The Great Stone Mound Monument- Vestige of the New England Celts- Holliston, MA.
"The true history of civilization is forbidden. Powerful conspiracies try to allow only a distorted version to be expressed. People... are actually under the sway of a dictatorial power that conditions their activities and behavior. Our social and religious history has been falsified for thousands of years... The psychosis still continues in our time: textbooks, books on mythology and encyclopedias conceal the truth and present only the... mandatory version [of history]". - Robert Charroux, The Conspiracy of Falsehood, from the book Masters of the World, published 1967.
If one has ever been through my hometown of Holliston, MA., and driven down Prentice St., one might catch a glimpse of a giant stone mound amidst a field of green, which is now on land owned by the Pinecrest Country Club/ Golf Course. To the un-initiated, one might think that this Great Stone Mound to be the result of field clearing done by the country club; however, the Pinecrest Country Club has owned the land only since 1955. The Great Stone Mound was already there. Okay, so perhaps it was the result of field clearing? No, perhaps not. The farmers who owned the land (the Howe family) before the Country Club in the early 20th century have no clue as to the Great Stone Mound's true origins.
Here is a picture of the Stone Mound, taken from a Holliston Reporter article:
In fact, here is a link to the Holliston Reporter article:
Holliston Reporter Archive- "The Rock Pile"
Notice that in the comments section, somebody mentions there is another (smaller) pile like it on the end of Burnap Ln., and another commenter asserts it is an Indian burial and that there are two mounds like it in Brookline. This last commenter is close to the mark, but as we shall see, there were pre-colonial Celtic settlements that thrived throughout the New England area in pre-colonial times.
In the 1960's and 1970's there were written publications made by the Early Sites Research Group (no longer active) and the New England Antiquities Research Association regarding this Stone Mound in Holliston. I believe one of these groups, back in those days, also published material about a similar mound that I want to say is in Boxborough, MA., although I do not have my hands on this source material- I have seen the booklet in the past, though, but it has been awhile. If the other stone mound, identical to the Holliston counter-part, is not in Boxboro, it is in another town in that area such as Littleton, Acton, Ayer, or some such.
Another great Internet resource providing another article on this Stone Mound is Peter Waksman's Rock Piles blog. Here is a link to his article on the Stone Mound:
Mill St. Holliston, Stone Mound- Rock Piles Blog
The comments section of this article is also worth a read. Peter Waksman is an older gentleman (from my perspective), and I am lucky to have met him on several occasions. One of these occasions was at the Holliston Historical Society where he was a visiting/guest speaker. When Mr. Waksman mentioned the Great Stone Mound, Joanne Hulbert, Holliston town historian, wanted to put the mound in the context of late 19th century/ early 20th century field clearing by Mr. Howe and his farm hands. Although professing not to know it's origin, Peter Waksman rightfully refuted Joanne Hulbert's statement.
It is worth mentioning that Joanne Hulbert, Holliston Town historian, draws her conclusion of a late 19th/ early 20th century stone construction based on the following: that upon having built a stone construction, Mr. Howe told his farmhands to make sure that there was space enough for a horse and carriage to go around. And that is basically the historical reference that we have concerning a stone construction in the field around Mill St./ Prentice St where the Great Stone Mound is located. But wait a minute. This reference says nothing about the construction of the Great Stone Mound itself. It is, in fact, a likely reference to the stone wall built around the field.
Archaeologists involved in biblical archaeology in the early 20th century were excavating ancient Babylon/ Sumer. Some of the artifacts they found, for instance, at the ancient city of Ur (ancient Sumerian city) were cunieform clay tablets. It turns out that many of these ancient clay tablets were used for record-keeping purposes. For instance, one clay tablet mentions the erection of the stone wall enclosures around the city- apparently the ancient Sumerian's standard measure of their stone walls was that the width had to be a certain length, and they had to be wide enough for a horse and carriage to go around. The (later) ancient Romans, too, used this standard of measure. Especially the openings of the stone wall enclosures- make sure they are wide enough for a horse and carriage to go around. Or, if you would like, for two horse and carriages to go around (an ancient two-lane). We see this same standard of measure in colonial New England right up to the early 20th century. On the History Channel's "Curse of Oak Island" TV series, Season 8, Episode 17, the crew of the show find a cobbled stone road on the island (Nova Scotia), and the president of the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA) tells the crew that the cobbled road is wide enough for a horse and carriage, a standard measure from hundreds of years ago. (The mystery here is that this cobbled road is built in a European style that predates the colonization of the area by hundreds of years- in other words, it looks like it belongs in the 12th-15th centuries.)
