Snowhenge – Michigan Druids Unravel the Ancient Enigma

photo from the Snowhenge blog on Blogspot, used with permission

“The ancient DRUIDS did it with stone, the Michigan DRUIDS do it with snow.” So says the Snowhenge blog from which this picture came. We distinguish it from the blog of friend-of-Clonehenge David Mantripp at snowhenge dot net, who took the photo that marked our first posted snowhenge.

We’ve done several snowhenges since then and we’ve seen many more that never made it to our pages, but most of them have been from  places exotic, mainly Antarctica (here’s another, and another), where the Stonehenge-building field is strong and mankind cannot resist its power, and the even more exotic Bristol! This time our outstanding snowhenge is/was in humble Michigan.

Yes, Michigan is once more pushing to reclaim its briefly-held title of the Stonehenge State, after having it cruelly ripped from its claws by Washington State which no doubt wanted a name that people wouldn’t mistake for the national capital. To recap in case you’ve forgotten, Michigan is home to the little replica at Raven Hill Discovery Center, the all-over-the-web famous Wally Wallington’s Forgotten Technology henge (did he ever finish that thing?), and best of all, the beautiful Nunica Henge, in our opinion one of the finest ever made. Bravo, Michigan!

But alas, while this snowhenge is large, it is not a permanent replica. “Standing 6.5 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter and consisting of nearly 1000 cubic feet of packed snow, Snowhenge’s 12 pillars and 12 lintels are perfectly aligned astronomical markers. Looking directly through the hole in the center of pillar 3 soon after sunset on Winter Solstice extraordinarily reveals an almost equilateral triangle formed by the visible planets Saturn (left), Mars (top), and Venus (right). . . . Outside the circle, three pairs of standing snowmen show where the sun rises and sets for each of the solstices and equinoxes.”

Clearly a lot of thought and work have gone into this henge, and judging by the copy on the blog we would hazard a guess that a lot of intoxicating substance, liquid or of another variety, went into its builders! We have trouble believing that “Numerous consecutive years of record heat spikes in Perth, Australia are directly responsible for the extraordinary cold snaps at MacKay Jaycees Family Park which will amazingly keep Snowhenge frozen all year round.”

But if that should happen, we would definitely add this henge to our list of large permanent replicas. It wouldn’t tie Michigan with Washington State, but it would certainly put them in striking distance! Permafrost would be a small price to pay for a chance at the title!

Score: Well, our snowhenge scores have been all over the place so far, but we’ll give this one a solid 8 druids. Why, if there’s no bluestone circle, no trilithon horseshoe, no ditch and bank?! It’s their prose, I’m afraid. Stupid silliness, as some have experienced, is the way to our hearts and our carefully-meted-out druids. And look at their closing line: “No matter the medium, the DRUIDS purpose remains the same – do it bigger, live it larger, play it harder, have some fun.” Hard to argue with that!

Our thanks to the illustrious Andy Burnham of the Megalithic Portal, who sent this our way, and to Peter Salisbury who gave the permissions. Happy henging!

More Stonehenge Movie Goodness

a poor quality still from a Youtube clip of King Arthur (Yes, I’m afraid we really are THAT lame!)

A quick posting of a few more movies with Stonehenge connections, starting with the rather amusing one in the 2004 movie King Arthur with Clive Owen and, the reason a lot of people went to see it, Keira Knightley as a rather scantily clad warrior maid. At the end of the movie they get married at a construction that a lot of people think is Stonehenge, although it is by the sea near Tintagel in Cornwall, some way from the real Stonehenge in Wiltshire. It is a nonexistent Stonehenge-ish thing made for the movie.

Another fun one is a less-known film called Merlin: The Return for which a Stonehenge replica was reportedly built in Africa where it was filmed. Alas, we have no picture of that one, but we’ve read that it situated Stonehenge in the woods, much as in this montage: Stonehenge as a Woodland Site.

Less fun and not actually involving Stonehenge replicas were the Tess movies over the years, various versions of the Thomas Hardy novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles. A scene in the novel takes place at Stonehenge and some have filmed at the site.

That includes the 2008 version made by BBC television and the 1979 version made by the infamous Roman Polanski with Nastassia Kinski in the lead role.

And last, and for a change also least, we may as well mention the movie Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Why? “Silver Shamrock, a mass-producer of Halloween masks, plan to kill millions of innocent people worldwide by placing pieces of a stolen boulder from Stonehenge into small tags and attaching them to the masks.” And from another webpage we learn why: “See, Stonehenge was a sacrificial altar and wields enormous power, that will make their heads explode and burst forth with crickets and snakes.” How cool is that!?

