Walking roman roads in Lancashire

The roman road north from Ribchester fort to Carlisle and Hadrian’s wall runs through the remote landscape of north Lancashire

[@garethdavies6706]

Wonderful as usual Peter

[@rhonataylor85]

Great!

[@kaymorrice8141]

Fascinating. Thank you for sharing this

[@kerryburns6041]

You´re very welcome, I think many academic careers are based on the official version of history, but I believe there are some very awkward questions which remain unanswered. Someone with knowledge of astronomy and mathematics and amazing abilities regarding the movement of gigantic stones built Stonehenge around 5,000 years ago. We are told that they lived in dwellings made of sticks and mud, which I find rather strange. 3,000 years later, the Romans arrived and found the inhabitants still living in the same primitive accommodation. That a highly sophisticated people could exhibit such skills, and yet make no progress during the next 3,000 years seems odd, compared to the progress we have made since the reformation. Either an advanced race visited Britain, built Stonehenge and then left, or the inhabitants were capable of more than we can imagine, and would presumably have built stone houses during that 3,000 years, providing the Roman invaders with a ready source of building material. Stonehenge is a stark reminder that we just do not understand how it came to be, or what sort of people, with what sort of tools, could have constructed such a complex and difficult edifice -- and more than that, it undermines our present accepted version of history. (Which is already in tatters !) There is an ancient stone-built ruin in the almost inaccessible reaches of my lower garden here in Andalucia, beautifully constructed on a 45 degree slope. Like Stonehenge, nobody really knows who built it, when, or why. It´s just another reminder that history is full of awkward questions.

[@kaymorrice8141]

@@kerryburns6041 I live in Spain too ... in a backwater! There’s my h to understand about their history too but I’m starting with an interest in my homeland first lol. Funny ... when ya young, history is boring but as ya get older, history becomes far more fascinating!

[@kerryburns6041]

I've tried to imagine the quantity of stone in the approx 2,500 (?) miles of Roman Road, and the 80 miles of Hadrian's Wall with a fort every mile. It is obviously colossal. I don't believe they could have quarried it all, or even most of it. Especially as the harnesses for their heavy horses were very badly designed, at great cost to their efficiency. Also much of the stone I've seen used is 'building stone' for walls and such. For heavy cart wheels they would have quarried slabs. This makes me wonder whether there were many stone buildings along the ley lines that are often close to Roman roads, and if they were plundered to make the roads. If so, pre-Roman Britain was not what history tells us. Would that surprise anyone?

[@kaymorrice8141]

Interesting 🤔

[@garethdavies6706]

If there were stone buildings already in situ,where and who quarried this,and would the masons have been as skilled as the Romans,and if so why hasn't this been made known ?......or has it ?...not sure.

[@kerryburns6041]

@@garethdavies6706 Good questions Gareth, I can't answer them, but I can add some more which may broaden the context. Someone built Stonehenge, around 3,000 BC, obviously they had fine mathematical knowledge, excellent astronomy, and an astonishing way with huge megaliths. Supposedly they were content to live in huts of sticks and mud ! Three thousand years later, the Romans arrived and found them still in primitive dwellings. No progress in 3,000 years ? Civilisations can rise and fall in that period of time, stone can be quarried, houses built, and disaster can strike, leaving enough stone to allow the Romans to repurpose it. All pure speculation for sure, but whoever the people were who built Stonehenge, they are studiously ignored by mainstream historians, because they just don´t fit the picture. But those mute megaliths speak clearly of an advanced society capable of things we would find almost impossible, and a much more complex past than we generally recognise. I have a fragment of the rim of a jar, it would have been 12 inches in diameter when whole. It is beautifully smooth and even, and partly polished, but most interestingly, it is stone, not ceramic. Someone, somewhere, at some time took a lump of stone more than a cubic foot, and made a stone jar perfectly smooth and polished, inside and out, and you can't do that with a hammer and chisel. If you research the "Egyptian Stone Jars" you will see similar examples of a skill which I think predates our present civilisation. Sorry -- no answers, only more questions ! -- greetings from Andalucia.