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There are literally millions of stars to be seen in the night sky, and tens of thousands that could be called bright and distinctive. No wonder then that our ancestors found it so easy to create imaginary pictures, the better to remember different parts of the sky. By the simple law of averages there are hundreds of instances in which three stars seem to stand in a row, as seen from a human perspective. We were well aware of this fact as we first read of usually conservative archaeologists making the suggestion that the three super-henges at Thornborough could be meant to represent the three stars of Orion’s Belt, because even if the henges were meant to be stars at all, why this particular trio?
The stars that make up Orion’s Belt are Delta Orionis, Zeta Orionis and Epsilon Orionis – better known as Mintaka, Alnitak and Alnilam. They are all extremely bright and are grouped away from other bright stars, which makes their line pattern all the more obvious. To the Greeks they represented the belt or girdle of the giant hunter Orion, whose constellation is one of the largest to be seen in the night sky. In the northern hemisphere it is best seen in the winter months.
As the Earth wobbles on its axis (precession) and as the galaxy slowly turns about its centre, the view of the stars as seen from the Earth gradually changes. These alterations are so small that they have barely impinged on humanity’s view of the sky across millennia but, even despite this, Orion’s Belt is one of the longest-lived parts of any constellation. It has been visible in its present pattern for the last 1.5 million years and is likely to remain that way for another 2 million years. All ancient cultures must have known Orion’s Belt and many used it as a navigational aid.
What was it that convinced those who had looked closely at the Thornborough henges that they might have been intended to represent the three stars of Orion’s Belt? As it turned out there were a number of reasons, not least of which was the unique shape of the pattern they form on the landscape.
Figure 9 (see page 61) shows the three Thornborough henges as they appear from the air. We had measured them very carefully, both from an aerial view using satellite technology, and on the ground with long measuring tapes. All our measurements were taken to and from the henge centres. We knew that the distance between the northern henge (henge A) and the centre henge (henge B) was slightly different to the distance between the centre henge (henge B) and the southern henge (henge C). The first distance was 366 Megalithic Rods and the second was 360 Megalithic Rods (a difference of something under 2 per cent). When we very carefully measured the distance between the three stars of Orion’s Belt it seemed as though the relative gaps between Mintaka and Alnitak and Alnitak and Alnilam had about the same ratio as the distances between the henges.
We then used a photograph of Orion’s Belt, much enlarged, which we placed proportionally over the aerial view of the henges. We did nothing to distort the image, merely manipulating its overall size until the three stars stood over the henges. The result can be seen in figure 9 (see page 61). Somewhat to our surprise, not only were the gaps between the stars almost identical to the gaps between the henges in a proportional sense, but the dogleg also seemed almost perfect.
As we were concluding the manuscript for this book we were discussing the problem of the apparent accuracy of the henges as a copy of Orion’s Belt and the improbability of these ancient people being able to achieve such engineering precision. It was agreed that Alan should break off our writing schedule to give it one last check. His email to Chris the next day conveys his excitement:
I’ve just done something I’ve never done before. I took the actual stars of Orion’s Belt (well at least a picture of them) and I blew it up massively in order to get the exact relative distances between them. I then drew lines on the art program from the middle of star A to the middle of star B, and from the middle of star B to the middle of Star C. I then blew up these lines proportionally until the longest of them (AB) measured 366 cm on the drawing program. When I did this I could see that the shorter of the lines (BC) was just a tiny bit under 360 cm.
I now carried out the same experiment with the henges, from a Google Earth image. This time I took the image into the drawing program and built circles around each of the henges so that I could tell ‘exactly’ where the centre was in each case (so there was no guesswork at all involved). I drew lines as I had done with the stars and then increased the lines proportionally until the longer line AB was 366 cm long on the drawing program. I then noted that the shorter line BC was exactly (not nearly, not very nearly but quite exactly) a tiny bit under 360 cm. Result. The Thornborough henges are not a good copy of Orion’s Belt, they are not even a very good copy of Orion’s Belt. They are an exact, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely exact copy of Orion’s Belt.