Eventually people do die, but we think they turn out to be robots or something. But there may be more–we confess we haven’t seen it. We just found the concept of destroying people using bits of Stonehenge as somehow amusing. Who comes up with this stuff?

Well, there are some more Stonehenge-related movies for you. We have at least one more to mention and we’ll get to that after an unrelated post or two. If you know of some we may have missed, please post a comment or email us at the email in the side bar. What a Stonehenge world this is!

Another Movie Replica: The Black Knight, 1954

photos are stills from this clip posted on TCM

We were going to do one post listing all the movies we know of so far that contain Stonehenge in some form. We’d already posted the movies This Is Spinal Tap and The Colour of Magic, and we thought we could round up the ones that were left in one quick post. Then we watched this video again. Lolz!!!1! It deserves a post of its own!

A synopsis of this section of the movie (from a full synopsis on this page) reads: “John, as the Black Knight, rides off to summon Arthur’s knights, as Linet, the abbot and the remaining monks are taken by the Vikings to the mysterious rocks of Stonehenge, where they are readied as sacrifice. Arthur, John and the knights arrive in time to rescue Linet and the clergymen and destroy Stonehenge.” But, trust us, this does not capture the madness of the wildly dancing girls, the heavily made-up so-called virgin about to be sacrificed, and the wild priests or druids presiding over it, let alone the dramatic rescue of said virgin and the about-to be roasted monks. Don’t you just hate those evil pagans?! 😉

Then, of course, there’s the pulling down of the stones at the end of the sequence. They come down quite easily,  pulled by knights on horses.  Think how that would have impacted on Britain’s tourist trade! Reminds us of National Lampoon’s European Vacation in which Chevy Chase backs into one trilithon and the whole thing goes down like dominoes. D***ed Americans!!

Score for this replica: 7½ druids. We think they did a fine job of mocking up what Stonehenge might have looked like long ago, considering it was 1954. As a matter of fact, we think they may have used the Maryhill replica (see here for our post on that one) for this aerial shot and just mocked up the parts they needed for the close-ups. Still, nicely done.

Our thanks to Bob Bradlee aka StonehengeGuy for steering us to this classic Stonehenge depiction. It is good to laugh!

Take Your Better-Looking Avatar to Stonehenge Second Life

Built in Second Life by Ewan Haggarty, sent to us by Pete Glastonbury

We don’t know much about Second Life. We haven’t figured out how to do something worthwhile with our first life, and we’re pretty sure spending more time on line than we already do isn’t the answer. But of course most people have their act together much better than we do, so for them having a second, virtual, life is an option. It’s probably a relief to enter a place away from routines and mundane concerns.

Second Life (Wikipedia explanation here) has all kinds of places to go, and people can build things there. So naturally there are Stonehenges. We mentioned a couple when we did a post on virtual Stonehenges before. As far as we know, each one is, in its context, a real Stonehenge, not a replica, although–who knows!–there may be virtual Stonehenge replicas there, too. If you know of any, do not hesitate to let us know!

Here’s a link to another, quite accurate Stonehenge made for Second Life. Here’s another Second Life Stonehenge on Flickr. We confess this is all mind boggling to us. We have this strange feeling that all these Stonehenges will have to come to blows someday like male mountain goats vying for the harem. We can see it now, all those huge stones hurling themselves at one another, trying to establish which is the real Stonehenge. When that happens, Second Lifers, get pictures!

Even with a virtual henge we can do what we do. Let’s see: bluestones? Check. Aubrey holes? Check. Sorta-kinda the ditch and bank. Half check. The stones are the wrong proportions and shapes, of course, but in the right places and anyway it’s catchy and you can dance to it. We’ll give it 7 druids. (See how we’re just ignoring the floating orb, the small pyramid and the wasp-ish thing with breasts? We’re good at what we do! Do not try this at home!)

Who builds these Stonehenges in Second Life? Astronomers? Engineers? Druids? We’d be curious to know. But we’re glad to know that people take the things that inspire and awe them with them wherever they go!

Henge for a Chameleon–1946, Somewhere in a London Zoo

copyrighted photo used with © on it. Click photo to visit page.

This is brilliant! British Pathé, a digital news archive, includes a video of chameleons climbing over a small Stonehenge replica at the London Zoo, like huge bizarre creatures of a past age. Brought to our attention by the magnificent yet under-appreciated Pete Glastonbury (unfairly gifted photographer whose speciality is ancient sites), this is probably the oldest existing video of a small Stonehenge replica.

Click >here< to see the British Pathé page, Prehistoric 1946, with video. (Totally worth clicking on just to hear the stentorian 1946 announcer and the ever-so-clever attempt at a humourous ending! ) The text on the page says, “Several shots of a chameleon moving around model of Stonehenge in a London Zoo. Some good close up shots of chameleons. This animal is half brother to lizard and looks like one. Man organises chameleons with hands – probably a zoo keeper.”

