Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery (11 page)

The presence of Sirius, as seen from Thornborough, might perhaps have represented one of the most compelling reasons for creating these massive structures.

The presence of Sirius each day at the southeastern portal of the henges gave us some of our most important clues as we went on to discover that the apparent association between the three henges of Thornborough and Orion’s Belt was definitely no coincidence.

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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.