I would say that this result is impossible, but I’ve done the whole thing three separate times and it works out the same every time.
There can be no doubt that these Stone Age astronomers where incredibly skilled – and no doubt that these henges are indeed a copy of Orion’s Belt.
We have long been convinced about the Orion’s Belt theory but we still wanted to know if there was more evidence to be found. This was forthcoming as a result of our previous experience in recreating the night sky as it had appeared thousands of years ago.
Using very accurate and powerful astronomical computer programs we are able to achieve something that only a few decades ago would have been either impossible or else extremely time consuming. In a moment we can look at exactly what our ancient ancestors saw when they viewed the night sky on any date, at any period right back to 4000 BC. It did not take us long to arrive at two major conclusions regarding the way the henges at Thornborough had been placed on the landscape.
The henges run from roughly northwest to southeast, and have their entrances aligned with the line of the henges themselves. In other words, it would have been possible to walk from the centre of henge A to the centre of henge C without having to climb over a bank top. As we have said, the alignment of the B and C henges pointed directly to the mount on which Lincoln Cathedral now stands, but there was more to this particular direction. The point where the Sun rose at its most southerly extreme, on the day of the winter solstice, in 3500 BC was also where Sirius rose ahead of it. As Sirius reached around 4° it stood over the centre of the avenue between the henges, like a guiding light – and a few hours later the Sun did the same thing.
If Orion’s Belt is a famous group of stars, Sirius is even more famous. This is partly because it is the brightest star in our skies and has been so for as long as human beings have walked the Earth. The importance of Sirius in a mythological sense cannot be underestimated and it appears in the folktales, and even the religion, of almost all ancient civilizations. It was of the greatest relevance to the ancient Egyptians and to the people of Mesopotamia, and was doubtless just as important to the henge builders of ancient Britain.
If we look at figure 12 we can see how, in the night sky, a direct line taken across Orion’s Belt to the south will lead to Sirius – indeed, Sirius has often been located using this technique – together with other parts of the night sky that were, historically, considered important for ritual reasons or for navigation.
So far so good, but the presence of both the midwinter Sun and rising Sirius immediately led us to realize something that had been puzzling for years; how did our ancient ancestors reconcile the differences between days marked out by the Sun and days as perceived by the stars – because they are distinctly different.
For most of us today, time is a simple matter of consulting a wrist-watch or our diaries. The new day begins at midnight and the next year is simply when the clocks strike 12 at midnight on 31 December. In reality these are arbitrary approximations – albeit very useful ones.
Figure 12. Orion’s Belt lining up towards Sirius
Time recording is based on astronomical observation of the movements of the Earth, and is torturously complicated. Days actually vary in length slightly, but a mean solar day is taken as having 24 hours of 60 minutes, split again into 60 seconds – giving a total of 86,400 seconds to the day. However, if we watch any star such as Sirius, it will return to the same point in the sky in 86,164 seconds (236 less than the solar day). This is called a sidereal day. It occurs because the stars are actually stationary and their apparent movement is due to the Earth’s rotation on its axis. The solar day is longer because it also takes into account the planet’s movement around the Sun, which makes one turn of the Earth seem to take longer.
In one orbit of the Sun (a year), all those 236-seconds difference between the sidereal and mean solar days add up to exactly one extra day. So there are 365 sunrises in a year but 366 star rises.
It is clear that the Neolithic astronomers of Britain fully understood this difference. If we take the gap in any one of the Thornborough henges in the southeast and view it, day-by-day across a year, from the centre of the henge, this is what we would notice. For the Sun to rise to the same point over the gap in the henge on two successive occasions would take 365 days. Meanwhile the star Sirius would have risen 366 times before returning to the same point.
Figure 13. The spin of the Earth
This apparently mysterious state of affairs would, no doubt, have fascinated these early astronomers and, in any case, their virtual obsession for the number 366 had shown us long ago that they were quite conversant with a year made up of sidereal days – which has no modern name but which we call a ‘star year’. The importance of this realization cannot be understated, and once again the super-henges had served to confirm our predictions regarding the methods and knowledge of the ancient British astronomers.
