figure 1: The north-east quadrant of the horizon from the megalithic sites of CarnacAn extensive megalithic complex in southern Brittany, western France, predating the British megalithic.. At that latitude, alignmentsIn general, to the sun and moon on the horizon, rising in the east or setting in the west.
Also, a name special to Carnac's groups of parallel rows of stones, called Le Menec, Kermario, Kerlescan, and Erdevan. to the solar and lunar extremes followed a simple geometry of multiple squares, repeated in all four quadrants, the observer in this quadrant being placed bottom left.
It was most fortunate for the stone age astronomer that the time periods surrounding the earth could be counted in whole numbers of natural units such as the solar day, the lunar month, and the lunar orbit. Over longer periods, whole number fractions would become whole, revealing special cosmic numbers, then symbolic of the cosmic time periods associated with planets, eclipses and other coincidences, so that a large matrix of relationships gave the Stone Age a world of meanings in the sky based upon time and number.
This Stone Age view was responsible for building the megalithsStructures built out of large little-altered stones in the new stone age or neolithic between 5,000-2,500 (bronze age), in the pursuit of astronomical knowledge. but slowly lost due to advances in agricultural settlements, city states, written history, mathematics, religion and finally, science and technology. Astronomy became focussed upon space rather than time. Planets were now objects in space, eventually seen with telescopes, tracked using orbital equations governed by a solar paradigm of heliocentricThe modern view of the solar system in which all planets orbit the Sun and the Moon orbits the Earth as third planet out. gravity, instead of the antique and direct earth-centered view of the stone age. The subtleties of time cycles seen from the earth, though still present, were no longer noticed by eyes and minds now blinded by indoor living, education, jobs and calendars of extensive not cyclic time: made up of weeks, irregular months, holy days now badged holidays and every four-years, Olympic events.
Lunar Extremes over 6800 days
Few may have recently noticed how high and low the moon can ride in the sky in the past year or two. This is because the lunar orbit around the earth is tilted to the solar and planetary plane. Due to gravitational interactions with other planets and the sun, the lunar orbit crosses the sun’s path (the eclipticThe path of the Sun through the sky along which eclipses of sun and moon can occur, traditionally divided into the 365¼ parts of the solar year, each part then a DAY in angle rather than time.) at two diametric points called nodes, which move backwards through ZodiacThe 12 constellations through which the sun passes in the solar year of 365.2422 days every 18.618 years causing the eclipse phenomena of both the sun and the moon.
During the backward motion of these crossings, the moon’s orbit can at one point pass above the tilted sky of the earth (the tilt of earth’s axis), making the moon travel higher and lower than the sun in summer and winter, only each orbit. The sun travels north in the summer and south in the winter giving us the seasons. The Stone Age saw yearly solar rhythm as the movement on the horizon of sunrise and sunset during the year, where the northerly and southerly extremes occur in summer and winter solsticeThe extreme points of sunrise and sunset in the year. In midwinter the sun is to the south of the celestial equator (the reverse in the southern hemisphere) and in midsummer the sun is north of that equator, which is above the geographical Equator). alongside a very high sun and very low sun. So when the Moon is goes even higher and lower in the sky each orbit, it is approaching the Lunar maximum standstill every 18.618 years. When at maximum standstill, the moon exceeds the solar extremes on the horizon at its rising and setting.
In this one sees that the Stone Age astronomy was very down to earth, being seen from the earth using only eyes and the horizon, rather than visualizing the solar system abstracted into a 3D model and recently, surrounded by stars and galaxies. We still see things from the earth but what they mean is less phenomenal and more conceptual.
