The Battle for the Future of Stonehenge | Hacker News Reader

The Battle for the Future of Stonehenge

theguardian.com

62 pointsfredley28 comments

Typical planners nightmare: they all know a better tunnel would work, but nobody has the balls to propose asking for the money and beurocracy demands the people who could make it happen, won't make it happen.

It's at best a political football. At worst, a victim of progress.

(spent time here as a kid in the sixties)

> Simply widening it is unthinkable: the Stonehenge heritage site is a precious prehistoric landscape.

Looking at it on Google Maps, it seems the south of the road is just fields. It's unclear why the road can't be widened and a tunnel would be needed.

https://www.google.fr/maps/place/51°10'38.8"N+1°49'33.4"W/@5...

Those fields are part of a UNESCO world heritage site, where countless neolithic artefacts (including human remains) would be disturbed or destroyed by construction.

Besides that, the road is very busy and noisy, and is a huge blight on the site itself. Visitors will get a much better sense of how Stonehenge felt for ancient visitors without the stinking, roaring A-road right next to it!

It is a very sensitive area for conservationists and historians. Pretty well guarantee that if they started to dig a hole to build a new road they would find something of interest that would delay the build and make the cost sky rocket.

I wonder how long Carhenge will last?[0] Probably not very long, I guess. Rust.

0) http://carhenge.com/wp-content/gallery/carhenge-1/FOC_bw-pic...

Concretehenge should last I think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryhill_Stonehenge

What about Achill-henge? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achill-henge

That went up in one weekend! Using stock concrete slabs, I guess. Maybe the sort they use for bridges, given their size and shape.

It's cool to see a full-sized replica, arguably looking ~like the original did. I wonder what the weather's like in Maryhill. If there's not too much freeze-thaw, it might well last thousands of years. I mean, some Roman concrete has.

The funniest thing about Stonehenge is the obsession that it was all about some type of religion. Read any BBC article on Stonehenge for an example of this or watch any BBC documentary.

It is the default myth where all specifics can be imagined or presented earnestly in a learned TV programme. Many assumptions go into this including the idea that our ancestors needed some convoluted religion instead of some connection with the world around them. Anyone can project their fictional quasi-religion onto what our obviously ill educated ancestors thought, it is so easy, like a mirror.

I wonder if in 5000 years time there will be people making similar observations regarding airports and placing their own idea of what our primitive religion must have been to have created these things, making connections regarding the orientation of the runways and some variant of the Mayan calendar.

Stonehenge is a gift that keeps on giving for the industry that surrounds it. People that are involved on this gravy train are up there with firemen and nurses in that their work is so much more worthy than that of your typical office admin worker or shop assistant.

I mean, who wouldn't want to protect England's most treasured monument?

Meanwhile the more interesting history of England does require some intellectual curiosity rather than idle thoughts about embellished mystery. Stonehenge invites tourists in to engage with some mystical bullshit. Who cares that there are many, many other vintage monuments and stone circles in South West England, there for anyone with a proper Ordnance Survey map and walking boots to discover and enjoy. The thing is that Stonehenge creates a spectacle, other neolithic stone circles are just that, some stones in a circle and can be seen as that without having to go into some quasi-religious awe.

Also quite useful for this awe and wonder is that most things from pre-history was made from bio-degradable materials. Our ancestors could have had the most amazingly crafted houses with furniture made from willow but we would never know they just louched about on comfy willow couches as all that remains are a few things like Stonehenge, meaning that BBC TV programmes insist that everything was all about some mystery religion.

> I wonder if in 5000 years time there will be people making similar observations regarding airports and placing their own idea of what our primitive religion must have been to have created these things

Airports today are treated as a kind of holy site.

* Certain types of speech are considered blasphemy in airports. Try and say the word bomb near the security line and see what happens.

* We have purification rituals we have to undergo, some would say trials even, before we can enter the inner sanctum. We have to shed our old self and be blessed before we can enter.

* We all become like children in airports, obedient and servile while in the presence of the security deity.

* Blessed goods such as alcohol and cigarettes from the duty free shops and 'holy water' (water purchased inside the secure zone) are available inside.

* The is a ritual for re-entering the normal world: customs, and all of the inspections and mortifications associated with that.

I'm sure some will argue that these rituals are in place for a good reason. But to me they make no more sense than the arbitrary rituals and superstitions of any of our most ancient religions.

That made me chuckle. I will be elaborating on this mentally over the next few weeks. At least a trip to the airport does take you to the heavens above. I am now imagining the staff in Catholic style robes.

My mom bought a shadow box filled with coffee beans a tiny grinder, miniature mugs and other scaled down coffee accessories. The word "Coffee" was written prominently in 3 dimensional letters.

She doesn't even particularly like coffee. She just bought it to cover up her old landline phone jack on the kitchen wall, but I keep telling her it looks like she built a coffee shrine.

