Category: in Britain

Understanding Lunar Maxima: Ancient Insights Explained

Stone Age astronomy focused on celestial time cycles and natural units, allowing astronomers to develop intricate cosmic meanings. As civilizations advanced, attention shifted to space and scientific models, diminishing the intimate connection to time. Notably, the development of megalithic measurements reflected their unique perception of time, emphasizing a geometric understanding of their environment.

figure 1: The north-east quadrant of the horizon from the megalithic sites of Carnac. At that latitude, alignments 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.

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Shaping of Stones in Alignments

Megalithic sites are subject to strict evidence criteria regarding solar and lunar alignments. Studies show that stone configurations often indicate astronomical events, with specific shapes reflecting lunar cycles. Notably, the alignment of stones at sites like Le Manio and Carnasserie highlight ancient observation techniques, suggesting intentional design to mark celestial occurrences.

where the sun or moon rose or set at a site can allow a dating due to the tilt of the earth having varied over a very long term cyclicity. One can also see that alignment to such events was a major feature of megalithic monuments, of pointing to sun and moon events. This approach gets even more powerful when day or month counting between alignment events can be measured within the dimensions of a site, using units of length seen belonging to a megalithic culture, like the megalithic yard.

However, another feature of stones at megalithic sites is their shape. When tracking the tracking the moon in time, its phase is changing so that shapes could indicating lunar phase, according to some sort of code. Le Manio Quadrilateral near Carnac shows a great shape variation in the 36 stones of its southern curb of 36, marking the 36 lunar months in three lunar years alongside a day-inch count of 1063 days-inches. This count starts from the Sun Gate from which the summer (and winter) sunrise can be viewed (so that the curb is 14 degrees south of the summer sun line.)

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Centers of the World

Explores the concept of sacred centers in relation to ancient civilizations and their geographical patterns. It discusses how these centers, influenced by Earth’s nature, manifest through numerically significant shapes and polygons. The movement from the poles affects mapping and measurements, revealing harmonious relations in spatial designs reflective of cosmic principles.

18th-century illustration of Mount Kailash, depicting the holy family: Shiva and Parvati, cradling Skanda with Ganesha by Shiva’s side

A culture often creates centers, While someone may gets powerful, and everything gets built around them and the rest is history, the concept of sacred center came from the nature of the Earth itself. In Egypt the meridian was both explicit and dominant in the south to north flow of the Nile, after the desertification of the Sahara. In Britain and elsewhere however, large landscape geometries were created of an approximately circular nature and this is a natural result of the near-spherical Earth.

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Easter Aquhorthies

Easter Aquhorthies (i.e. apocathery) has eleven stones in a circle and in between the two south-to-south-west stones is a large (bridging) recumbent stone, more commonly found in Scottish circles  and associated (by Alexander Thom) to lunar observatories because, in Scotland at lunar maximum standstill, the moon can rest upon or be hidden by a raised horizon.

Picture by krautrock, a member of megalithic.co.uk in June 2010.

Figure 1 Alexander Thom’s site plan, with cardinal directions and highlighting the diameter .

It is tempting to assume geometry within stone circles and this one invites that by having eleven regularly placed stones,. However, 11 is rarely found in regular geometries or stone circles.

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Dun Torcuill: The Broch that Modelled the World

image above courtesy Marc Calhoun


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Multiple Squares to form Flattened Circle Megaliths

above: a 28 square grid with double, triple (top), and four-square rectangles (red),
plus (gray again) the triple rectangles within class B

Contents

1.     Problems with Thom’s Stone Circle Geometries.

2.     Egyptian Grids of Multiple Squares.

3.     Generating Flattened Circles using a Grid of Squares.

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the geometries proposed by Alexander Thom for a shape called a flattened circle, survivors of these being quite commonly found in the British Isles. Thom’s proposals appear to have been rejected through (a) disbelief that the Neolithic builders of megalithic monuments could have generated such sophistication using only ropes and stakes and (b) through assertions that real structures do not obey the geometry he overlaid upon his surveys.

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