I once learned in high school that our ancestors—only recently descended from the apes—vegetated in caves, groomed each other’s fur for lice, hunted mammoth or other animals from time to time, and otherwise chewed on berries and roots. Maybe so. But another group of the Stone Age family behaved in a highly intellectual way. Its mathematic and geometric performance shows that. No doubt about it! I constantly hear scientists demanding facts. They would respond positively to facts. Which scientists? It is really the responsibility of “Paleolithic specialists.” But they can be counted on the fingers of one hand and are, furthermore, geographically fixated. They restrict themselves to a particular area. The framework of their thinking follows evolution. Higher geometry, for example, has no place in the Stone Age. As a wanderer between the sciences, I learned a long time ago that facts are also filtered, that they are bent and squeezed until suddenly everything fits again and we can return to the same old things. However, the monuments from the Stone Age—stone circles, dolmens, menhirs, for example—are found just as much across a range of countries as rock drawings and geoglyphs. It appears there must have been some kind of prehistoric tourism in which the sages traveled from tribe to tribe and passed on their tidings. In Central America, and this is generally known, the Maya built pyramids and temples in accordance with astronomical principles. In that respect, scholars refer to a “magic imperative” of calendar and astronomy. What was the situation in Europe at a time, furthermore, long before Central America? What “magic imperative” caused the Stone Age tribes to do the same thing? Who taught them the Pythagorean theorem, the number pi, the pentagram, and other achievements of mental geometry? Why did they all have the idea of aligning their mass graves astronomically and building huge stone or wood circles? The proof of my claims is available. It can be checked, photographed, measured—as demanded by high-flown science. Yet no one is interested. Any documentation just produces a confused shake of the head. What do we prefer? To adjust our thinking or to continue to live with a product that has passed its sell-by date?
In the Gulf of Morbihan in Brittany, France, not far from the town of Carnac with its thousands of menhirs (stone columns), there are two small green islands: Gavrinis and Er Lannic. The tiny island of Er Lannic has the remains of a stone circle, or more precisely a slight oval, of between 58 and 49 meters diameter, consisting of 49 megaliths. Only half of these stones are positioned on land; the other half is submerged by the tides. (Images 163 and 164) In the same location, almost 9 meters deeper, there is a second stone circle consisting of 33 blocks. They can just be recognized at low tide during a calm sea. The two stone rings merge like a figure of eight. The circle under water has a diameter of 65 meters.
Flooding? No, the water has risen. When? About 18,000 years ago. How do we know that?
One September morning in 1985, Monsieur Henri Cosquer, an employee of a diving school in Cassis (east of Marseille, France) dived into the depths off Cape Morgiou. He was not actually looking for anything in particular—other than to admire the wonders of the sea. At a depth of 35 meters, directly next to a small rockslide, Henri Cosquer noticed the entrance to a cave and cautiously swam into it. The diver quickly realized that the cave led to an ascending underwater tunnel. On that morning, Henri Cosquer did not dare to go further. Time was limited; he only had enough oxygen for another half hour. Also, he had neither underwater lights nor a camera with him.
A few weeks later, Henri Cosquer tried again in the same spot. This time his diver friends Marc and Bernhard were with him, and the diving equipment was also more professional than what he had at the first attempt. The men carefully swam through a 40-meter-long corridor and finally reached the surface in an underground lake. Their searchlights illuminated an incredible scene. They recognized two horses on the western wall of a chamber. Bernhard’s searchlight flitted to the ceiling and alighted on a goat drawn in black charcoal. It was covered by a transparent calcite layer. Now the men clambered out of the water, took off their flippers, and checked the air in the subterranean chambers. It was spicy and a little resinous, but could be breathed without difficulty. In the next chamber, even larger than the first one, the light beams skimmed over a whole picture gallery: bison, penguins, cats, antelopes, a seal, and various geometric symbols.
Henri Cosquer showed his photos to some archeologists. They were not very enthusiastic, remained skeptical, or even thought that the pictures were forgeries. It was not until six years later, on September 19, 1991, that the Archéonaut, a French naval research vessel, anchored off Cape Morgiou. Eleven frogmen followed Henri Cosquer into the cave system. Eight specialists were waiting aboard the Archéonaut, including two archeologists. Specialist equipment was lowered into the depths, the subterranean picture gallery was thoroughly mapped, and small samples of the paintings were brought to the surface. The C-14 dating produced a minimum age of 18,400 years.