However, the presence of Sirius appearing in the southeastern gap at the winter solstice seemed to confirm that the three henges might well have been constructed as a faithful reproduction of Orion’s Belt. After all, Orion’s Belt in the sky points directly to Sirius and the three giant henges served the same purpose for earth-bound observers – which it had clearly been intended to do.
A rather tenuous possibility occurred to us almost immediately we had discovered the Sirius alignment with the henges. If those creating the super-henges had seen fit to reproduce Orion’s Belt on the Earth, might they not have also recreated Sirius as well? We knew there were other super-henges in the locality, some of which we had already identified and measured, but was there one in the place where Sirius should be (relative to the Thornborough henges) if it had been translated to the ground?
With a little effort we answered the question to both our surprise and our delight. There was indeed a henge to be found directly in line with the southeastern entrances of the Thornborough henges. We had missed this particular henge before because it has been almost totally destroyed by many centuries of ploughing, though it can still be seen as parch marks in the soil when conditions are right. It seems to have once been a henge on the same proportions of those at Thornborough and it is near a place called ‘Cana Barn’.
We measured the distance between the southern ‘Orion’s Belt’ henge and the Cana Barn henge to see if there was an interesting integer in Megalithic Seconds of arc. We were temporally mystified to discover that the distance from the centre of Thornborough henge C to the centre of the Cana Barn henge was almost exactly 10,000 m – as close as it was possible to measure this gap was 10 km. At first we dismissed this as being a rather incredible coincidence, until we remembered that there was 1,500 m between the centres of the two outer Thornborough henges.
It was highly unlikely that two key dimensions could be in metres by random chance – yet how could these Stone Age henge builders have possibly used metres to lay out their henges?
It was very strange, but far from impossible because metres are far more ancient that most people believe.
Careful measurement of the distance between the third star in Orion’s Belt (Alnilam) and Sirius, as they appear in the sky, gave us the probable distance on the ground between Thornborough henge C and a hypothetical Sirius henge. As best as we could estimate a scale on the ground, the distance between Thornborough C and a Sirius henge should have been a little over 11 km. The actual distance between Thornborough C and Cana Barn henge being 10,000 m suggested to us that its positioning was of ritual importance.
We also noticed on the sky maps that, although the stars of Orion’s Belt point more or less in the direction of Sirius, the ‘arrow’ is not exactly in line. When we transposed both Orion’s Belt and Sirius onto an aerial map of Thornborough and Cana Barn, we realized that, although the distance between Thornborough C and Cana Barn was not exactly proportionate with the stars, the offset alignment of the Cana Barn henge was in tune with the star pattern. In other words, there seemed no real doubt that Cana Barn super-henge was part of the same complex as Thornborough, and had been a definite – and quite startling – attempt to place Sirius on the landscape.
As we have already recounted, thanks to the intervention of Edmund Sixsmith we were able to visit the site of the Cana Barn henge. And it was here that our thoughts drifted towards the Giza Plateau. Could the ancient Egyptians have copied this Orion’s Belt layout when they built the pyramids some 800 years after Thornborough? And could the Giza pyramids have a counterpart to Cana Barn henge?
Although archaeologists have suggested that the Thornborough henges could well be a representation of Orion’s Belt, what they have not done is to make any suggestion as to how the arrangement came to be so incredibly accurate. In the night sky the three stars cover a distance roughly equivalent to a human fist held at arm’s length. The slight difference in distance between Mintaka and Alnitak, as opposed to the gap between Alnitak and Alnilam is barely visible with the naked eye and, even if it were perceptible, how on earth could anyone using naked-eye astronomy get these relative gaps correct when recreating the stars on the ground at such a grand scale?
It appears that archaeologists have not considered how anyone with Stone Age technology could have mapped out such a huge, yet accurate, representation of Orion’s Belt on the ground. Perhaps they imagine that the builders made an artist’s impression of the star pattern and then scaled it up. Perhaps the astronomers looked up at the sky and then held up a big piece of slate with a scribe putting chalk marks to represent the stars.