So, I have noticed that the stone wall enclosure around the field of Mill St./Prentice St. in Holliston (where the Great Stone Mound is) is a massive stone wall- this is probably the massive stone construction project undertaken by Mr. Howe and his farm hands in the late 19th/ early 20th century- the stone wall enclosure around the field, that is, and NOT the Great Stone Mound itself, for the mound was already there. And, the openings of the stone wall enclosure around the field are INDEED wide enough for a horse and carriage to go through. Today, the golf carts driven by golfers at the Pinecrest Country Club still drive through the opening of the stone wall enclosure, "wide enough for a horse and carriage to go through."
It is important to note that this section of Holliston is the Miller Hill area. The field where the Great Mound sits is basically a plain at the foot of the hill. There are other ancient stone ruins, too, on the other side of the woods of Miller Hill, behind Gorwin Dr. I posted an article on this blog about a "Holliston MA. Mega-Stone-Mound" in October of 2014. Peter Waksman too, has covered this site on his Rock Piles blog. As Mr. Waksman's pictures are clearer, I will provide his link here as a resource. If you wish to find my post, it is archived in the side panel of this blog (10/2014). Here is the link to Peter Waksman's Rock piles site concerning the Miller Hill/ Gorwin Dr. Stone Mound:
Rock Piles Blog- Miller Hill Stone Mound
Now, the thing is, that these Stone Mounds, especially the style of stone mound represented on the land now belonging to the golf course, do in fact bear a striking resemblance to Neolithic stone mounds in Celtic areas such as Ireland and Scotland. Some of these stone mounds are 5,000 years old. Some examples (and I will provide links) would be the LoughCrew Cairns of the Boyne Valley of Ireland (also in the same area where the Newgrange passage chamber is. Funny, the Great Stone Mound of Holliston is in the same area as the Upton Stone Chamber.) Then there are the Grey Cairns of Camster Caithness, Scotland. These are known as the Orkney-Cromarty type and are called the "Camster Rounds." Also the Clava Cairns of Scotland came up in a search, as well as "Nether Largie" stone mounds. Here are some quick links:
Wikipedia On LoughCrew Cairns, County Knowth Ireland
Wikipedia On Camster Rounds of Scotland
World History Encyclopedia On the Clava Cairns, Scotland
As the stone cairn sites in the above links are various, I also encourage the reader to look at these sites, such as the LoughCrew cairns or Camster Rounds, with Google Images where one may find some more relevant pictures associating these Old World sites with a site such as the Stone Mound site in Holliston, MA. I did want to provide some links with good information to these sites, however.
It is interesting to note that these 5,000 year-old neolithic stone monuments from Ireland/ Scotland are in good repair. The thing about building in stone is that it was meant to last forever. Long after buildings and houses are gone, stone monuments should still be here. The Great Stone Mound of the Holliston golf course is no exception.