The sea level of the Mediterranean 18,400 ago was 35 meters lower than today. At that time, the entrance to the cave was on land. The water has risen—be it in the Mediterranean or in the Atlantic at Er Lannic. That can also be proved at the port of Lixus in Morocco, where the oldest parts lie under water; at Cadiz in Spain, where a 100-meter-long piece of road can still be seen underwater at low tide; in Malta, where so-called “cart ruts” sink below the surface of the Mediterranean; and off the island of Bimini in the Caribbean, where clear remains of walls and a road lie under the surface of the sea. The sea has risen—worldwide. It’s as simple as that. (There are many other examples of water having risen. Even Plato wrote about it some 2,500 years ago, in the third book of his Laws.)
Today, as I’m sitting typing these words on my keyboard, mankind is being gripped by an unfathomable debate: climate change. The glaciers are said to be melting and the oceans rising. But they have been doing that every few thousand years, quite obviously also in the Stone Age, when there were no industrially produced CO2 waste gases to warm the climate. What is wrong with this society? Looking the other way, spreading ignorance and half-truths, not taking account of the facts—the same also applies to many scientists, particularly the type who constantly and angrily demand to be taken seriously. That is the society we live in. Looking away and refusing to register what is also applies to the incredible messages from the Stone Age.
The small island of Gavrinis lies directly next to the two stone circles of Er Lannic, which are partly disintegrating under the water. Before the sea level rose, Gavrinis and Er Lannic were part of the landmass. Gavrinis is a mere 750 meters long and 400 meters wide. The island is fringed by trees. Mossy grass and rampantly proliferating gorse cushions one’s steps, as if a thick carpet had been laid down leading into the sacred place. And what a sacred place it is! For the “passage grave” on the hillock has been fitted with a mathematical message which can turn us smart-alecks speechless.
The indigenous Bretons always knew that the hillock in truth contained a structure from the Stone Age. The entrance was discovered in 1832—the apparent grave inside was empty—and between 1979 and 1984, an archeological team led by Dr. Charles-Tanguy Le Roux restored the cyclopean complex. The inside of the passage grave turned out to be a phantom from a time long past and, at the same time, contained the most logical of all answers: mathematics.
The Stone Agers began by completely flattening the hill on the island of Gavrinis. Then they carted huge quantities of stones of various sizes to the building site and also rolled a few dozen cyclopic megaliths along. (Image 165) Even the floor of the passage grave consists of slabs. The builders must have known from the beginning that they were creating a message for eternity.
The entrance consists of two vertical stone slabs with a horizontal one on top. (Image 166) This is followed by a gallery, flanked and covered by monoliths, into the interior of the artificial hill. (Image 167) Then there is the “sanctum,” also called the “burial chamber,” although a grave has never been found. This “burial chamber” is a further 2.6 meters long, 2.5 meters wide, and 1.8 meters high. It is formed by six mighty slabs and covered by a gigantic ceiling slab which measures 3.7 by 2.5 meters. In total, 52 megaliths were used to build the actual passage grave, of which half (26) were engraved with strange symbols. The local archeologists assume that these ornaments were carved deep into the stone slabs with small quartz stones. Logically this work would have had to be done while the slabs were still lying on the ground, that is before the passage grave was built. That is the first thing to make us prick up our ears. The people who built this masterpiece cannot have been pottering about in a piecemeal fashion, in whatever way happened to work best at the time, but they must have been working to plan. They knew in advance which engraved slab later had to be placed in which position. The engravings are of innumerable spirals and circles which flow into and over one another, peculiar grooves which look like enlarged fingerprints, snaking lines which often flow over from one monolith to another, and in all this confusion a slab with depictions which are reminiscent of axes or pointed rock implements. (Images 168–172) It is an engraved world which, depending on the angle of the light, throws bizarre shadows on the curious patterns on the walls. It is these grooves which speak. They contain the mathematical message, timeless and valid for every generation that can do sums.
The mathematics were discovered by Mr. Gwenc’hlan Le Scouëzec, a Breton and obviously a mathematical genius, although he modestly thinks that the thousands-of-years-old message is quite obvious to everyone.1
The count begins where everything has to start in mathematics, with one. Counting from the entrance, the sixth stone on the right is particularly conspicuous. It is smaller than all the others and is engraved with a single “fingerprint”—nothing to the side or on top, only the circles and grooves of a “fingertip.” It is the only stone with just a single symbol. All the others either have no engravings at all or several at once. Does the sixth stone indicate the number 6? Was this intended to signal the system which was to be used for the calculation?
The 21st stone in the gallery shows a “fingerprint” at the bottom, above which there are three rows, one above the other, with a total of 18 ax-like, vertical engravings. (Image 173) Eighteen is equivalent to 3 × 6. The multiplication of 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 gives 360 or 60 × 6. The 18, the number of “axes,” in turn signals the twentieth part of 360. In our geometric system, this number represents the number of degrees in a full circle. But what is the connection between our system and the past?