The relative position of the outer two stars would be easy to mark out – because they could not be wrong. It is only the positioning of the middle star that matters, with its offset to one side and the slight off-centre gap between the outer stars. One can image the scene as the man with the chalk followed orders to place the third dot. ‘Left a bit, down a bit. No not that much. Now right a little – yes that’s it … I think.’
Having created a scale drawing that satisfied the astronomers as a good representation of the stars, they would then have to scale it up. Assuming they had a large piece of slate that allowed them to draw the outer two stars say, 1 m apart, they would have to scale it up 1,500 times to get the distance we find at Thornborough. Given that a metre representation would have to be split 504.132 mm and 495.868 mm to copy the stars – it would be utterly impossible to get anything near an accurate result across 1.5 km of land.
However, we do know the method they used.
Using sight alone this simply is not tenable, and if anyone stops to think about the situation for a while they are surely going to arrive at the conclusion that either the Stone Age astronomers had access to accurate optical measuring devices, or that they used some other technology to achieve such stunning accuracy. The first of these suggestions is certainly not within the realms of what we know of the period, and it turns out that the answer to this puzzle once again confirms our previous suggestions about the use of pendulums.
As we have already said, these devices are the oldest machines known to mankind. We have experimented with many potential techniques, and we believe that these henges were specifically designed to incorporate as much ‘magic’ as possible – which meant building in all kinds of layers of astronomical values.
They must have taken a variety of data into account before they started. It is known that there were originally earthworks called cursuses (see page 79) on the site before they built the first henges that slightly predate the ones we see today. The cursuses were probably used to conduct the measuring of the heavens required for the task. As we have said, the outer star can be in any position they wanted and only the middle henge mattered. They therefore needed to understand the relative distance between the stars.
There were two separate ways this could have been achieved, and it is likely that those planning Thornborough used both methods to check and double-check their results. The first method would have found them not at Thornborough but at its companion henge in the south at Dorchester-on-Thames. Since the henge there is a single structure, it is likely that it was built before the more grandiose Thornborough array. Around 3500 BC we envisage that an astronomer-priest, holding a pendulum with a length of a half Megalithic Yard stood at the centre of the henge, looking to the east and waiting for Orion’s Belt to start its climb over the bank top. When the first star appeared above the bank, at 3° to 4° altitude relative to the true horizon behind the banks, he or she would start the pendulum swinging. By the time the third star appeared the pendulum would have beat 1,452 times. Translating the pendulum string length to actual linear measurements would have produced 1,452 half Megalithic Yards, which when halved makes 726 full Megalithic Yards. So those carrying out the experiment must have suspected that according to the will of the gods the two outer henges had to be 726 ‘somethings’ apart.1
There is a second and even more surprising method, and in this case the absolute position of the middle henge relative to its companion henges is included. To achieve this we believe they erected a long vertical pole on flat ground with an unobstructed horizon and then stood at a point a little way to the north of where the stars of Orion’s Belt could be obscured by the pole when the stars were at their culmination (highest point) in the south.
The stars at this point are at the top of their arc and therefore briefly moving almost perfectly horizontally to the ground. They then waited for the instant that the first star of the trio to appear from behind the pole – and began the pendulum swinging. They counted the beats until the moment the second star emerged and then the third star appeared. The time taken for each swing would have been around 1.002 modern seconds, and the pendulum length would therefore have been as close to a modern metre as makes no difference
We did the experiment using astronomical software, which is obviously calibrated in minutes and seconds. Mintaka to Alnitak took 366 seconds and Alnitak to Alnilam took 360 seconds.
This result was immediately compelling.
We had no need to translate the findings into Megalithic Yard pendulum swings because the numbers were already perfect. We already knew that there are 366 Megalithic Rods between the first and second henge, and 360 Megalithic Rods between the second and third henge. Somehow the henge builders had translated a second of time in the sky to a Megalithic Rod on the ground. What is more 366 + 360 = 732, so the first method that had indicated 732 ‘somethings’ between henge A and henge C was also correct.