I'm certain that if archeologists found it 5,000 years in the future, they'd construct elaborate stories about our daily devotions to the deity we called Coffee.

Honestly the closest thing to a religious experience I have most days (weeks...months...) is getting rid of the foggy feeling in the morning with a cup of coffee while reading whatever I'm interested in at the moment. I've often wholeheartedly thanked the coffee in front of me for saving my mental state. It's certainly a ritual at this point.

I guess I'm saying... Would they really be far off?

>> I'm certain that if archeologists found it 5,000 years in the future

I am certain they would not.

Wait until future civilizations start digging up Startbucks's

Or tanning salons. Future generations will be horrified people cooked themselves and willingly gave themselves cancer in the name of "beauty."

It's a running joke in archaeology that any artifact of unknown usage has "religious" purposes, whatever that might mean. The whole druids thing (as it's presented today) is a recent invention, basically the 19th century so there is no guarantee that they have any clearer understanding of the stones' purpose than the rest of us do. Regrettably, pre-Roman Britain did not preserve anything in writing.

As you say, for anyone visiting that area: skip Stonehenge which is noisy, crowded and fenced off, and go to West Kennet Long Barrow or Avebury (about 20 miles down the road?) where you can actually walk amongst and touch the stones. Avebury is literally a village built in and around an ancient monument, it's quite something.

https://goo.gl/maps/mHUyxecZ4EE2

Something like what you are describing is documented in Tripoli. In the late 19th century, archeologists found large stone structures.

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/remains-of-the-olive-oi...

These were thought to be religious in nature. The structures had grooves in the rock, which were thought to be grooves for the the blood of the sacrifices to run out. Later investigation showed that these were in fact olive presses from the Roman era, and that the grooves were for the olive oil to run out.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259417162_Roman_Sit...

Religion is just the easy way out for archeologists when they can't explain it properly.

1.7 Billion ... for a couple miles of tunnel? Through/under green fields? That is an insane amount of money.

Put down some gravel and pave a road. Any artifacts will be safer under the road than if dug up for a tunnel. If you dont want to see the road, box it in above ground. Plant hedges around it. Dont rip up history just because you dont want to spoil someone's view.

There already is a road there. That’s the whole point. It’s one of the busiest in SW England and it is only ~200m away from the monument. The whole area (I.e. the “view”) is a protected historic landscape and it is blighted by the road. The plan is expensive because it is a bored tunnel. It is where the entrances of the tunnel are that is controversial - the middle of the tunnel will be deeper than the archaeology.

On a weekend just have to avoid the road there. Yes it is busy but what makes it so awful is everyone slowing down to 20mph so they can gawk at it. Then there is the inevitable shunts as someone forgets to brake in a line of traffic. Personally I would plant a hedge to shield view from the road. This in itself will make traffic flow better. Of course hedge will just not fit in with the Salisbury plain landscape. Stonehenge was put there originally for its long views of the horizon and the sun rising/setting.

So the government allocated £1.7B for tunnels. While I don’t know how much of that is for that actual tunnel construction, it seems quite excessive given the landscape. It’s not London where tunnelling anywhere runs the risk of encountering other tunnels/infrastructure/WW2 bombs/etc.

Makes me wonder what Elon Musk would charge?

He might recommend a train for cars, get told off by the local politician and call him a pedo.

Weirder things have happened.

Original article says it is £1.7bn for just under 2 miles of tunnel. For comparison, the new Crossrail is £15.4bn for 73 miles including 13 miles of twin tunnels under central London[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail

That's rather disingenuous, the tunnelling contracts for Crossrail's 42km of tunnels came to £1.5b in 2011, or £1.8b today - £40m per km.

The tunnelling was 10% of the total cost of the project.

Stonehenge requires 6km of tunnels, which would be £250m at crossrail rates, if that was also 10% of the total cost that would be a £2.5b project

The tunnels aren't comparable either -- each bore of crossrail is 7.1m, I believe the ones needed for the road tunnels would be larger than that, but on the other hand crossrail project included electrification of the GWR to Reading and resignalling.

Crossrail is also Europe's largest construction project - some of the numbers are incredible, e.g. "Over 3 million tonnes of excavated material from the tunnels was shipped to Wallasea Island in Essex to create a new 1,500 acre RSPB nature reserve"[0]. It also required spending £1bn[1] buying up and demolishing large areas of prime real estate in one of the most densely populated and expensive places in Europe to create 10 brand new stations. Not to mention that "100 archaeologists have found tens of thousands of items from 40 sites, spanning 55 million years"[2]. So the fact that it is more than 10% of the cost of this for a short tunnel under open fields in a sparsely populated area for relatively few people and providing no major new public transport hubs is I think all the more surprising.

[0] http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/crossrail-in-numbers

[1] https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_fi...

[2] https://archaeology.crossrail.co.uk/about-tunnel-the-archaeo...

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