Three, four, five, and six written in sequence read as 3456. This figure is present on the 21st monolith. 3456 divided by 21 gives 164.57. This, in turn, is the circumference of a circle with a diameter of 52.38 meters. So what? Why all the fooling about? The southern azimuth on the day of the summer solstice for the position of Gavrinis is precisely 52 degrees 38 minutes. Do I still need to mention that the passage grave is of course aligned with the solstitial point? Can things become any more confusing? Oh yes, they can. These coincidences are only the beginning. We only divided the number 3456 by 21 because it appears on the 21st monolith. The result was 164.57. That turned out to be a circle with a diameter of 52.38 meters. What happens when we divide the two numbers? Grab your calculator; it has to be 164.57 ÷ 52.38 = 3.14. The famous number pi.
Pure chance, the skeptics cry, and numbers can prove anything. They are right, but in the case of Gavrinis, chance is excluded. The engravings keep indicating, to anyone willing to see, how to proceed or which numbers to use for division. Image 174 shows the “ax” and to its left indicates the number to be used for division. The number of monoliths and their position was also intentional:
a. The right side of the passage has 12 slabs.
b. The “burial chamber” has six slabs.
c. The left side of the passage has 11 slabs.
The two numbers in a + b fit into the pattern, because adding them gives 18 and that is the number of “axes” engraved on the 21st monolith. But what about the monoliths on the left side of the passage? The number 11 does not fit into a series of six in any way.
One moment, please! The recurring basic figure was 3456. Divide this number by 11, because of the 11 monoliths on the left side. The result once again is the pi number 314.18. If we place a point between 3456 and divide 34.56 by 11, we can of course only get the result 3.14.
And it keeps going on like that. Gwenc’hlan Le Scouëzec has demonstrated it beyond dispute in his comprehensive work Bretagne Megalithique. Gavrinis turns out to be a treasure trove of numbers, in which three different, mutually independent calculation systems are integrated which can, however, be combined: a senary system with its multiples, a decimal system, and a base 52 system with the sub-magnitude 26. (The Mayan calendar is based on the base 52 system.) The senders of the numerical message of Gavrinis thought of everything. No matter in which calculation system future generations would be working, they could not avoid stumbling on the solution, whatever the case. The Pythagorean theorems are also integrated into the mass of data of Gavrinis—long before Pythagoras!—as well as the number for the synodic lunar orbit (down to the decimal point!), the spherical shape of the earth together with its diameter, as well as the length of the earth year at 365.25 days.
Gwenc’hlan Le Scouëzec, who cracked the mathematical code of Gavrinis, concluded his considerable achievement with the words: “It is quite possible that in the many calculations some are less certain than others which are truly of key significance. On the other hand, there are too many coincidences for the key common features to have arisen by chance.”2
All just gimmickry and random chance? Before I add examples from the Stone Age, which have nothing to do with number games but only with astronomy, I wish to make the point that the passage grave of Gavrinis was created fully intentionally for recipients in the far distant future. First the Stone Agers leveled the site, then they carted thousands of stones there, cut the monoliths for the floor and ceiling slabs to size, and chiseled the engravings before construction. Once the work was done, they covered the artificial hill with sand and earth, so that grass and bushes would grow on it. The megaliths prevented the interior from being damaged. In the far distant future, human beings would notice that the hill did not fit into the landscape. We have noticed. The message has arrived.
The next example has nothing to do with numbers but with the relationship between the earth and the sun.
For the last 5,165 years—calculated backward from 2012—to the present day, the same miracle has taken place in Ireland each year. It happens once again in a “passage grave”—although here, too, a corpse has never materialized. The place is called Newgrange, and it lies 51 kilometers northwest of Dublin or about 15 kilometers west of the town of Drogheda. There, in the county of Meath, in a loop of the river Boyne, the original inhabitants of Ireland set a grandiose memorial into the landscape. It is a technical miracle from the Stone Age. It is not simply a grave surrounded by stones to prevent animals getting at the corpse. Newgrange is a masterpiece of surveying, a lesson in astronomy, and a transport phenomenon. It was built at a time when, according to orthodox archeological opinion, Egyptian history had not yet happened, there was no pyramid on earth, and the cities of Ur, Babylon, or Knossos did not yet exist. Presumably the impressive stone circle of Stonehenge had not yet been planned when unknown astronomers built the passage grave of Newgrange.