We immediately suspected that we had found an explanation for the apparent use of the metre, as the second and the metre are two halves of the same thing. And they were both in use 4,500 years ago – so it is far from impossible that they might go back another 1,000 years to the building of Thornborough.
The Sumerian civilization developed in the region around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Prehistoric peoples known as the Ubaidians had originally settled in the region, establishing settlements that gradually developed into the ancient city-states of Adab, Eridu, Isin, Kish, Kullab, Lagash, Larsa, Nippur, and Ur. As the region prospered, Semites from the Syrian and Arabian deserts moved in, both as peaceful immigrants and as raiders. Then, around 3250 BC, a new group called Sumerians arrived and began to intermarry with the native population. These small, dark-haired newcomers were intellectually and technologically highly sophisticated, and they spoke an agglutinative language that is unrelated to any other known language. No one knows where they came from.
As the Sumerians gained control, the country grew rich and powerful. They invented glass-working, the wheel, and writing; their language eventually became the language of the intellectual, just as Greek and Latin did at later dates. They also are credited with devising the second of time.
We have shown in our book Civilization One that the Sumerians had also been pendulum users. However, the Sumerians did not use the 366° geometry we find in Western Europe. Rather, they are credited with having invented the 360° with which we are familiar today. Because they were apparently divorced from the 366° system, neither did they use the Megalithic Yard or Rod. Instead they opted for a linear length that was equal to a pendulum beat for a tiny part of the day they did recognize – namely the second of time.
Using exactly the same astronomy-based method of observing the turning of the Earth, the Sumerians were able to keep the length of their 1-second pendulum accurate across their entire history. In their case, the length of such a pendulum was, to all intents and purposes, a metre long, being 99.88 cm – a unit they called the ‘double-kush’.2
This unit was confirmed by the late Livio Stecchini, a distinguished professor of metrology, who has also argued that the double-kush had been used by the Sumerians to produce units of capacity and weight that were almost identical to the litre and kilogram. In his work ‘A History of Measures’, Stecchini concluded that all ancient measures are, by definition, related. He used numerical analysis of data to confirm the idea to his own satisfaction but his ideas are rejected by most academics today on the basis that his proof is not of the kind they prefer or even understand. Like Alexander Thom, Livio Stecchini had a first-class brain and he has made a major contribution to a better understanding of the past.
Although history credits the Sumerians with the creation of 360° system and with an advanced counting system, we have long doubted that they had actually been responsible for its origination.
The evidence of the apparent use of the metre and the second at Thornborough has strengthened our previous impression – namely, that these units predate the Sumerians. But we soon realized that there was a strong in-dication that the metre predated even the building of the henges at Thornborough.
Henges were a new innovation in around 3500 BC, and the structures that predated them were rather mysterious earthworks known as ‘cursuses’. The term is believed to have been coined by William Stukely (1687–1765) and was based on the Latin for ‘course’ because Stukely, and others at the time, thought these earthworks had been Roman athletic courses. We now know that the cursuses of Britain predate the Romans by several thousands of years, and though the idea of them being anything to do with athletics is now redundant, the name stuck.
Most cursuses are parallel banks and ditches, forming generally, but not always, straight tracks. The smallest of the cursuses are only around 50 m in length but the largest ones, so far identified, stretch to 10 km. The width of each cursus also varies from a few metres up to 100 m. Archaeologists are aware that the cursuses were not simply roads or tracks because they have deliberately closed ends. Some of them may well have been used as a means of getting from one place to another, but they clearly also had some more important and most likely ‘ritual’ purpose. Nobody knows what cursuses were for.
Chris was reading an article about the Greater Stonehenge cursus, which planted an idea. It reported how a team from the University of Manchester, led by archaeologist Professor Julian Thomas, has dated the cursus as being contemporary with Thornborough and some 500 years older than the Stonehenge circle itself. They were able to pinpoint its age after discovering an antler pick used to dig the cursus. When the pick was carbon dated, the results pointed to an age between 3600 and 3300 BC – which caused something of a sensation among archaeologists.
