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Ritual caves found on 'witchcraft' island

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Heather Delaria
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« on: October 11, 2015, 02:04:40 am »

Ritual caves found on 'witchcraft' island
Posted on Tuesday, 6 October, 2015




Countless rituals have been performed on the island. Image Credit: CC BY 3.0 Anchor2009
Evidence of a 9,000-year-old Stone Age ritual site has been found on the Swedish island of Bla Jungfrun.
Even today the island, which possesses a rugged landscape of huge boulders and steep cliffs, is a place shrouded in mystery with its own local legends that tell of a secret coven of witches that meet there every Easter as well as tales of supernatural forces, evil curses and dark magic.

It isn't clear exactly how far back these legends originate, but now archaeologists excavating caves on the island have uncovered a ritualistic site that is thought to be at least 9,000 years old.

"The results are astonishing and reveal extensive human activities on the island in the Mesolithic Stone Age," the team wrote.

Inside one of the caves they found an altar where these ancient people would have once made offerings to their gods while in another there was an area that looked a lot like a theater stage.

A massive hollow, thought to be man-made, was also found in one of the caves.

"The entrance to the cave is very narrow, and you have to squeeze your way in," said archaeologist Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay. "Once you're inside, only half of the cave is covered and you can actually stand above the cave and look down into it, almost like a theater or a stage below."

Exactly what rituals these ancient visitors to the island would have practiced thousands of years ago however is something that may be fated to remain forever lost in the mists of time.

   
http://www.livescience.com/52257-stone-age-rituals-on-witchcraft-island.html?cmpid=NL_LLM_weekly_2015-09-22
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Heather Delaria
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« Reply #1 on: October 11, 2015, 02:05:37 am »


'Witchcraft' Island Reveals Evidence of Stone Age Rituals

by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   September 22, 2015 09:20am ET




Sites on mysterious island
Archaeologists work on the island off Sweden where they discovered evidence of Stone Age rituals. The island has long been linked with tales of witchcraft, supernatural powers and curses.
Credit: Kenneth Alexandersson
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A Stone Age site where cave rituals may have been performed some 9,000 years ago has been discovered on Blå Jungfrun, an island off the east coast of Sweden. The island has long been associated with tales of witchcraft, curses and supernatural powers.

Blå Jungfrun's "huge boulders and steep cliffs provide a dramatic landscape, and for centuries the uninhabited island has been associated with supernatural powers," wrote a team of archaeologists in the summary of a presentation given recently at the European Association of Archaeologists annual meeting in Glasgow, Scotland.

According to a centuries-old legend, witches gather every Easter on the island to worship the devil himself. Curses have also been associated with the island. For instance, those who remove a rock from the site are said to endure a lifetime of bad luck. [See Images of the Stone Age Site on this 'Supernatural' Island]

How far back these beliefs and stories go is unknown. "The time depth of these stories is shrouded in mist but could be considerable," the archaeologists say.

The team began archaeological fieldwork on the island in the spring of 2014. "The results are astonishing and reveal extensive human activities on the island in the Mesolithic Stone Age," the archaeologists wrote.

People who travelled to the island may have practiced various rituals inside the two caves, archaeologists say. One cave contains what may be an altar where offerings could have been made to deities. Meanwhile another cave has an area that could have been used like a "theater" or "stage." 

"In two caves, distinct ritual features were identified," wrote the team members, who hail from Kalmar County Museum and Linnaeus University, both in Sweden.

Stone Age rituals?

One cave has a massive hollow, about 2.3 feet (0.7 meters) in diameter, which was hammered into a vertical wall. A fireplace lies underneath the hollow. "We believe the hollow is man-made and that the fireplace has been used in connection to hammering out the hollow, probably [on] several occasions," said Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay, an archaeologist with Kalmar County Museum.

Archaeologists said they are not certain what took place here; however, one clue comes from the cave's layout.

"The entrance to the cave is very narrow, and you have to squeeze your way in. [However,] once you're inside, only half of the cave is covered and you can actually stand above the cave and look down into it, almost like a theater or a stage below," said Papmehl-Dufay. [See Photos of the Cave of the Underworld]
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Heather Delaria
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« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2015, 02:06:12 am »



Animal bones found at the Stone Age site contained mostly seal remains, dated to around 9,000 years ago.
Credit: Kenneth Alexandersson
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« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2015, 02:06:49 am »

 The "act of producing the hollow could have been the important part [of the ritual], perhaps even the sound created while doing so," he said. The noise from the hammering and the sight of the fire burning, as viewed from above, may have created an interesting effect for Stone Age audiences, the researchers said.