Also, below is a link to an earlier post in this blog here, from Thompson, CT. The first 3 pictures are different angles of the same stone mound which is an identically built, although smaller, structure, similar to the Great Stone Mound of Holliston. The base of these structures is the same. When I visited this site in Thompson CT., the large stone mound, which comprise the first 3 pictures in the link below, was described to me as a "boat cairn." It is termed thus because it is in the oblong shape of a boat. At one end, the "nose" of the boat juts out. Although the Thompson CT. stone mound is smaller than the Holliston Great-Stone Mound, both can be said to be "boat cairns." Again, the bases of the cairn is the same, both have the same oblong shape, and both have a protrusion on one end of the oblong shape, representing the "nose" of the ship. When I first saw this feature on the Holliston stone mound, I thought at first that this was one side of the stone mound wall that was getting ready to collapse or something (there is a small collapse but in a different spot), then I realized that this was an intentional feature built into the design of the stone mound and that I had seen this feature before in the Thompson CT. boat cairn. The "nose" of the Holliston Stone Mound boat cairn points in the direction of Highland St. I wish I had better pictures of the Thompson CT. "boat cairn" but at least I do have some pictures to share, which is the link right here:
Thompson, CT. Stone Mound Pics
Now, again, it is important to note that the Great Stone Mound of Holliston is not a stand-alone monument. As I mentioned above, there is the other great stone mound on the other side of Miller Hill behind Gorwin Dr. In fact, photos do not really do this large stone platform mound, which overlooks a swamp, justice. This platform mound is surrounded by smaller cairns. Also notable is that behind the driving range of the golf course there is a series of small hillocks which may be internment mounds. On top of one of these small mounds is a druid's stone chair. This is the equivalent of an ancient coronation stone. William B. Goodwin features an example of a druid's stone seat in his book "The Ruins of Great Ireland in New England" on page 387, in which there is a nice black and white photograph of a druid's stone chair from Chester, New Hampshire. Now, the druid's seat in Holliston behind the golf course is not a full sized boulder, it is a very large stone shaped out to be a chair. As it is, the stone chair lays tossed over on it's back side. Only upon close examination of this stone chair can one discern what it truely is. There is, in fact, a notched groove on the back of the seat (this bears no resemblance to any modern quarry mark) that fits into a worked notch (supposed to click in place) on the boulder platform that this druid's stone seat is supposed to be erected upon, however at some point the stone chair was heaved off of the boulder platform and now lays on it's back-end side, and nobody notices such a thing. As far as I know, I am the only one to notice this druid's stone seat. Unless I pass this knowledge on, I am the last one to know such things. This is also the general area where I found a certain quartz crystal artifact, in which there are only two other known examples of in the world- one found in Ohio, the other found in the English countryside, and the one in my possession from Holliston.
Anyway, these stone seats are Celtic in origin, hence the term a druid's seat/ stone chair. They are the ancient equivalent of a coronation stone. We need not go to the British Isles to study this, for they are found in New England as well. One example of this is the Stone of Scone, which is currently in Westminster Abbey, UK. Legend associates the Stone of Scone with the Lia-fail, which was the coronation stone of the High-Kings of Ireland. The stone seats, some found in the British Isles, others in New England, are an older, more ancient equivalent of such as coronation stone.
In his book "Before Columbus", published 1971, Brendeis University professor Cyrus H. Gordon was adament that the ancients of the Old World, probably as far back as the Bronze Age, were sailing to, and perhaps even settling, the Americas. One of the chapters of the book is titled "The Testimony of Greek Authors" in which he cites many ancient sources of knowledge of the Americas, such as the histories and testimonies of Theopompous (4th century BC), Diodorus of Sicily (1st century BC), Aelian, a Roman author of the 2nd century AD, and Strabo, of the 1st century BC. Cyrus H. Gordon also mentions the works of Homer, and also that of Plato's account of Atlantis, in which is described a "true continent" which lay past the sunken island continent of Atlantis, which was said to be located in what is now the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. French author Robert Charroux also talked about the ancient Greek author Sanchuniathon in his works as having knowledge of the Americas.
That there were Celtic people living in the New England region in ancient, pre-colonial times there can be no question. They preceded the Icelandic Vikings in settling Vinland, which is the New England region (see earlier posts on this blog.) According to the Icelandic Saga of Thorfinn Karlesefni, which is a historical document from either 1001 AD or 1007 AD, there were already settlements of a Celtic-speaking people in Vinland, the New England area, which the Vikings came into contact with, even capturing some of these people who they were able to mutually communicate with. The Icelandic saga of Karlesefni also states that these Celtic people built crude stone hovels, which may be the only historic reference we have to the building of the stone chambers in the New England/ Upstate New York region, such as the Upton Stone Chamber and the stone chambers of Gungywamp in Groton, CT. According to William B. Goodwin, who wrote "the Ruins of Great Ireland in New England" in 1946, the New England stone chambers (of which there are hundreds) represent a Celtic style of stone architecture, which according to my research, does in fact seems to be the case. Goodwin was the pre-eminent Icelandic scholar of his day, which eventually led him to pioneer the research of the earlier Celtic settlements of New England.