Professor Thomas was reported as saying: ‘The Stonehenge cursus is a 100-metre wide, mile-long area which runs about 500 metres north of Stonehenge.’ Now, it could easily be that Professor Thomas was rounding up the dimensions for sake of easy communications or, just conceivably, he might be accurately reporting dimensions. Obviously he would not make anything of the round numbers in metres because he ‘knows’ that the Neolithic builders had no units of measure and, anyway, the metric system was invented by the French in the late 18th century, so any correspondence must be a meaningless coincidence.
But we have different information and, just maybe, there could be more to it than simple chance.
Chris went to his shelf of books on Neolithic archaeology and lifted down Inscribed Across the Landscape – The Cursus Enigma by Roy Loveday. This is an excellent book from a man who has spent several decades studying these curious earthworks. Skimming quickly through the pages he came to a couple of graphs that told an amazing story.
The first one showed the size variation of cursuses up to 800 m in length. The graph showed a hugely disproportionate number of cursuses with integer lengths in metres. The ones that were 100, 200, 300, 400 and 750-m lengths accounted for the majority of them. Of course Loveday could be rounding these up, but he had not done so for all of them. However, the next graph was even more telling.
This graph showed the distribution of both henges and cursuses by average monument width. Again, the cursuses show an overwhelmingly integer distribution of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 100-m widths. But, importantly, the henges do not follow any pattern in terms of metres. Of the 23 cursuses, 20 display these integer widths.
Roy Loveday would have no reason to round his dimensions up or down just for the cursuses and not for the henges. It looks as though the metre, or more precisely, the seconds-pendulum length of 99.55 cm was used as the standard measure before the henge builders began using the Megalithic Yard. Some of the cursuses are 6,000 years old, so the second and the metre are almost certainly extremely ancient indeed.
Where could the second/metre have come from? We had an impression that we were looking at something that was probably already ancient when these cursuses were constructed. It felt as though this was a reconstruction, not an origin. For a start, we know that light travels at 600,000,000 half-kush per second in a vacuum, and that the oldest known method of counting is the Sumerian system of using 60 and 10. So it seems highly likely, if somewhat surprising, that the originator of the metre and second knew about the speed of light.3 This seemed crazy but we do not allow our preconceived ideas to block facts or blunt investigation. Later, we were to come across a scientist who has a potential answer to this vexing question. A completely stunning solution!
Yet we also knew that the apparently later megalithic system was also the result of a fantastic level of scientific awareness that is inconsistent with the apparent abilities of the Neolithic people of the British Isles. It was clearly based on knowledge of many special relationships involving the physical nature of the Earth – and even the Moon and the Sun. In addition, the 366 system indicates an awareness of other marvellous harmonies in both light and music.4 And it even suggests a stunning scale of temperature where the freezing point of water is zero degrees, boiling point is 366 degrees and absolute zero (the lowest temperature in the universe) is exactly minus 1,000 degrees. All too neat to be an incredible series of coincidences.
We realized that we had accidentally tripped over something utterly remarkable – something that was far more important than the niceties of Neolithic archaeology. Our civil engineer friend, Edmund Sixsmith, has drawn together all of the powerful workings and correspondences that we have found within the 366 system. He calls them the ‘Knight and Butler Symmetries’. But we have been far from the first to find evidence that contradicts the traditional view of the past. The ‘chaos to order’ theory that believes that the evolution of societies has been a fairly smooth upward curve from ignorance to excellence, is ridiculous and obviously wrong. The distant past is obviously far more complex than archaeology claims.
Thomas Jefferson carefully studied all known British measurements in the 18th century and concluded that they were the result of scientific knowledge from somewhere in deep antiquity. Like his colleague, Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson was a polymath, with a truly first-class brain, who took a macro view of his subject. Alexander Thom and Livio Stecchini were metrologists of the 20th century who were not frightened to investigate the facts on a macro level and cold-bloodedly report inconvenient facts.
Thanks to the aid of modern technology we have been able to put the fabulous work of these men into a context – and provide many new facts that amount to the evidence that standard archaeology claims is not there.
It is time for a rethink. Facts can only be ignored for so long.