In 3113 B.C. both sides of the north Atlantic were demolished by a tidal wave resulting from a meteor impact. There were few survivors, and a Cretan ship arriving in Britain reported home that the island was deserted. But as time went on Britain was a continuing source of tin for Cretans and Phoenicians, and Phoenician colonists from what is now Spain traded extensively with what is now Ireland. They regarded it as 'The Sacred Isle' due to the presence of magi.
A few Faan wizards were in the mountains of Snowdonia at the time of the tidal wave. They were called ‘Pheryllt’ or Pharaonic, revering Pharaon, son of the Goddess Inanna. They descended into the deserted lowlands to centre their new ministry at Glastonbury. Their former dominance was shattered in the new era, probably by Ea worshippers from Ireland. Before 2900 B.C. wooden posts supported a Faan rotunda on the Stonehenge site, replacing another which had predated the tidal wave. But early in the third millennium it was allowed to rot and the rivals moved in, using the site as a graveyard, filling the holes left by the posts with cremated human remains typical of Ea worshippers in Ireland. The third millennium witnessed their expansion. The Faan tomb at West Kennett was sealed around 2200 B.C., when work began on the Avebury stone circle. Lacking wizardly astronomical alignments, the Avebury circle probably belonged to Ea worshippers. And nearby Silbury Hill was similar to the manmade hill at Knocknarea in the west of Ireland, an area of Ea worship.
Around 2500 B.C. new arrivals had landed in Britain. Survivors of the tidal wave in the high country of what is now Spain, and also in the Alps, they had moved into the newly emptied low lands of western Europe. Their technology of constructing stone calendar circles may have been suppressed by the wizards of the Faan before the tidal wave, but times had changed. Now they were becoming dominant in western Europe. Those who came to Britain had previously travelled eastward into the Alps.
They were quite tall people with square jaws. They shared the mountains with shorter Alpine people who may have been of central Asian origin (see 'Arthur'). A famous example of the shorter type is the man whose body was preserved in ice since circa 3000 B.C. with his leather shirt, bearskin hat, grass-stuffed leather boots and grass cape intact. The taller people were not indigenous to the mountains, and after the tidal wave they left. When some of them arrived in Britain they brought the knowledge of bronzemaking which they had learned in trade with the Mediterranean. They introduced also brewing, spinning and weaving. And they probably contemplated building one of their stone circles at the Stonehenge site.
They were dashing in appearance, wearing ponchos over smocks –knee length for the men, longer for the women– with half length sleeves and no trousers. They used razors and wore neat round knitted caps and and heavy gold jewellery, favouring basket shaped clips (probably to adorn braids) and wide wrist bangles. Their weapons were long bows and arrows, and jagged knives. They lived in hamlets of about ten circular houses made from wattle and daub. The houses had high beehive-shaped thatched roofs. These people ploughed with harnessed horses and fertilized with seaweed. They hunted deer and tended pigs, sheep, goats and longhorned cattle. They grew barley and emmer wheat which they cut with long sickles. Since many of them were buried with bell-shaped drinking beakers, archaeologists refer to these people as the 'Beaker folk'.
Toward the end of the third millennium, several centuries after their appearance in Britain, their population on the mainland was thriving in central Europe and trading on both Baltic and Mediterranean coasts. At this time an early migration of Caucasians rode in on horses from what is now southern Russia. Archaeologists call these Caucasians the 'Battle Axe people' because of their double bladed battle axes. They were quite different from the poncho-wearers with the beakers, but the two groups had similar burial practices, laying men's bodies facing the east and women's facing the west. It is believed that the two groups integrated in central Europe, and were the ancestors of many people who live there today.