There is also the testimony of language. There is Bogastowe Brook, which is the Lake Winthrop area, by the Holliston/Medway town lines. Bogastowe is a Celtic place name, or, if you would like, a hybridized Celtic/Algonquian Indian place name. Holliston town historian Joanne Hulbert says that Bogastowe should also be spelled as "Paugastowe" which looks more like a correct Native place name. However, what is important here is the phoenetic pronunciation, and the meaning of the word, not the spelling. The ancient Celtic/Gaelic word "bog" (still in use in the English language) means "a watery place." The Algonquian Paug, or Bog, also means "a watery place." In other words, this is a borrowed word from the ancient Celtic New Englanders who settled the area thousands of years ago. The seasonal "Indian" encampment on the shores of Lake Winthrop may have originally been a neolithic Celtic settlement that went Native. The neolithic Celts had more or less the same culture as the Algonquian people, they would have set up wicki-ups or wigwams near a place of water much the same way as Native people did. And if the cultures were compatible as I would infer, why wouldn't they have mixed together.
Next, I will cite Magomisquog as an example. Another hybrid Celtic/Indian place name. Magomisquog is the Native place name for the hills of Milford, MA. It means "the great/giant(s) rock affording a grand view" Magog, or Gogmagog, is the Celtic word for a giant. In the British Isles, a Mag's hill means a giant's hill. Here we have a Mag's hill, or giant's hill, Magomisquog, in Milford MA. Evidence that giants once existed has been found, in fact, in the hills of Milford (see earlier posts in this blog.) It is an archeological enigma that a tenured professional would not want to touch with a ten-foot pole, yet the evidence is there, none-the-less. Also note that a stone club has been found in Milford. William B. Goodwin mentions in "The Ruins of Great Ireland in New England" that stone clubs have been found in New England before, that they have been mistakenly identified as American Indian, but that they are actually a Celtic artifact- they correspond to the stone age/ neolithic equivalent of the Celtic Mace, which was wielded by the king's or high priest's right-hand man (think of Man-At-Arms from He-man and the Masters of the Universe for a cartoon depiction of this.) Also interesting is that the Cerne Giant, in England, which is a chalk figure of a Gogmagog, yields a mace, or club, in his right hand (see the book "Gogmagog: the Buried Gods" by TC Lethbridge for more information on this.) That a stone mace was found at the foot of the hills of Magomisquog in Milford, MA., can be no coincidence.
The last example I will cite is Monadnock. This is a popularly climbed mountain which I cherish in Keene, New Hampshire. Monad in Algonquian can mean a hill or mountain, and Monadh in Gaelic/Celtic also means a hill or mountain. A "cnoc" in the Celtic/Gaelic language means a mountainous rocky crag, which is exactly what Mt. Monadnock is. The "c" in "cnoc" is silent. This is another Celtic word that slipped into the Algonquian language. Again, what is important is the phonetic pronunciation and the word meaning. The spelling of the word is subject to slight variants. In his book "America B.C.", professor Berry Fell lists many dozens of Algonquian place names which match a Celtic counter-part in terms of phonetic pronunciation and meaning. Most of his examples came from northern New Hampshire and Vermont. I listed the three examples I am most familiar with personally.
To further illustrate the point of the connection between Celtic and NorthEast Algonquian language, I will list one more example from Dr. Fell's book America B.C. Please note that Dr. Fell mastered Celtic language and literature while working on his doctoral degree at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. This made Dr. Fell uniquely qualified to study the Celtic monoliths and Stone Chambers of New England, and also to find and point out the connections between NorthEast Algonquian and Celtic languages. The average archaeologist in the area does not have such a background in Celtic studies, and is therefore at a loss to explain such conundrums or "coincidences." Anyway, here is one brilliant example of the similarity of language that Dr. Fell had pointed out, which is the Amoskeag River, which in Algonquian roughly means "one who takes small fish." Dr. Fell recognized this word as the Celtic Ammo-iasgag, which means "small-fish stream." Dr. Fell stated that this word must have been imparted to the Algonquians by the Celts, "but some details of the sense as well as the precise pronunciation have been blurred by the passage of time." French author Robert Charroux even goes so far as to say that North America was the original homeland of the Celts, if one studies their ancient mythology, before the wars of the Tuatha de Danon and certain world-cataclysms.
