wave file into the pedal and like magic, the pedal creates the reverberations associated with the space. This cairn in Orkney is one of the IR captures included in the pedal. The pedal is pre-loaded with many caves, churches, rooms and vintage reverb devices, it's called the Poly Verbs. That ancient cairn has some interesting acoustic properties that sound really good with a flute or guitar. Pretty neat, eh? - I thought so. - the picture of the cairn was included in the directions pamphlet, I recognized it in this video thumbnail and had to watch the video to see the actual space! Amazing!
It is very impressive in person. Same with Ring of Brodgar, Skara Brae, and Scapa Flow. I love the Orkney Islands. Such a wonderful place.
Very interesting video. The type of story that can launch a lifetime of learning and exploration (rather than shopping for disposable clothes on one phone)
A good video - a pity it wasn't longer. But, why are the entrance tunnels on just about all these pyramids, mounds, etc, so narrow and low? It seems to be a universal feature.
In some cultures which we have knowlege of the builders' thinking it was a metaphor for emerging through a birth canal.
@@mayfly552 My first thought, too. I was hoping someone had said it.
It's from a show called Mystic Britain. Good show.
@@jlfox Thanks - found it!
I doubt they had the wooden beams for support or could get stone big enough for support for wider tunnels.
My take: The low tunnel represents the birth canal - entering it and moving into the tomb represents the birth process in reverse (were the people at that time a matriarchal society?). We come from the earth and return to it.
Many of the cave paintings have entrances so small that you literally have to squirm through.
You are probably right about it being about children, grounding perspective and experience before conceiving of death and the dead so you dont look down or seperate yourself from it/them, majority of death was of young mothers and babies for sure, old age is a modern luxury.
My man bent over in a tunnel, and came up with a whole fanfiction backstory lore for their motivations.😭
Note: This megalithic structure is 5000 years old but because it is in the northern United Kingdom, nobody claims 'space aliens' built it.
Good point!
I checked. There is an article in The Scottish Sun with the headline that it could have been built to ‘to defend Scots against alien invasion’. There's always an alien theory!😅
Obviously space aliens built this!
Maybe just Maybe 😂
Well would you want to come all that way here if you were a space alien?
a reincarnation type of ceremonial building to represent the rebirth of the old into the new, a long narrow passage like that could very well represent the birth canal. This type of passage ceremony is more common than not among Human tribes of then and now.
The structure is almost womb like, I wonder if the people of that time had a belief system that incorporated ideas of rebirth to an afterlife? Especially considering the passageway is aimed at the midwinter setting sun. Many cultures considered the west to be the direction the soul traveled to the beyond.
Every building is womb like. So is every hole in the ground.
It would be interesting to do a 3D modeling of the structure itself, without the mound of soil piled on top of it; this way we could have a better idea of the form from the dry stone architecture.
Up front I claim ignorance but, every time we are shown these sorts of structures my brain goes to "defensible position", but we are often told they were for ritual or religious purposes. This goes for Stone Henge as well. What about multiple purpose and eventually re-purpose? Everything we get about ancient people is filtered through societal values constructed around more recent religious prejudice that seems to lower the bar for the ancients. If life is a "survival story", why would you spend your time and effort building monuments to myth and crypts? Was life so easy there they had spare time to build a folly?
Not really clear what you’re trying to say. Maybe be more direct.
While looking at other Orkney projects, it seems they only built in stone so the question of why did they build it?
Because they could.........
Early peoples were not necessarily as warlike as more modern peoples. When the human populations were small there was really no need to compete over resources or desirable territory - there was enough for everyone. As populations increased competition (I e. war) became the order of the day.
Agreed
Narrow , low entrance is a lot easier to defend. So, you might be right.
If time travel is ever possible, I am going to travel back to when sites like this where built and see how right or wrong the experts of today are.
And it was built long before the Romans invaded. So much for the savages who the Romans thought they had to civilise. The people of Britain were very civilised
I wish they'd mentioned the hinged door that's made of solid stone. It boggles my mind that people so long ago could make something like that.
Very well constructed considering it's 5 thousand years old.
O I have been at this amazing Hof tvice.
Best regards from Iceland.
The small passage way may also involve the architectural technique Frank Loyd Wright used of moving the person coming into a structure through a restrictive, non-awe inspiring entrance hall to exit out for the big reveal.