For thousands of years, no one paid attention to the round hill above the river Boyne, until in 1699, when the road worker Edward Lhwyd swore mightily. A boulder blocking the line of the road would not budge. When it had been half-freed from the earth, the swearing road worker noticed two engraved spirals and some rectangles on the recalcitrant block. Now everything became clear: “Another one of those damned graves.” The message reached the next pub. Newgrange had been discovered. (Image 175)
Thorough excavations did not begin until the 1960s. In 1969, the lead researcher Professor Michael J. O’Kelly from Cork University discovered a right-angled artificial opening above the two monoliths at the entrance. It was only 20 centimeters wide, but that was enough for the scholar to see the light. (Image 176) On the day of the winter solstice in 1969—and again one year later—O’Kelly seated himself right at the back of the vault. Here is his eye-witness account:
Exactly at 9:45, the upper edge of the sun appeared on the horizon, and at 9:58 the first shaft of direct sunlight appeared through the small roofbox above the entrance. The beam of sunlight then lengthened along the passage into the burial chamber until the beam reached the edge of the basin stone in the niche. When the beam of light had widened into a 17-centimeter ribbon and flooded the floor of the chamber, the reflection illuminated the grave so dramatically that various details both of the side chambers and of the vaulted roof could be clearly seen. At 10:04 the ribbon of light began to narrow and precisely at 10:25 the beam of light was abruptly cut off. So for 21 minutes at sunrise on the shortest day of the year sunlight penetrates directly into the burial chamber of Newgrange. Not through the entrance but through a specially constructed narrow slit above the entrance to the passage.3 (Images 177 and 178)
As a cautious academic, Professor O’Kelly did not at the time want to give a final answer to the question whether the light show was accidental or intended. The question has meanwhile been ticked off by others.4
The two Irish scientists Tom Ray and Tim O’Brian from the School of Cosmic Physics set up their instruments in the burial chamber on December 21, 1988. Precisely 4.5 minutes after sunrise, the first beam of light appeared in the rectangular opening above the entrance. After a short period, the shaft of light widened into a 34 centimeter ribbon which was however—horror of horrors!—abruptly reduced to 26 centimeters by a slightly inclined monolith. (Image 179) The chamber was still illuminated, but no longer to the full width of the original beam. What had happened?
Tom and Tim set their computers to work. In the course of the millennia, the earth’s axis performs a slow wobble, as a consequence of which “east” 5,000 years ago was not precisely where it is now. But 5,134 years ago—the computer calculations say—the full width of the sunbeam had lit up the vault through the opening in precise alignment with the compass and had unfolded its lightshow on the rear wall at a distance of 24 meters. Even taking account of the wobble in the earth’s axis, there is little change in the lightshow. The only factor to influence the light beam today is the slightly inclined monolith. Random chance was excluded. The builders of Newgrange had planned the magic lightshow. Now some questions need answering.
The position of a single monolith in the passage would have changed everything. If the artificial slit over the entrance had been a few centimeters smaller, or if its position had been a few millimeters off, the fingers of light could not have reached the back wall through the passage and chamber. Furthermore, had the passage of monoliths been shorter or longer, the sunlight would either not have reached the back wall or not illuminated the cultic symbols. With a shorter passage, the light beam would have fizzled out on the ground due to the slope of the terrain.
There is more: The giant complex of Newgrange is not set on even ground, and the east-west passage does not lie horizontally but slopes upward. The highest point on the floor of the passage is also the location of the last monolith after 24 meters. This angle of ascent was planned. The starting point of the sunbeams on December 21 was not the entrance of the grave, nor did the beams creep from the floor at the entrance to the back, but they entered through a small rectangular opening above the entrance monoliths. This position alone, in combination with the hill lying opposite behind which the sun rose, allowed for a straight beam of light into the center of the vault.
There the light hit the edge of the “basin stone,” a block with an artificially scraped out basin, like a bundled laser beam. What came next was a magic symphony, triggered through the mirror effect of the basin stone. The beams fanned out in various directions, always directed at cultic symbols and, of course, at a right angle straight upward like an arrow through the shaft of the vaulted roof. (Image 180)
This vault over the passage grave is a marvel in itself. Specialists call it a corbel vault. Heavier monoliths below and lighter monoliths above were placed on top of one another in such a way that the next highest monolith always extended a little over the edge of the one below. This created a six-meter high steadily narrowing hexagonal shaft over the center of the grave. At the top of the chimney, the gap was bridged with a flat stone which could be removed as required. (Image 181)
Slogans have a stronger echo in empty vaults. Why must Newgrange have been a grave? The grave idea haunts the specialist literature as a fact and can probably never be eliminated. What are these facts? Human and animal bones were found in Newgrange, ergo the complex has been built for that purpose. It is also a fact that every dugout, every convenient hole, can be used as a grave—even if originally it served a completely different purpose. In the same way, the idea for Newgrange might have been a completely different one even if—much later—bones were added. The rest of the dead was deemed to be sacred among all peoples, so only the bones in the vault of Newgrange were to be startled and blinded by the sun each year? If Newgrange was conceived as a grave complex from the very beginning, then the deceased person must have had a very special affinity with our central star. If not, the rectangular opening for the shafts of sunlight does not make any sense.