It is obvious that the 18.618 year period of these maxima would be of interest to Stone Age astronomers and, when counted in days, this is 6800 solar days long. To count this seems an unlikely task for the Stone Age but a little whole number magic and playing around with “what numbers are”, must have revealed that counts could be done by grouping units into larger aggregations, as we do with the yard of three feet or mile of 5280 feet. And they could start keeping tallies of days: for example, by moving a stone a fixed length per day. In feet, 6800 feet is for us a rather long mile, but there is evidence of miles being used in the late Stone Age. With any large number (which in the Stone Age would mean a very long length) one seeks repeating patterns just like those we see in decimal, as 68 and 100, 100 being 10 * 10, and 10 being a natural count on the fingers. In this way, inches (and the shorter digit of Egyptian measures) naturally called small units after fingers and thumbs and larger, after distances within parts of the body (such as foot, palm, step), to express an early and developing metrologyThe application of units of length to problems of measurement, design, comparison or calculation. based however upon standardized units, not an individual’s body parts as some suggest (as in a King’s foot).
A Unit of Measure adapted to counting the Nodal Period
In Britain by 3000 BC, Professor Alexander ThomScottish engineer 1894-1985. Discovered, through surveying, that Britain's megalithic circles expressed astronomy using exact measures, geometrical forms and, where possible, whole numbers. came to the conclusion that the British megalithic were using a megalithic rod (of 2.5 megalithic yards) which was exactly 6.8 feet long, this then contemporaneous with the building of Stonehenge and Avebury. Just before this, in the Preseli Hills of West Wales, one can see lengths of 6800 feet between significant built elements (such as Castell Mawr to Pentre Ifan) of an extensive landscape temple. These rods of 6.8 feet would contain 100 megalithic inches (of 0.816 inches), a unit measured by Thom within the cup-and-ring marks of British megaliths.
Figure 2 The rectangle to count half of 6800, where half of 34 is 17, a prime number. The megalithic yardAny unit of length 2.7-2.73 feet long, after Alexander Thom discovered 2.72 ft and 2.722 ft as units within the geometry within the megalithic monuments of Britain and Brittany. of 2.72 feet times 100 is 272, which is 16 x 17 and 4 x 68 and it is this factor of 17 that made 2.72 feet useful for counting the nodal periodUsually referring to the backwards motion of the lunar orbit's nodes over 6800 days (18.618 years), leading to eclipse cycles like the Saros., especially when divided into 40 megalithic inches which, times 2.5, is 100.
One therefore arrives at the notion that, while days were primarily counted in day inches (as at Le Manio near Carnac in 4000 BC), the counting of the nodal period had naturally arrived at a unit of 100 megalithic inches within a rod of 6.8 feet, which could condense the counting of 100 days periods as 6.8 feet in megalithic inches. But also, 6800 feet could represent 68 x 100 days and, 1000 megalithic rods of 6.8 feet represented the 6800 days of the nodal period, as found in Preseli Hills before 3000 BC. This might explain the evolution of the megalithic rod in Preseli as feet per day and later, the 100 megalithic inches in 6.8 feet required just 10 megalithic rods to assemble 6800 megalithic inches. A singular megalithic culture in Britain, who already counted days and months with inches, feet and a smaller megalithic yard, now developed a new unit of length to count, and represent, the nodal period of 6800 days, namely a rod of 6.8 feet.
The ability of metrology to count time as length bypasses the modern critique of the late stone age as not able to quantify their astronomy. But their interests, being differently focussed upon Time rather than Space, allowed the counting of time using units of length, creating numbers as lengths that could then be compared geometrically to compare the different periods of time as ratios. By erecting one end of two different measuring ropes, the ends of two ropes can stand (on the flat) “above” one another, forming a right triangle. The Stone Age did not need to understand the triangle mathematically for them to gain access to its trigonometric properties. Some of these properties are little used today, but came to the fore in the late stone age astronomy. Triangles are key also to understanding the circular geometries of the stone circles (and variations upon the circle) which characterized the British megalithic.
Conclusions
This alternative view of the Stone Age is not easily accepted since it undermines our foundation myth, concerning the rise of our own culture above primitivism, and it also requires one to step back from the modern way-of-seeing, to see how their astronomy worked. T. S. Eliot put this sort of dilemma, of the journey that is understanding, as:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets