Stonehenge and Mystery Hill have three things in common. They were observatories. Each has astronomical alignments. Almost nothing is known about the builders of both.
Unfortunately, many pre-Colombian structures in America’s Stonehenge were carried away, vandalized or merely destroyed. Two landowners’ actions contributed to the mystique that surrounds Mystery Hill. Theories about the builders have been set forth.
Mystery Hill – A Bit of History
Jonathan Pattee was the earliest recorded landowner. It’s known that he altered the monoliths and structures. The man? Various stories about him exist. He was a robber, an abolitionist who ran a station for the underground railway where runaway slaves could spend the night, a bootlegger, a farmer, a millionaire, a person who built the structures, helped by his five sons, for no apparent reason, an eccentric or insane. To further add to the mystery is the work of William B. Goodwin who bought the land in 1936. He believed the Culdees, Irish monks, built the structure in pre-Columbian times. He moved stones around to support his thoughts, obliterating many archaeological records.
Structures of America’s Stonehenge
It’s obvious that those in Mystery Hill are related to astronomy and coincide with the Pagan Sabbats, Fire Festivals, Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Midsummer or Litha, Lughnasadh and Mabon.
Monoliths align with the Midwinter solstice sunrise and sunset, November first sunrise and sunset, Spring and Autumn Equinox sunrises and sunsets, May first sunrise and sunset and Midsummer solstice sunrise and sunset, August first sunrise and sunset. True north, aligns with the star Thuban, pole star of 2,000 BCE. According to astronomers, these exact patterns coincide with those dating from 2499 to 1900 BCE. The Sunrise Stone marks the Summer Solstice.
- The Watch House, outside the main complex, is aligned to the February first sunrise. The back wall of the chamber’s stones contain a high percentage of white quartz which is found in many global Neolithic structures.
- The Underground Upton Chamber is one of the largest and most perfectly built stone chambers in New England dated by experts circa 710 CE.
- The Sacrificial/Altar Stone is a huge flat boulder that was place on four legs.
- The Oracle Chamber’s altar stones resemble those found in European megalithic sites.
- Scientists noted that the structures are similar to Phoenician architecture and writings on the stones resemble Ogham, Phoenician, Iberian, Basque, Libyan, Egyptian, and Punic scripts.
Theories about Mystery Hill
While we may never know who built this site, archeologists and scientists theorize about who they were. Many mainstream archaeologists conclude, based on artifacts, the stones were put together by farmers during the 1700s and 1800s. An example is the Sacrificial Stone which closely resembles those used to extract lye from ashes, the first step in the soap-making. In 1893, Hugh Morrison, Chairman, Architecture Department, Dartmouth College, and author Daniel Fiske wrote about the impossibility of the megalithic structures at Mystery Hill being the work of AmerIndians or early settlers.
Mystery Hill is an astronomical observatory built by a pre-Columbian civilization. There are stones encased in trees that could have sprouted before the arrival of the first colonists. Today, the henge can still be used as an accurate calendar for the year. America’s Stonehenge might be linked to the Greeks or Phoenicians. There is a similarity between the construction of the Oracle on Mystery Hill and those found in ancient temples in Malta and Greece. The Celts might have been the builders because the entrance is like the one at Avebury in the English County, Wiltshire.
Sources:
- The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved, Colin & Damon Wilson, (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2000)
- Mysterious New England, Austin N. Stevens, ed., (Yankee Inc., 1977)