The second cave yielded yet more strange clues. Archaeologists found a hammerstone and an area that was used for grinding up material. This area "could have been used to place something in, perhaps as part of some form of offering, like an altar," Papmehl-Dufay said.

In between the two caves, the archaeologists discovered a small rock shelter, just 20 by 26 feet (6 by 8 meters), that contained stone tools and seal remains. Radiocarbon dating indicates people consumed the seals around 9,000 years ago.

"A few people could have been sitting or standing, perhaps just resting or spending the night during sporadic stays on the island," Papmehl-Dufay said. "However, more-specific activities with ritual elements to [them] cannot be ruled out, such as feasting in connection to the rituals performed in the nearby caves."

More to discover

Work on the island is continuing as archaeologists try to unravel the secrets of the site's past. The scientists are currently investigating a layer of material, below one of the caves, that contains quartz that may have been used to help make tools.

Exploring the site has been quite an experience, Papmehl-Dufay said. The uninhabited island is now a national park, and though members of the public are allowed to visit the island during the day, they must stick to certain paths. Any visitors (the archaeologists excepted) must leave before nightfall. There is no water or electricity on the island, so all people traveling to the site must bring all the provisions they need.

"Hopefully, we'll be able to do some more fieldwork on the island the coming spring," Papmehl-Dufay said.

Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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http://www.livescience.com/52257-stone-age-rituals-on-witchcraft-island.html?cmpid=NL_LLM_weekly_2015-09-22
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Misanthropic
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« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2015, 02:10:41 am »

What are these places? ghost towns with a whole story behind?
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Allison
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« Reply #5 on: October 11, 2015, 02:12:02 am »

9,000 years ago....noting that the yearly "easter" meetings have nothing to do with the resurrection of Jesus. this is fascinating stuff and just shows that beliefs, rituals and sacrifices have been an important part of the human "learning" progress when nature was less understood. There is also here an insight on their survival while there, feasting on animals, building shelters, building fires. They say there is no water on the island, I am only assuming they mean drinkable water, but maybe the fire burning was of one area for boiling water??
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« Reply #6 on: October 11, 2015, 02:13:10 am »

No they are a few examples of creepy places that got cool names all throughout AZ.
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« Reply #7 on: October 11, 2015, 02:15:02 am »

Visitors who has brought rocks with them back home has been forced to return them due to have being followed by bad luck. Adding to the legend of the island being cursed for some ancient unknown reason. The name means Blue Maiden in english.
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« Reply #8 on: October 11, 2015, 02:16:02 am »

Association is a powerful yet poorly controlled tool. If we elect to associate evil with a place, then we will quite purposively seek data to support that hypothesis. And, to support our hypothesis we will seek out others to agree. I suppose it's about garnering a sense of power and control.
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« Reply #9 on: October 11, 2015, 02:17:32 am »

Boiling water to purify it for drinking is a quite recent innovation. While water was obviously used for cooking purposes since very ancient times - perhaps even pre-Homo sapiens - it was not recognised that boiling/distillation would purify "bad" water until people began to realise that water could contain microbial agents that might cause sickness. I suspect the area where fire was found to be used was either for cooking/heating, or some ritual purpose. Water for those on the island would likely have been gathered via condensation if a ready supply of ice/snow for melting was used.
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« Reply #10 on: October 11, 2015, 02:18:48 am »

But if they boiled water, it would not have been for the intend of purification to remove microbial agents, as you point out, they did not know about that then, but they did know they could cook food in it and very highly posible knew it tasted better after being boiled.....it is possible they boiled sea water, it was an island, they would have been surrounded by water. People over the centuries have died during the trial and errors of eating, they have even gone mad with someofthe foods they have tried out. Who knows what posible " madnesses" occured on that island by eating or drinking.
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« Reply #11 on: October 11, 2015, 02:20:41 am »

It must be fifty years since I read Margaret Murray's "God of the Witches," but I recall her comparing cave paintings of ritual dances with dances in rural 17th Century England and finding similarities. She was arguing for the existence of a suppressed but continuously practiced form of paganism, condemned by the Church as "witchcraft," from the Neolithic almost to modernity. Which sounds quite a bit like this.
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Thorvir Hrothgaard
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« Reply #12 on: October 11, 2015, 02:23:06 am »

Distilled or boiled water (by itself) actually tastes pretty terrible, very different to natural water. Sea water wouldn't be potable unless completely distilled, due to the salt content.
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« Reply #13 on: October 11, 2015, 02:24:52 am »

Sounds like a place to build a summer home.
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« Reply #14 on: October 11, 2015, 02:25:01 am »

Sounds like a place to build a summer home.
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