You also exit the structure through that narrow channel, think birth canal.
Watch out for those Barrow-Wights!!!!!
I know what you have read.
Yes, indeed!
SIMPLY ASTOUNDING that ANY STRUCTURE that's 5,000 YEARS OLD is still intact, let alone in THAT FANTASTIC A SHAPE!!
I have to wonder if places like this contributed to later myths about 'the little people who live under the hills.'
Interesting idea!
This is amazing. I love visiting Roman and iron age sites in the UK but these are mainly ruins and are still vitually new build compared to Maeshowe. They don't make em like the used to!
I wonder if they had a water level. Fabulous stone work.
The experience he describes of a small tunnel opening up into a room. Frank Loud Wright called, embrace, release, space explosion.
5,000 years old and no signs of flood damage? That's going to upset the Noah's ark people.
Heck, Gobekli Tepe is 10,000 years ago.
😂…. 😎🏴
When was it restored? It looks like there is cement structures filling in the corners.
Doesn’t this mimic female anatomy for the process of rebirth/ascension into the heavens? Isn’t that what all mound tombs and pyramids are about?
Personally I doubt it. That’s overthinking it. It’s just more stable as a structure, and a way to prevent access.
The most ancient faiths tended to be goddess based, as in "Mother Earth" being the supreme being. The concept of a male god being supreme came with later, more aggressive tribes, possibly as populations increased creating competition for resources.
It definitely sets us thinking. A lot of men see it as something to enter, invade & explore, but on exiting more maternal thoughts come to mind ie. birth canals & an entrance into the world from the darker cacoon of the Mother! It is + can be whatever we imagine it to be but 1 thing is for sure that to a clan of people around 5,000 yrs ago the manpower to build it was diverted from other day to day struggles of their lives. That clearly shows the importance of this sacred structure or womb. Bye.
0:20 Runes carved in to the wall. I can't translate it as the picture is too blurry, and thusly are uncertain what all the runes are. But I think it says from what i can see "Þ? ehahÞina" I'm unsure about a few of the runes due to the picture being blurry and if some of the marks are natural marks in the stone of if it's carved. IF i'm correct about atleast the 4 last runes (Þina) then that atleast mean "your or your's".
The runes used was used up untill the year 1000, so it was most likely carved during the scandinavian conquest of England (Medowland).
Wow! Amazing.
I suppose this is just a clip from a longer video of the site, but it would have been better if the camera did swing up to catch the corbel ceiling & to get a sense of height in the chamber. Also, where is all the light coming from? DUNNO!
Amazing contraction, but why do people today, always thinks is is build for ceremonial purpose..or build for the dead…it is amazing that the people in that time were able to build these structures, that still exists today…just like it surrounded objects like the stone objects, but all over Scotland, Engeland, Wales, Ireland even even in French, we see stone building like this, we really don’t know, why they built them, for what reason, but one thing their were very clever and intelligent, but sadly their history is gone, the only footprint they left are these mystery stone object, fascinated by so many people…
This is a pyramid and they were used as the pyramids in Egypt and other places, they are frequency modulators, for balancing Earth. When there have been many cataclysmic events there were knowledge how to balance out this planet. The chambers are more for balancing the four elements. They still work, they are still active, many are not dug out, many are still under Earths surface but they still do what they were built for to some degree, especially when it comes to balancing out Earth. They are built on certain leylines, it is like acupuncture spots on and for our planet. Those that built all of the Pyramids had greater knowledge from us. Some of those pyramids built were to the detriment of the planet, those at sea floor of Bermuda, they were placed incorrectly and caused a lot of damage. It is all the same, if you build something without taking into account the impact on the environment, then you get issues. Same goes for today, if we build buildings incorrectly they will not last. The day we awaken in the best possible way, we will know what the full scope of those hillsides/pyramids were for, not before. x
Connections between worlds & between kin.
.......how they got a perfect circle........I know stonehenge is roughly circular, but it's not like that.......there's a single standing stone in north-west England, near a village called Shap........it's at the centre of an absolutely perfect circle, & I think archaeologists are thought to have said "How absolutely perfect it is, is puzzling"......4,000 years old. Like a giant pair of compasses made it.
Dude, all you need is a stick and some string and you've got a circle. No aliens needed.