The replica is just four trilithons, but there it is, a bit of Stonehenge replica history. No scoring for this. It’s too awesome, too sexy for its trilithons! Please, if you have any old photos or videos of Stonehenge replicas, we want–no–we need to see them!

[This reminds us of the Stonehenge for Lizards post. Hmmm, there’s also the Stonehenge at the reptile zoo and the chocolate replica with the plastic lizards. We detect a pattern!. David Icke, where are you when we need you?! 😉 ]

Note: For those who don’t know, subscribers to our Twitter feed get links to extra henges from time to time, including our Friday foodhenges. In case you’re interested. Anyway, have a great weekend. Happy henging!

Icing Henge–Perhaps the Ultimate Stonehenge Cake!

photo and cake by Vanda Symon, with permission

It doesn’t often happen that a homemade henge turns up in our inbox unsolicited, although we love when it does. You can imagine how delighted we were to receive an email from summery New Zealand with this beautifully crafted cake in it.

Made by mystery author Vanda Symon for the eighth birthday of one of her sons, this cake shows a remarkable degree of realism, from the proportions of the individual stones to the  trilithon horseshoe facing the three intact lintels in a row, to the placement of the fallen stones. Very nicely done!

We asked why make a Stonehenge cake for an eight-year-old’s party, and Ms. Symon replied, “The now Eight-Year-Old has always liked things that are old, mysterious and cool – so he wanted a wonders of the world party and the birthday party cake was going to be a pyramid or Stonehenge. We’d discussed a big gingerbread pyramid, but that wasn’t “cakey” enough, so he thought Stonehenge would be great because it’s essentially round, and hey, a cake is often round. Practical boy. I’m grateful he didn’t ask for the Colosseum!”

And so are we! Score for this cake, 8 druids, one for each of the birthday boy’s years, and our highest ever for a cake!

Ms. Symon goes on to say, “The cake was a big hit with the birthday guests, and the whole thing disappeared at the party, so Hubby didn’t even get a piece! There was also one of those surreal moments where all of the little guests were happily nibbling away on icing henges, ten kids eating things that looked like big rocks. Naturally they were beautifully sugared up in time for their parents to come and collect them.”

And on her blog she adds, “Damn chuffed with it, actually.  Amazing what you can do with icing.”

True, though it wouldn’t hold up for thousands of years in the British weather. Sigh–now we’re all hungry!

A Little Stonehenge, a Cucumber, and Eleven

photos by Somara aka snarkygurl, with permission

[Strictly speaking this is not a Stonehenge replica, but a replica of a Stonehenge replica. The rare clonehenge clone!]

What a movie! What a cake! The movie This Is Spinäl Tap made the Stonehenge replica a household idea. We’ve often wondered what percentage of the 250 and counting posts we’ve put up would be here if it weren’t for Spinal Tap. Well, there is no doubt about today’s entry!

The baker/artist and photographer writes: “A friend of ours wanted to surprise her husband with a Spinal Tap cake for his birthday. She didn’t care what it looked like, so I had free reign to do what I wanted. I like it, other than the part where I accidentally made the strap too long, and where I lost the wrestling match with the white frosting.”

Well, we think she did an excellent job. Even got that cucumber-wrapped-in-tinfoil in there although much reduced in size!

And, speaking of reduced in size, our focus is, of course, the little Stonehenge replica, a trilithon, actually. We like the way the colouring on it is marbled to make it look like stone. It is very nicely done. Plus, it looks delicious. We hope it was.

Please note that the dials on the amp do say 11. That’s one higher! By the way, you can see our other posts concerning Spinal Tap here and here.

Score: 5 druids. It’s not much smaller than the one in the movie, after all. And we’re guessing Somara had a lot less money to work with. It’s not easy to get this kind of likeness in an edible replica. Nicely done!

Stent Henge–and A Happy 2010 to All!

photo from ADAMANT, used w/o permissions–permission pending

Happy New Year, Gentle Readers! The first henge of the year is one that will be hard to top. It’s made of stents of the sort used to prop open coronary arteries. The copy accompanying it reads:

“A reader reports one of his dearly departed co-workers spent a great deal of time creating a scale model in stents of Stone Henge. Stent Henge was created with pieces of scrap Nitinol self expanding vascular stents embedded in cured Sylgard 184 elastomer. It is a nearly perfect reproduction of the layout of the famous stone circle in England in a compact package just about the perfect size for a paper weight. It took nearly a year of work during slow periods. ” [links added by us]

We wonder, how do you even do something like this over a year? Do you add the clear silicone slowly, layer by layer? We don’t know, but the outcome is impressive and accurate. See the section that has retained its lintels? And the inner trilithon horseshoe?