No tribe can manage a cultic structure like Newgrange as a spare-time job. An observation and surveying period of at least one generation was the prerequisite for determining the day, hour, and minute of the winter solstice for the geographical situation of Newgrange. Precise plans or models had to be made, every angle on the inclined building site had to be correctly aligned, the position of every individual monolith had to be exactly correct, and of course the cultic stones with their geometric engravings had to be anchored in the tunnel before the complex was closed off. Oh yes, and before the actual building work, the hill had to be removed and leveled at its angle of inclination. Earth and gravel, millions of smaller stones, and the giant blocks of grey granite and syenite had to be brought to the site. The chief architect would probably have scratched his plans in ochre on reindeer skins and laid out angular measurements and string on the ground. In doing so, he kept scrupulously to the megalithic yard, the uniform unit of measurement in the Europe of the time discovered in our time by Professor Alexander Thom.5 It corresponds precisely to 82.9 centimeters and spread from Newgrange to be used for all stone structures, be they in Stonehenge or Brittany in France. Presumably the Stone Age journal Megalith Construction Today was required reading.
If Newgrange (and other complexes) were conceived as graves, then the deceased person must have appeared to be superhuman to the society of that age. Why? At the birth of a child it could not be predicted whether he would become a hero or any other kind of “superman.” But the construction of the grave, including all the preceding calculations, measurements, planning, and the cutting of the monoliths and the transport of the massive stones took at least one generation of the time. Ergo the father or grandfather would have had to commission the tomb for their future offspring. Whereby, they could not know whether he would become a hero at all and die in his home. He might just as well have died in battle far from his home tents and have been cremated elsewhere.
Here people will raise the objection—I can smell it coming—that these stone structures throughout the world with an astronomic reference performed a vital function as a calendar. This objection is of so little substance that I can hardly be bothered to deal with it again. What was the purpose of Newgrange? Was the place itself, the geographic location, a “sacred point”? Possibly, but then there has to be a surfeit of similar types of point. The world is drowning in megalithic complexes. Furthermore, the “sacred point” does not explain the astronomic and technical know-how.
The only thing that is actually certain is that someone in the mists of antiquity planted an astronomic precision timepiece into the landscape, a memorial which transmits its message with unaltered precision 5,000 (or more?) years later. What message? Who were these time thinkers, these initiates, who were able to impress both their time and the far distant future? And why did they do what they did? What was the trigger? What kind of person was at work here?
The progression from ape to intelligent human is a farce with thousands of open questions and thousands of incomplete answers. Every few years, the relevant science sells us the latest “assured knowledge” about the origin of species. The kind of pseudo-arguments which are used in textbooks to fill the gaping void in our knowledge is a sad sight to behold. I read, for example, that pre-hominids lived in packs and as a result developed intelligent and social behavior. Gruesome! Many animal species, not just apes, lived and live in packs. But apart from a hierarchy and pecking order, they have not developed any cultural intelligence. It is eternally argued that human beings are intelligent because they adapt better than other species. That objection is so much hot air. Why have other primates such as gorillas, chimpanzees, or orangutans not “adapted”? According to the rules of evolution, these cute animals would also have been “compelled” to develop intelligence. You cannot apply evolution selectively to one chosen species. The fact that we are intelligent really only says in comparison to the non-intelligent species that we should not be intelligent either. Furthermore, there are much older life forms than the primates. Scorpions, cockroaches, or spiders, for example, have been shown to have existed more than 500 million years in the past. The same applies to various species of reptiles, some of which are even said to have descended from the dinosaurs. Now we know that crocodile mothers care lovingly for their young, but crocodile culture is nevertheless lacking, despite all the millions of years in which they have “adapted.” Because they all survived so bravely, these species should have squirmed through much better than the incomparably younger Homo sapiens. Where are the art objects or burial sites of these creatures?
When I read that humans do not have fur because they learned to cover themselves with other furs, I feel that someone is pulling my leg. The pre-hominids are said to have descended from the trees for climatic reasons. What a thought! As if an ape species had realized that in evolutionary theory, it might be needed for humans at some point in the future! It climbed down from the trees but left its compatriots—don’t they imitate everything?—swinging from branch to branch in the trees to the present day. The social attitude of our ancestors left something to be desired.