I think the doors small because they didn't want the elements getting in lol
Archaeologists say it was built after 2800 BC.
Making it only 4,800 years old.
About 160 generations.
Why didn't we learn about any of this stuff in school? There's all this amazing archeology all over the world and all we learned about was the pyramids in Egypt and Central America... or so it seemed.
Ah, the Orkney's!
No, they are not referred to as « the Orkneys », the archipelago is called Orkney, or the Orkney Islands. I have seen Orcadians cringe when it is called the Orkneys.
@@neilgordon8145 Pardon me! It was meant as a compliment but sure, let's quibble over semantics.
@@neilgordon8145 the apostrophe surely didn’t go unnoticed? Horrendous English.
But anyway, I’ve always used the contraction ‘the Orkneys’ instead of ‘the Orkney islands’. Thanks for pointing out this massive faux pas, I’d love to go there one day (currently addicted to the Outer Hebrides) and would hate to offend 👍
It also could be used to store food stuffs ?
Odd that they didn't angle the camera upward since they were praising the stone arch ceiling construction. I suppose at some point the ceiling may have collapsed, or even been damaged during an early excavation, but still, I would have liked to seen whatever is above. If that bit was reconstructed, they could have stated so.
I am curious about any lingering sediment and possible DNA, isotopes, etc?
You’re small when you go in, but in death you become bigger than life. OR
The outside keeps you down but you expand when dead or mourning/celebrating the dead. OR
Rebirth, going through the birth canal, which is small and tight, to or from the womb.
Why is everything either a burial tomb or a temple?!
They were usually the most important, thus also the most well-built structures.
When the Ancient Egyptian kings began building most of the temples with stone, their palaces were still mud brick. The former - and the tombs - were meant for eternity, but even royal homes were meant for a few generations, temporary.
@@MerelyGifted where's your evidence??
🥱
Tombs that had libraries in them... every ancient structure was a tomb... catacombs couldn't hold enough bones.
Decorated churches with your bones, made chandeliers from your bones, lived in adobe homes or shanty homes, built giant stone 'tombs'.
Makes perfect sense, why would they build themselves nice homes of giant block construction? Nice housing for the dead, shacks for the living.
Progress!!
They were recreating the passage from the womb to the outside world that occurs during birth and equating that with the passage into death. That is why the people had to crawl through a small opening to get in and out.
How could they light the place, no draft and a lot of people inside would be very smoky? Just wondering.
I bet this is not the pinnacle of Neolithic architecture. We tend to discount ancient societies a lot.
Next week the history channel will say this was built by aliens.
Yay Clive anderson
Why is that they always say it's a burial tomb and not a fortified bunker home? Sunk in living room so small critters and snakes can't get to the 3 bedrooms. A wall fencing of the dwelling.
They probably used a make shift leveler
Not a tomb, I'm going to education. It's a teach room for small groups. Larger groups in the open air (ie the ditch sections built at Stonehenge, at the same time, circa 3,000, BCE). Method of Ioci (Loci) University.
You can see Nordic runes on the walls. Check out what they say. You might be surprised!
But we can't read Nordic runes. Are you going to tell us?
Google or any LLM will tell you. Not sure what the rules are for explicit language in the comments are.
@@Webpoodle So what does it say, since you're an expert?
@@zyxw2000 Just Google Maeshowe runes and you will find more info than could reasonably be put into a comment here. Go for it!
Nordic runes are 3000 years younger. If there are nordic runes on the wall, they are not written by the builders.
Imagine telling the people back then, that 5000 years later, other people watch their stuff on little devices that can receive signals from objects that orbit the earth or from cables that cross the oceans.
'Magic mirrors,' or 'magic slates' if they didn't have portable mirrors in the area at that time.
@@princecharon well, at least they knew, that there are only two genders.
Can’t we be awed by an ancient structure without having to mention phones?
@@PRH123 if you don't like my comment, dont read it, kunt.
@@PRH123 can't we just write comments without getting annoyed by the comment Gestapo?
We Have Much To Learn From 5000 Year Old Builders.
Somewhat like the Eleusinian mysteries,
Would of been nice to see the ceiling
I believe its a bunker & why it was built so well & precise without mortar of course.
Mankind's building work seemed to degenerate, after the fall.
Grain store?
This could do with being a long form video.
It is. The series name and episode title are at the beginning of the video.