Whoever made this used a photo of Stonehenge as it stands today as a guide. Perhaps he kept it in his chamber–or maybe he knew it by heart! I suppose we shouldn’t go on in that vein. (Don’t beat us!) Heh. Our New Year’s resolution is to actually be funny. Wish us luck!

Score: 7½druids. It’s made of unusual materials, and someone has taken pains to make it accurate. That’s what we like here in Clonehenge country. Posthumous kudos to the builder of this eccentric beauty!

Stonehenge of the Orchids, South Africa

photos by Jim of Cal Orchid, with permission

At Clonehenge we scour the earth for replicas so you don’t have to! Today we bring you an entry from the exotic land (unless you’re from there!) of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, the east coast city of Durban, where the South African Orchid Council held their orchid show in September.

The winning stand in that show, created by the Eastern Province Orchid Society, was (Ta da!) Stonehenge! Scroll down a little at this link for more pictures. We offer our congratulations.

Very early on, we thought of miniature golf courses as likely Stonehenge replica sources, but we can’t believe we didn’t think of flower shows until now. It seems so obvious! The beauty of it is, flower show people have that tendency to be meticulous and to do things right. Hence this rather nice ring with the Spanish moss draped over the lintels.

And who knows–maybe they’ve hit upon something here. Not that orchids were associated with Stonehenge necessarily, but what about plants? Could certain plants have been associated with and planted around certain megalithic sites? Perhaps research has been done, analysing pollen from certain levels of excavations, but we haven’t heard of it. We can imagine medicinal herbs or others regarded as powerful in other ways transplanted there to add to the mystique of the site.

Or maybe not, but these days Stonehenge replicas are often associated with gardens and plantings. The graceful curves and gentle chaos of ephemeral plants are shown off to great advantage against the solid ageless stones, or at least their imitators.

Score: 6½ druids for Stonehenge of the Orchids. It manages to be both humourous and stately! A combination we could all aspire to, especially as the holidays come on.

Note: In the Durban area, evidence of human occupation goes back 100,000 years. Stonehenge, by comparison, would be modern there.

Nesshenge: The Stonehenge Rope Experiment

photo from John Hill’s article on the Antiquity website, with permission

We had this bookmarked for quite a while, uncertain whether it belonged on the blog, but then a friend of Clonehenge (Mr. P.G.) sent us the link asking if we’d done it yet, so here it is. Last year, 2008, Liverpool was designated European Capital of Culture by the European Union. As a contribution toward that, John Hill and others from the University of Liverpool by a very simple method including a rope, simple counting and the sun’s shadow, laid out the pattern of positions that would be necessary for a model of Stonehenge.

They then measured out a smaller pattern to suit the site and proceeded to dig a ditch and bank and mark the sites of the Aubrey holes. You can see a diagram of this stage of the original Stonehenge here. A fuller explanation of what Hill and the others did can be read in the article we mentioned. You can see the result above.

This construction certainly qualifies to be posted on Clonehenge, going by Rule Number 6 of our Rules of Henginess,  and is in fact the first henge to qualify on that basis alone. A Stonehenge replica without uprights or trilithons–we were waiting for this. Well done! They placed the earthen bank on the inside of the ditch, too, another distinctive feature of Stonehenge, as other henges tend to have the ditch on the inside.

These things may seem minor, but they are pleasing to find in a world where one trilithon of anything is called a henge.  This is a true Stonehenge replica, a replica of the developmental phase of Stonehenge called Stonehenge 1 (the phases are described on this Wikipedia page).

So how do we score this? We haven’t even found anything to mock or be silly about, but we don’t deduct points for that, tempting as it might be. Score: 8 druids. Because if druids had been involved in building Stonehenge instead of coming at least a millennium later, this is very much like what they would have built at this stage.The article points up that even the astronomy and celestial/landscape relationship have been painstakingly provided for.

What more could we ask? Well, there’s the question of ambiance. The spot is perfect for what its creators were doing, but here at Clonehenge, Stonehenge is not just a work of engineering and astronomical precision. We have learned that some people see it as sculpture, some people see it as a sacred site, and many people regard it with awe. (Let’s face it–gigantic looming stones–ftw!*) If Stonehenge looked like this, there wouldn’t be so many replicas and we wouldn’t be talking here, but this is brilliant and we will add it to our list of large permanent replicas!

*(we mean that to stand for for the win, not free the whales, or f*** the world, which would be, well–sort of humourous in that sentence, actually, now we think of it . . .)