Nonsense, that is not how it was, there was something else, the clever articles say. Fear of stronger animals as well as easier nourishment had forced the pre-hominids to get up on their hind legs. What a laugh! The ape-like drive to imitate has become proverbial. Why did none of the other ape species follow this intelligent behavior? Were they less afraid of wild animals? And if such logic forced them to develop intelligence, then giraffes, who can see and smell any enemy from miles away, should really have developed a giraffe religion a long time ago. Finally, it is argued that all these changes only affect one particular line. The primates in our line had begun to eat meat to feed themselves better and more easily. As a result, our line achieved a significant advantage over other apes. Mama mia! Since when is it easier to kill a gazelle or salamander than pick fruits off a tree? Furthermore, wild cats or fish of prey have been eating meat for millennia, including the brain. Did they develop painting or mathematics as a result?
In a remarkable article in the specialist journal Sagenhafte Zeiten, the director of studies, Peter Fiebag, raises the question about the “human creative big bang”: “Some experts believe a change in the ‘wiring of the brain’ had triggered the ‘human creative big bang.’” And he adds, “A section of DNA was, by mistake, copied from the X chromosome to the Y chromosome.”6 Really, “by mistake,” Fiebag asks? Or did it happen with the aid of extraterrestrial genetic engineering?
Fiebag’s thought has a great deal of merit, even if anthropology has not quite caught up. There, in the salon of the sciences, we are served each year with the latest contradictions. Why not? Science is a living thing and the latest knowledge revises previous findings. Everyone is in agreement that we are unique. That also applies to other animals. But we are more unique than all the others because we have culture: painting, imagination, religion, mathematics, and the ability to plan for the future. (Though, the latter could be relativized, because a spider also plans for the future when it weaves its web.)
The lines of humans and chimpanzees had already been divided from before Eden, says Dr. David Reich from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then the two species had begun exchanging genes again: “After the pre-hominids had already lived as their own species for hundreds of thousands of years, they suddenly started to interbreed with their knuckle-walking relatives again.”7
I have some difficulty with the idea of a hominid with an upright gait suddenly spurning the members of his own species and preferring to have sex with an ape lover. And why the resulting bastard should possess better genetic factors remains just as much of a riddle as the question of whether the chromosomes of the disparate pair would be compatible at all.
Things become even more confusing: mysterious bones were found in a cave in the Altai Mountains in central Asia, and analyzed at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig: “The clearly human bone from the Denisova cave are not the same as the human genome. Sensationally the genetic material of the Denisova hominid differs from Homo sapiens by more than twice as much as from the Neanderthals.”8
In the name of all that is Milky Way! Perhaps our venerable anthropology might dare to take a creative leap toward the Director of Studies Fiebag. It can be proved, after all, that the Stone Age people mastered the high art of mathematics and geometry and demonstrated it on site. Or do we all have to think differently? Do different types of humans perhaps exist alongside one another, the more stupid ones and the knowledgeable ones? The latter left examples of their skills, which are ignored by society to the present day, although any fool could verify them.
Near the town of Carnac in Brittany, France, there are thousands of menhirs in long rows. (Images 182–185) Dr. Bruno P. Kremer from the Institute of Natural Science of the University of Cologne, who has published several papers on this arrangement of stones, estimates the number of menhirs still existing today as “more than 3,000.”9 And Pierre-Roland Giot, the leading expert on Brittany in France, is of the opinion that something approaching 10,000 menhirs must once have stood in the landscape.10 Many of the granite blocks have been destroyed today, worn away by wind and weather. (Images 186–189) The ranks of three to 10 stones give the appearance of a petrified army. The smallest are barely 1 meter tall; the giant among them, the menhir of Kerloas near Plouarzel, is 12 meters high and weighs 150 tons. The largest “long stone” in the whole area is the menhir of Locmariaquer. It lies broken on the ground, was once 21 meters high, and weighed a good 350 tons. (Image 190) The most impressive thing is probably the long parallel columns of the Alignements (alignments). Near Kermario, there are 1,029 menhirs in 10 rows on an area about 100 meters wide and 1,120 meters long. At Ménec, there are 1,099 standing stones arranged in columns of 11. The Alignement of Kerlescan comprises 540 menhirs in rows of 13 and at Kerzehro we can count another 1,129 menhirs in columns of 10.
