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Anyone with even reasonable eyesight who looks for long enough at Orion’s Belt will be able to see that, although the three stars are more or less in line, there is a perceptible dogleg in the alignment. In other words, if a line is drawn through the centre of Mintaka to connect with the centre of Alnilam, Alnitak will be out of line. Similarly if Mintaka and Alnitak are joined by a common line Alnilam will be out of line.
We have spent countless hours looking at computer projections of the shape and position of the stars both today and back across a vast span of time. Using the knowledge we had already amassed, plus a great deal of experimentation, we have been able to back-engineer the most likely methods used by our ancient ancestors to work out all sorts of astronomical problems. Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 demonstrate how the correct positions for the Thornborough henges were worked out in terms of their distances, one from another. But these explanations do not answer the puzzle of how our ancestors managed to cope with the offset dogleg in the three-star system.
Here we have to put up our hands and admit that we do not have a hard-and-fast answer. There appears to be no way, without recourse to modern accurate measuring equipment, to establish exactly how much out of line the three stars are. We would of course be fascinated to hear anyone else’s opinion on this point and it is entirely possible that some method was employed which has not occurred to us.
When the three stars of Orion’s Belt are parallel to the horizon, as described in Appendix 2, the difference in altitude between Mintaka and Alnitak is inconsequential. Both the stars have an altitude of around 12° 55'. At this time Alnilam, the middle star, has an altitude of 12° 51'. This means that the difference in altitude of the middle star and its two companions is a tiny 4 minutes of arc. Now bear in mind that a whole degree of arc of the sky is equal to the width of a human thumbnail when the hand is held at arm’s length, and we begin to see what these people were up against. And yet when we superimpose the three stars of Orion’s Belt onto the Thornborough henges, the fit is as good as perfect.
Common sense dictates that there was some method for establishing the dogleg when creating both the henge array and the pyramid footprint on the ground but, very annoyingly, we cannot discover what it was.
There is a possible clue at Thornborough. Across the middle henge and running from roughly northeast to southwest is a cursus. A cursus, as we explained earlier in this book, is a long, often straight line on the landscape marked originally by ditches and banks on both sides of it. There are dozens of cursus monuments across the length and breadth of Britain and there must originally have been many more than the ones recognized today.
What cursus were used for is still not known for certain, though the fact that the one at Thornborough runs at right angles to the alignment of the henge array might offer some sort of clue for this one. It seems to have been aligned to the setting point of Orion’s Belt, and is thought to be earlier than the henges (but how much earlier is not known). This particular cursus may have been used, over a period of time prior to the eventual layout of the Thornborough henges, to assess how much further northeast the central henge needed to be located, relative to its companions, and in order to make the best possible match with Orion’s Belt.
It seems significant in some way that this cursus should be placed across the central henge and that it should also have an alignment that, to the southwest, marks the setting point of Orion’s Belt. For the moment this is the only real clue we have. It remains the case that the positioning of the central henge relative to its companions is so accurate, in terms of the shape of the ‘real’ Orion’s Belt, that placing the central henge using nothing but guesswork seems less than likely. Our ancient ancestors have surprised us on so many occasions with their skill and determination that we would not be even slightly surprised to discover that there was indeed a method for placing the central henge on the landscape accurately.
Of course the same problem also exists regarding the pyramid footprint and the placement of the middle pyramid. Yet, it stands to reason that if the Stone Age astronomers of Britain had solved the problem, their Bronze Age counterparts could simply repeat the exercise 1,000 years later in Egypt.