Just an aside. It’s likely a liminal point of transition symbolically between the original physical mothers womb of the person to be interred within who likely belonged to the prestigious lineage to which the tumuli belonged. In death one follows the deceased family member through the low ‘birth-canal’ back into the dark primordial tomb/ womb in the inner chambers. The high people accompany the dead into the tomb/womb of their ancestors and they return to the world of the living of light through that same ‘birth canal’ emerging into the world of life and back to the natural cycle. They are symbolically then reborn/cleansed/sanctified, particularly if high status chiefly war chiefs or priests or priestesses. Descent and return of only certain people to the underworld across all traditional cultures is always the sign of the exceptional, the valorous, the highborn etc…the tumuli lies redolent like a pregnant woman’s ventre on the female body of the land/landscape. They were likely associated therefore with not just death ceremonies but fertility rites, first fruits ceremonies/offerings etc..
Amazing!! 3000 BC and humans cooperatively or were forced to built this for something or somebody? A mystery for sure.
Orkney has dozens of amazing neolithic sites like this, some are still in the process of being excavated. My favourite when I visited was the Tomb of the Eagles. It's a barrow like Maeshowe, but it's smaller and in slightly worse condition, but the great thing about it is that there's no visitor centre or anything. When I went a few years ago you just turned up and crawled in with a skateboard on a rope, with no fees or anyone else in sight, you had it all to yourself. It got it's name from the remains of dozens of eagles found inside, along with thousands of human bones. Unfortunately since covid it's been closed to visitors because it's owned by a private landowner who's struggled with the upkeep.
I have occasionally heard/read commentators who suggest the obvious regarding passage graves in general and even later crouched inhumations as a returning of the dead to the womb of mother earth. Although the woo surrounding modern attempts at paganism have rather spoilt the idea for more pragmatic folk like me.
It does seem that the difficulty of the post life journey mirrors the pre life one to that first bawling breath of a newborn infant as it fills its little lungs.
You are stooped and compressed by the entrance passage in an echo or reversal of the birth experience. You're leaving one realm and entering the mother earth/a womb-like chamber. I think that's pretty strongly implied in the structure.
Reports like this are great, and sickening as well. Sickening because I know that when colonizers got to California, they destroyed similar installations. Here we called them shellmounds. They weren't trash heaps. They were places where ancestors were buried. And they were all destroyed. By colonizers. Kind of hard to get over it. especially when you know your family was in there.. 😞💔🤬
How about a granary/root cellar that doubles as a defensive position? Anybody coming down that hallway would be at a severe defensive position when they emerged, and a couple of archers firing down it could wreak havoc on any Raiders coming down. It seems like too much labor for burials, maybe the burials were later generations, after its primary purpose had been forgotten.
Was it to protect folks from a natural calamity perhaps?
One would have to "Divine with the stones",let alone dwell..
Nah, it’s just harder to remove things with a smaller corridor
Amazing,like to enter the silence.
Maybe, the tomb and entrance represents a womb; a reverse passageway between life and death.
Some of those stones along the tunnel would be about 100 tons. Stone age people shaping and transportating those is not such an easy explanation
It was rebuilt in the 10th century.
The viet cong made their tunnels too small for the larger Americans, and There are plenty of old legends of 'little people' in Europe.
Perhaps the low entrance is a way of ensuring obeisance or deferential respect upon arrival.
That is the impression that I get from it.
My impression is that dwarves built it
Maybe the entrance is so small so the Nephalim won't fit!
Looks like stone melting. Check for iron and aluminum within large stone.
Couldn't it have been used as communal shelter when a God awful storm occurred?
I wonder if it were not a reconstruction of a womb.. a place of rebirth? 🇨🇦
Tomb or mausoleum? Nonsense.
An insult to the intelligence of the creator's of this magnificent megalithic construction. This was built to protect the living not the dead. The skill, effort and resources used in its construction show that it had a much more important purpose.
If only Smithsonian would open their records & give us the TRUTH!!!!!!
Al Czervik said cemeteries and golf courses were the biggest wastes of prime real estate. Just saying.
This needs LIDAR and deep penetrating sonographic imaging.
Прославляй душа моя ГОСПОДА ОТЦА СЫНА СВЯТОГО ДУХА Аминь 🙏
Frank Lloyd Wright would have loved this