These are just some of the details, but they give an idea of the enormous work which was undertaken by someone at some stage. Carbon-14 dating at the dolmen of Kercado produced an age of 5,830 years. May the gods be thanked for this date, even if it might subsequently turn out to be too recent. At 5,830 years, all the nonsense put forward in all seriousness in the previous literature can at least be put to rest. It has been suggested, among other things, that primitive nomad tribes had cut and aligned stone blocks in European pre-history to copy the peoples of the East who possessed mighty structures in Egypt and elsewhere. Another current of thought suspects that the whole of the area which is Brittany today had once been sacred land of the Druids—but they reached their height in the last pre-Christian century. If therefore the Druids located their holy places in the network of menhirs, they must have taken over a complex that had already been finished and completed. It was originally believed that the stone columns were gravestones—but no bones ever materialized. Then someone thought it was a gigantic calendar in stone. Error. Even an astronomical alignment was assumed to be behind the long rows. In the meantime, we know better: they are about sophisticated geometry.
The western cromlech near Le Ménec includes two Pythagorean triangles whose sides have a ratio of 3:4:5. Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher from Samos, lived at about 532 bc. He cannot have instructed the “nomad tribes and gatherers of berries” in his teachings. Poor Pythagoras! Your helpful theorems were already applied millennia before you.
If the trapeze-shaped sides are extended from the Manio I “warrior grave,” they meet in an angle of 27 degrees at a distance of 107 meters. Exactly the same triangles with the same diagonals of 107 meters and the same side ratio of 5:12:13 occur several times in the stone settings of Carnac. Here it is surprising that the simple Pythagorean triangle with the classic ratio of 3:4:5 was seldom used. The megalithic people made use of higher geometry. In the journal Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau,11 Dr. Bruno Kremer points out that the individual ensembles were built in accordance with fixed “designated measures which allow us to conclude that highly developed surveying techniques existed as early as the Mesolithic period.”
This involved not just applied geometry, but also the spherical shape of the earth, division into degrees, azimuth, organization, planning, transport of the stones, and many other things. Dr. Kremer refers to an angle of 53°8’ which is based in a Pythagorean triangle with the ratio 3:4:5. The 53°8’ corresponds “pretty precisely to the azimuth of the sunrise at the summer solstice at all locations on the geographical latitude of Carnac.”
The long stone columns of Le Ménec and Kermario run in a northeasterly direction and at their longest point touch the Alignement of Petit Ménec. This line is also the hypotenuse of a Pythagorean triangle. If we draw a line northward from the western end of the stone column of Le Ménec, it meets the dolmen of Mané Kérioned after 2,680 meters. From here, another line at exactly the same angle of 60 degrees heads for the menhir Manio I. Once again the distance is 2,680 meters. The three points form an isosceles triangle; they are all equidistant.
This is not some sort of arbitrary search for triangles. The points are connected in precisely the same distances at precisely the same angles. These large-scale examples can be endlessly repeated.
A north-south line runs from the eastern end of Le Ménec. In the south it touches the dolmen of St. Michel, in the north Le Nignol, and behind the village of Beg-Lann, the menhir Crucuny. The straight line lies within the triangle referred to previously, whereby Le Nignol marks exactly half the length. Another 60-degree angle produces an additional isosceles triangle with a side length of 1,680 meters: St. Michel–Le Nignol–Kercado. In doing so, the line Le Nignol–Kercado not only bisects the stone column of Kermario into two equally-sized sections, but the intersection simultaneously marks the halfway point of the hypotenuse of the Le Ménec–Petit Ménec route. As Dr. Kremer writes: “In view of the numerous relationships and alignments, there cannot reasonably be any further doubt that these megalithic complexes were planned in terms of their spatial organization.”12 (Images 191 and 192)
God did not set to work in Brittany, and we may exclude random chance altogether. What then, in the name of all the planets, were these Megalithic people about? What drove them? Where did their mathematical and geometric knowledge come from? What instruments did they use? What surveyors determined the fixed points in the uneven landscape? To what maps did they transfer their calculations? In what scale? With what string or, if you will, mirrors, did they communicate along the kilometer-long straight lines? How was the transport organized? What kinds of rope did they use—if any? How did the heavy transport function in winter? When it rained? When the ground was soft? What tools were used to cut the monolithic slabs? Why columns of menhirs of varying width and different rows? Sometimes nine, then 11 or 13 columns? What was the purpose of the stone ovals at the start and end of the Alignement at Le Ménec? How important was the way the space was divided, the smaller triangles within the larger ones? Why were stones of different sizes used? (Image 193) How much time was spent of planning before building began? What size was the workforce? Who directed the masses? Who had the supreme command and why? What legitimized the boss? Where did the workers and retinue sleep, spend the winter? Where are the remains of the resting places, their food, their bones? How long did the whole megalithic apparition last? If longer than one generation, what writing was used to pass on the instructions to the next generation?
The crazy thing is that it must all have happened in one generation, or else there must have been plans which were stubbornly adhered to over many generations. It is not possible to date Gavrinis, for example, at 4000 BC but to deny the same age to the large broken menhir or the dolmen of St. Pierre. Why not? All the points lie on one sight line. How were the megalithic people supposed to set a sight on something that did not exist at the time? Consequently, the points were fixed at a specific time before building started.