Around 1700 B.C. new arrivals came to Britain from the eastern Mediterranean. These people were the 'Hyperboreans' described by the historian Hecateus. They were Trojans, and they brought with them a wealth of luxury goods. They successfully integrated with the 'Beaker folk' who were building Stonehenge, and the two became one group identifying itself as Hyperborean. The poncho-wearers traditionally built simple circles of stones, and it was probably under Trojan influence that the project became grandiose, with lintels added and an arrangement of megaliths within the circle. The combination of influences produced a new kind of temple. Hecateus wrote that the Hyperboreans regularly sent offerings to the island of Delos via a network of couriers, indicating that they had trusted contacts across west and central Europe.
Toward the end of the second millennium B.C., priests in central Europe wore tall gold headgear which looked like thinner metallic versions of the classic 'wizard hat'. One such item is engraved with a chart depicting the 'Metonic' cycle of the sun and the moon, long before the Greek scientist credited with its discovery. In Wales a stiff elbow length gold cape comes from the same period. No one has ventured to explain to which ethnic group these articles belonged. Without more information from archaeologists no conclusions can be drawn, but the workmanship seems too fine to be Trojan, and probably belonged to magi from Caucasia.
In 1184 B.C. the Trojans in Anatolia were defeated by the Mycaeneans, and the Trojan Aeneas fled to Italy. A brother of Aeneas returned to free his people from slavery in Greece. From their refuge in the Cyclades they retook Troy, but were again defeated. By the terms of their treaty with the Mycaeneans they were permitted to set sail for Britain, where they joined the Hyperboreans in 1171 B.C.
Before the 3113 tidal wave, astronomical knowledge in the north had belonged to the Faan and to their close relatives in Ireland, the Danaan (see 'The United Kingdom'). These people were Japhethites, coming largely from an ethnic group closely related to some of the Hyperboreans' ancestors. These people had constructed dolmens in the fifth millennium, then passage tombs and chambered tombs in the fourth millennium. The histories which record the line of Hyperborean kings record also the earlier presence of Chaldees, the wizards of the Danaan and of the Faan. The Chaldees were a Hebrew group, and this may explain why bones in the tombs of the so-called 'little people' were only slightly smaller than those of average Europeans today. The wizards of the Danaan must have been the magi who had so impressed Phoenician traders to Ireland.
To the Faan, stone circle building was an alien technology, and it met with resistance. They built a passage tomb around the resonant centre pillar of an early stone circle built just before the tidal wave at Bryn Celli Ddu in Anglesey, but broke the stone circle. During the third millennium they had to accept the new technology as 'Beaker Folk' arrived and started building more circles. These were calendars which measured the positions of the sun and moon relative to the Earth.
The Faan are not credited with Stonehenge because the burial sites built around Stonehenge when major construction was completed (circa 1500 B.C.) bore no resemblance to Faan burials. The burial sites around Stonehenge were round mounds with intact skeletons belonging to the integrated society of the Hyperboreans and 'Beaker folk'. With increasing integration, the Trojans' burial practice would prevail, of cremating the dead and placing the remains in graveyards. The Faan disposed of the dead very differently. They exposed the bodies and interred the bones of their monarchs in their rectangular stone tombs, keeping the skulls separate.
The wizards of the Faan were still a force to be reckoned with on the island, but they were overpowered by people who did not practice their religion. It is evident that there was a Faan presence in the area of Stonehenge, for Faan artifacts have been found not far away at Windmill Hill. There the Faan were prosperous enough to build a wooden rotunda accommodating several thousand people, replacing the one that had existed on the Stonehenge site.
The people who built Stonehenge used it as a calendar, and there is no evidence of blood sacrifices from them. Use of the circle was plagued by deteriorated weather conditions, perhaps due to a meteor shower on the continent circa 1200 B.C., perhaps due to the eruption of an Icelandic volcano in 1159 B.C. The island fell into a condition of economic depression and warfare and eventually construction was halted. The last stones were installed about 1100 B.C. The megalithic era was drawing to a close. And the islands were soon to be changed forever by Caucasian invaders, Iron Age warriors of unprecedented ferocity –those enduring people who are known as the Celts.
more about the wizards
sites predating the Faan
graphic courtesy of G.G.A.
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