I will also give an example here, of an earlier post from my blog, of the stone monument shrine I came across in the woods of Medway behind Fisher St. in 2012. This stone monument is aligned to the Winter Solstice Sunrise, which is an ancient high holiday of the Celtic people. Some researchers think this is an ancient rite that was observed all the way back in the times of Lost Atlantis. The link is here, from when NEARA (New England Antiquities Research Association) regional co-ordinator Peter Anick and I went to the stone monument one year to record the winter solstice sunrise firsthand:
Winter Solstice At Ancient Stone Monument, Medway, December 2014
As Robert Charroux pointed out in his book "The Gods Unknown", the Celtic Civilization was the mother of all civilizations. Behind the driving range of the golf course, there are two stone towers. These are modern/early 20th century. However, the "two towers" symbolism is a use of ancient Celtic symbology for something very important- J.R.R. Tolkien even uses this symbolism in his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Also of note is that there does seem to be smaller "Beaker style" burial mounds in the swamps along the banks of the stream behind what is now the golf course, where the Great Stone Mound of Holliston is located. The Beaker People were neolithic stone-age Celtic people, associated with the stone monuments of the British Isles. They would bury their dead, place a boulder over the burial pit, build a small rock cairn on top of/around the boulder, usually this being an artistic expression of the interred person who passed on, and then mounded the whole thing up with Earth. I notice these small mounds literally everywhere near swampland in my area. The thing about this is, in all the Massachusetts Archeological literature, which is thousands of tomes, and a couple of hundred years old now, there is no reference anywhere to any Native American burials found in such a context- they do find Native burials in other contexts, however. I can only conclude that this is another issue that these professionals do not want to touch with a ten-foot pole. So, perhaps these small mounds are Celtic burials, which for some reason, we are forbidden to know about the meaning of this. The land of Tir Nan Og, the "Other World' of the Celts, which was real in both a literal sense as well as a magical sense, was also known as 'the land of the hills." A very fitting description of New England, but I would also say it might be a reference to these burial mounds, as well.
In fact, here are some links to my earlier blog posts concerning the Stone Chambers at Gungywamp in Groton, CT.:
Gungywamp Chambers; King's Chamber & Mother Earth Chamber
I also did a general re-cap of many of the Stone Chambers I had visited in the local area, driving out from my hometown of Holliston. This is relevant because, it puts the Great Stone Mound of the Holliston golf course in the context of these other stone structures. Here is the link:
Some regional Stone Chambers, Standing Stones, & Dolmens
Also, I came across an ancient Standing Stone Obelisk one time in the woods of Sherborn, MA. Right next door to Holliston, due east. Who knows what the story of this is. Maybe I did find Atlantis:
Sherborn, MA. Stone Obelisk and Stone Statue Ruin
Another thing I noticed about the Great Stone Mound on the golf course, when I was looking at it earlier this winter is this- there are no quarry marks on any of the stones, yet some of the stones are rough, but I noticed they had been split from nearby bedrock ledge by a burning method- which is a very ancient method for rock quarrying. Also, there is a slight collapse on one of the sides, and on another side, it looked as if some stones had been taken OUT of the pile- perhaps Mr. Howe and his farm-hands needed a few extra stones for the stone wall enclosure they built around the field in the late 19th/early 20th century.
So, lets weigh the evidence. Although it cannot be conclusively proved when the Great Stone Monument was built, I would say it is either a Neo-lithic Era/Bronze Age Celtic monument, built by the New England Celts, or later, sometime between the 12th-15th centuries, post Celtic settlement and post-Viking Vinland of New England, but before the historical colonial era of 1492. This would place the monument in the same league as the Newport Tower in Rhode Island, or the Westford Knight petroglyph, the Sinclair expeditions, Oak Island, etc.
