Tag: megalithic yard

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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π and the Megalithic Yard

The surveyor of megalithic monuments in Britain, Alexander Thom (1894 – 1985), thought the builders had a single measure called the Megalithic Yard which he found in the geometry of the monuments when these were based upon whole number geometries such as Pythagorean triangles. His first estimate was around 2.72 feet and his second and final was around 2.722 feet. I have found the two megalithic yards were sometimes 2.72 feet because the formula for 272/100 = 2.72 involved the prime number 17 as 8 x 17/ 100, and this enabled the lunar nodal period of 6800 days to be modelled and and the 33 year “solar hero” periods to be modelled, since these periods both involve the prime number 17 as a factor. In contrast, Thom’s final megalithic yard almost certainly conformed to ancient metrology within the Drusian module in which 2.7 feet times 126/125 equals 2.7216 feet, this within Thom’s error bars for his 2.722 feet as larger than 2.72 feet.

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Vectors in Prehistory 1

In previous posts, it has been shown how a linear count of time can form a square and circle of equal perimeter to a count. In this way three views of a time count, relative to a solar year count, showed the differences between counts that are (long-term average) differential angular motion between sun and the moon’s cycle of illumination. Set within a year circle, this was probably first achieved with reference to the difference between the lunar year of 12 months (29.53 days) and the solar year of 12 average solar months (30.43 days). Note that in prehistory, counts were over long periods so that their astronomy reflected averages rather than moment-to-moment motions known through modern calculations.

The solar year was a standard baseline for time counting (the ecliptic naturally viewed as 365.25 days-in-angle, due to solar daily motion, later standardized as our convenient 360 degrees). Solar and other years became reflected in the perimeters of many ancient square and circular buildings, and long periods were called super years, even the Great Year of Plato, of the precession of the equinoxes, traditionally 25920 years long! The Draconic year, in which the Moon’s nodes travel the ecliptic, backwards, is another case.

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Quantification of Eclipse Cycles

Following on from the last post:
Given the many sub-cycles found in the Moon’s behavior, and the angle of its orbit to the Ecliptic, one would expect the eclipse phenomenon to be erratic or random but in fact eclipses repeat quite reliably over relatively fixed periods that were quantified symbolically by megalithic astronomy, within monuments and by the “sacred” numbers and geometries which encapsulate eclipse cycles, as with many other cycles.

An eclipse cycle repeats, to greater or lesser degree of accuracy, over an integer number of days or months. And because of a lack of conventional arithmetic or notation like our own in the megalithic, the practical representation of a cycle would be a raw count of days or months, using uniform measures, which could then be interpreted by them using (a) the rational fractions of whole unit metrology, (b) the factorization of a measured length by counting within using measuring rods or (c) using right-triangles or half-rectangles, which naturally present trigonometrical ratios; to compare different time cycles.

The Eclipse Year

The solar year (365.242 days) is longer than the lunar year of 12 lunar months (354.367 days) and we know that these, when counted in day-inches, gave the megalithic their yard of 32.625 (32 and 5/8) inches and that, by counting months in megalithic yards over one year, the English foot (of 12 inches) was instead the excess over a single lunar year of the solar year, of 12.368 lunar months. 0.368 in our notation is 7/19 and the megalithic yard is close to 19/7 feet so that counting in months cancels the fraction to leave one foot.

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The Integration of the Megalithic Yard

Above is a proposed geometric relation between Thom’s megalithic yard (2.72 feet), the royal cubit (1.72 feet) and the remen (1.2 feet). Alexander Thom’s estimate for it based on decades of work was refined from 2.72 to 2.722 feet at Avebury. If the origins of it are astronomical, then its value emerges from the Metonic period of 19 years which is 235 lunar months, making its value 19/7 feet or more accurately 2.715428571 (19008/7000) feet and this makes it 2.7 feet x 176/175 within ancient metrology. Another astronomical derivation is found at Le Manio as the difference between three lunar and three solar years, when counted in day-inches as 32 + 5/8th inches which is 2.71875 (87/32) feet. The megalithic yard of Thom’s first appraisal, of 2.72, probably arose from its megalithic rod (MR) of 6.8 feet since, the Nodal Period of the moon’s nodes take 6800 days which in feet would be 1000 MR. For a fuller explanation see my the appendix of my Language of the Angels book and my discussions of the Cumbrian stone circle, called Seascale by Thom and the only known example of a Type D flattened circle.

One can see that the Megalithic Yard is a tale of many variations, some of which might not consider how or why the megalithic might have come to adopt such a yard. I have come to trust simple integers and ratios to guide me to a possible megalithic pathway. To demonstrate, the above megalithic yard at Le Manio, of 32.625 inches is 29/32 of the English yard, and 32 lunar months (at Le Manio Quadrilateral) is 29 AMY. Such simple rationics is explored here.

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Leak Project Interview

Rex Bear talked to me by Zoom on the 11th March; about the extensive background of my new book Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels. Below is embedded from the Leak Project YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/ThL4voX33k8