As we can see, there are huge patches on the research map and no area that could be worked within one discipline alone.
And what about “ley lines” or “geomancy”? These are straight lines that are from 150 to several thousand kilometers long and stretch like a grid across Europe. Never heard of them?
A straight line can be drawn on the map from Stonehenge, which lies northwest of Salisbury in England, to the Stone Age hill of Old Sarum. In its extension, this line runs directly over Salisbury Cathedral, Clearbury Ring, and Frankenbury Camp. All the places are prehistoric; Salisbury Cathedral was built on a heathen ceremonial site. Now stand on the top of Old Sarum and look northward and southward. A compass illustrates the straight sight line. All points can be seen from the top of the hill. There are masses of such lines and without exception they originate in the Stone Age. The journalist Paul Devereux, who specializes in archeology, and the mathematician Robert Forrest have critically studied these lines and end their contribution in the scientific journal New Scientist with the words: “There may be a modern unwillingness to admit that ancient societies once developed activities which we do not understand. That also applies with regard to the stubborn silence of archeology about the lines in the Peruvian Andes and equally to the stubborn resistance against a thorough investigation of ley lines in Europe.”13
As long ago as 1870, William Henry Black (died 1872), a historian in the Public Record Office in London and member of the British Archeological Society, drew the attention of his colleagues to these curious lines: “The monuments, which we know about, mark great, geometrical lines. Lines which run across the whole of western Europe, across the British Isles and Ireland, the Hebrides, the Shetland and Orkney Islands as far as the Arctic Circle.”14
One of these lines runs from Denmark right across the Alps and ends precisely on the ancient Greek sacred site of Delphi. Another starts at Calais in France, runs across Mont Alix, Mont Alet, L’Allet, Anxon, Aisey, Alaise, L’Alex, Alzano, etc. as far down as Sicily. All places on the route possess a Stone Age sacred site. And the name of each location has the same root—even today.
There is detailed literature about this phenomenon.15, 16, 17, 18 Honest people have spent their lives researching these lines. People who were, of course, aware that the curvature of the earth had to be taken into account and who just as self-evidently knew that a straight line on a map will always randomly touch several locations. What remains is the facts, the “adjusted” points on a line. What do the opinionated critics care about that, who do not thoroughly examine anything, yet a priori know everything better? One would have thought that the neat analysis of a prehistoric riddle would have contributed to the clarification of some truly exciting facts and would have made the specialist world prick up its ears. Mistake. The scientists in the field of primordial and pre-history are battening down the hatches and sticking their heads in the sand. They do not want to take account of what they think is impossible even if it is served to them on a plate. What has happened to the much-vaunted scientific thinking? Where is the drive of scientific discovery? Where is the pleasure in finding the truth?
I know what the problem is: a lack of moral courage. In Germany, no prehistoric specialist will tackle the subject because it might be connected with the “ancient Germanic peoples” and is thus automatically associated with Nazi thinking. And, in general, the ley lines lead to all kinds of impossible consequences. No maps and no writing are supposed to have existed thousands of years ago. How, then, can sight lines link Stone Age sacred sites over hundreds of kilometers in uneven terrain? Were they all constructed at the same time? If not, what was the obligation placed on succeeding generations? Generations which, like it or not, linked their later sacred sites in precise lines with the earlier sacred locations—whether or not that fitted with the spirit of the times. And who—one might well ask!—fixed the network of lines before the first building phase? That these lines from the Stone Age definitely exist is only disputed by those who do not want to know. Poor, dishonest society.
At least it is not disputed that, in Europe alone, there are several hundred prehistoric stone and wood circles. Mighty progress! That all these complexes are connected with astronomy is gradually also understood by most people. The blockade of reason starts when we ask “why?” Why did Stone Age people create magnificent, astronomically significant stone and wood circles?
In honor of those “heavenly teachers.” That, at least, is the claim of the oldest account about the stone circle of Stonehenge.19 (Image 194)
In ancient Egypt, the sun was given wings. But the winged sun disk, to be seen in all temples, also existed in ancient Babylon and still earlier among the Sumerians. Soon the divine kings had themselves immortalized with wings—they can be found in any larger museum today. The Christians turned these flying figures into angels. The angel (angelos) was a messenger, a mediator between the world of the gods and of humans—hence the wings. And we also brought along from antiquity the helmets—pardon me, the haloes—of those untouchable beings in the pictorial images.
The world of our imagination has changed little over millennia—apart from psychology explaining many things in the wrong way.