One final thought is this: Before New England was officially colonized in 1620 by the English, Italian explorer Giovanni de Verrazano explored Narragansett Bay and the New England region in 1524. He described the Native inhabitants as being slightly less dark than a black African as well as groups of other Native people who looked like European peoples but with a tan. The homogenous, pure-blood look of the American Indian in the New England region was dark-skinned, an ignorant person might even confuse a Native person as passing for an African American. To get a good sense of the complexion of Native people, there is a full-color portrait which survives to us, of the Narragansett Sachem (Chief) Ninigret from the 1650's. This portrait is that of a Narragansett sachem. Place him in today's street clothes and people might profile him as an African American. So we know who the dark-skinned Natives are mentioned in 1524 by Verrazano. But who are the light-skinned Natives who look like Europeans but with a tan? I am going to have to put political correctness aside. These people were the New England Celts, or the descendants of the New England Celts. In his book "The Lost Colony of the Templars" published 2004, author Steven Sora points out that in Nova Scotia, there is an ethnic group of people known as the Jack-A-Tars. They are the mixed blooded descendants of MicMac people and Basque fishermen. The Basque fishermen, however, were already sailing from the Mediteranean to Nova Scotia in the days before Columbus even set sail! We have a great place for fishing down here in Massachusetts too, it is known as Cape Cod Bay. Steven Sora also mentions in his book that some North American Native tribes have an ancient DNA strand not shared with other American Indian tribes or Asians, but that this is a common strand shared with Europeans.
To sum up, there were ancient Celtic settlements in New England, as we can glean from early Icelandic accounts and enigmatic stone structures. It was these ancient Celts, or their descendants, who built the Great Stone Mound on what is now the Pinecrest Country Club by Mill St./Prentice St. in Holliston, MA. There are other structures around it, such as mounds, a druids stone coronation seat, and a giant stone platform mound on the other side of the woods from Miller Hill. The local place names and other artifacts also attest to a Celtic settlement sometime before the recorded history of the region.
*Please note: There is a TV show on a local News network in the area, a sort of popular program called "Chronicle." The reporters find interesting things around the New England region and report on it. The Stone Mound on the Holliston golf course was featured on the show once. Disappointingly, when the current owner of the Country Club was interviewed, she cited the false claim that the structure was built around the turn of the 20th century- there is no evidence to support this other than the fact that there was, in fact, a stone construction project around the field at that time, and that the landowner, Mr. Howe, had the specifications of his project built so that it would be "wide enough for a horse and carriage to go around". What everybody has missed, including town historians, is that this is a reference to a standard measure of a stone wall enclosure. Looking at the stone wall around the field, this alone would have been a major undertaking- the stone wall is also as "wide as a wagon" which is another standard measure for stone wall construction since ancient Babylonian, Roman, and Colonial times up through the early 20th century. Analyzing the opening in the giant stone wall enclosure around the field, which can be considered as a true gate, for the stone wall enclosure constructed by Mr. Howe and his farm-hands was really THAT big, it is indeed wide enough for a horse and carriage to go around, which almost absolutely confirms the reference to Mr. Howe's stone construction project was in regards to the Stone wall, and NOT the stone mound. Today, golfers still drive their carts through this very gate. People, including town historians, have erroneously attributed the historical reference to the building of the dimensions of the stone wall to the stone mound, not knowing any better. Again, the stone wall itself would have been a massive undertaking. I am not selling anybody short, I work with stone myself, I know how hard it is. I would compare this conundrum to a game of "telephone." If "Grandpa Raymond" for instance, was one of the builders who helped to build the stone wall around the field, and grandson or great-grandson only hears this from Raymond's daughter, aka Mom, all of a sudden did you know, "Grandpa Raymond" helped to build that stone mound- in other words, everybody is too quick to assume that the historic reference is to the building of the Stone Mound, and they have overlooked the massive Stone Wall which would have been a massive project, because the horse and carriage reference as a "standard" measure of stone wall building has gone over everybody's heads. I felt that this point needed some extra clarification as it is the key to understanding who built what and when. We no longer live in an agrarian culture, perhaps to our own detriment, so the horse and carriage reference is no longer well understood.
