Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery (16 page)

In short, Thom’s Megalithic Yard is real.

One of the first, and most intriguing features of the Megalithic Yard is its geodetic properties – the fact that a second of polar arc in the 366-system is exactly 366 MY long on the ground. An immediate consequence of discovering this fact was an acceptance that Neolithic astronomer-surveyors must have understood the circumference of the Earth to an exactitude that is still unsurpassed. The experimental work conducted by engineer Jim Russell has shown how they could have achieved that feat and the existence of major artefacts demonstrates that they did indeed do it. For Thornborough to have been placed at 1/10th of the planet’s circumference from the North Pole is an unlikely accident, but when one realizes that the north and south henges are latitudinally exactly four seconds of arc (4 × 366 MY), centre to centre, coincidence surely disappears as a rational option for any scientifically minded person.
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In circa 3500
BC
, when Thornborough was built, Sirius rose at the same point as the Sun at the winter solstice – but only at that precise latitude. The astronomer-priests that planned Thornborough also had the benefit of a star (Alphard) rising exactly in the east and setting in the west. Alphard would only have achieved this wonderfully helpful trick perfectly for 100 years or so – and no visible star does this today. It must have greatly aided the henge builders’ understanding of astronomy for, whilst Alphard was the only star to rise and set at the same point at every latitude in the British Isles, they would have noticed how the highest part of its path across the sky changed over even quite small distances. The further south they went the higher its culmination, and northwards it got lower.

We have identified that the henge builders knew how to measure latitude (position north and south between the poles) by observing the differences in angle of any star at its culmination. However, establishing longitude is a great deal more complex – the main reason being that there are no obvious starting and finishing points. Whilst the north and south of the Earth obviously culminate at the poles – the points of the axis – the east–west direction is endless.

This absence of a natural break point has been solved artificially by creating a primary meridian at Greenwich (near London) and an International Date Line on the opposite side of the world. These are, of course, just a convention created by the rulers of the once mighty British Empire. Other countries, including France and the United States of America, have attempted but failed to establish their own meridians.

So how could the Neolithic people understand the relative position of different sites in terms of longitude (east-westness)? The answer came from Jim Russell when he put himself in their shoes. When considering how they understood the Earth’s circumference he proposed that they could have used signal fires to measure the difference in rising times of stars as they came over the eastern horizon. This made Chris think about the possible Lincoln connection – the high ground some 127 km away that the Thornborough avenues point towards like a rifle sight. He called Alan to discuss an interesting theory:

‘I think we might have a solution to how the henge builders could measure relative longitude as well latitude and it’s all to do with Lincoln and Thornborough. We know the two locations are exactly one Megalithic Degree of latitude apart and Jim Russell has come up with a technique that could answer how they measured the relative longitude. He has suggested that straight east–west points could have rapid communication to time a star’s different rising time – but I have noticed how this should work at any angle.

‘Remember Alphard,’ said Chris ‘Back then it rose and set east–west at every point that these people could view it – no matter what their latitude or longitude.’

‘But only for a hundred years or so,’ Alan replied.

‘Quite long enough to lay out a grid system across these islands if they had wanted to,’ replied Chris. ‘Imagine the scenario. The master astronomer from Thornborough sends out a team to the Lincoln hill, which they knew was exactly 1 degree south. They then build a pile of dry timber ready for a bonfire at Thornborough and at Lincoln – and at say 5-km intervals in between. Each timber pile is screened with two sets of sewn animal skins – one covering the view to the north and the other to the south.’

Alan was busy drawing the proposed set-up on his pad. Meanwhile, Chris continued.

‘The Lincoln team are armed with a pendulum to measure time – either in Megalithic Seconds or, more likely, modern seconds. Whilst the team at Lincoln are 127 km away as the crow flies, they are further east by about 66 km in terms of longitude from Thornborough. That means they will see Alphard first by several minutes.’

‘Yes,’ Alan replied. ‘Just give me a moment …’

The Skype call went quiet briefly whilst Alan performed a quick calculation on his astronomical software. ‘Nearly there!’ he said and then there was another pause. ‘Chris,’ said Alan after a moment, ‘it’s exactly 4 minutes – and I mean 4 minutes, not 3 minutes 59 seconds or 4 minutes 1 second – exactly 4 minutes!’

An almost frantic conversation followed as we discussed the implications. The significance of 4 minutes was not lost on either of us. In a mean solar day, 4 minutes is the amount of time it takes the Earth to turn on its axis by 1 modern degree of arc.

The southern Thornborough henge and the Lincoln mount are precisely one Megalithic Degree apart north to south, and one modern degree east to west!

For years we had held on to a common hunch that the Megalithic 366-degree system of geometry and the 360-degree geometry we use today had once been used in tandem – and here was a confirmation of the fact. It looked almost certain that the Megalithic 366 system had been used to measure longitude and the 360 system to measure latitude.

We were stunned. Not many readers will immediately grasp the sheer magnitude of this result. This finding has massive implications and it delivers a
coup de grace
to the archaeological establishment who are doing their best to ignore the existence of Neolithic metrology. For the Thornborough henges to point at the Lincoln mount across the flattest 127 km in the UK and then to find that the two are exactly 1 Megalithic Degree (366 × 60 × 6 MY) apart by latitude and 1 modern degree apart by longitude is beyond any conceivable chance of coincidence.

We had long discussed the thought that the Megalithic Yard and its associated 366-degree system represented the night (stellar based), and the metre/second and 360-degree system was of the day (solar based). Here was a first indication, a powerful indication that we were right.

Everywhere we look we are blessed (or maybe sometimes cursed) by major new discoveries, all of which deserve someone embarking on a doctorate to concentrate on them specifically. In a conversation lasting, so far, less than a couple of minutes, we had identified another.

Of course only Alphard would provide the henge builders with the ultimate tool they needed because of its east/west behaviour for that short period of time.

This important discovery had, quite naturally, hijacked the conversation, but after an hour or so Chris returned to his original thoughts about how these amazing Neolithic astronomers had achieved such accuracy. ‘How they did all this is really clever,’ said Chris. ‘Using a fire arrangement, such as Jim has suggested, the process almost certainly worked like this: Shortly before Alphard was due to rise, everyone in the chain stokes up their masked fires. Being further east, the team at Lincoln see Alphard rise first and they then immediately drop their screen facing north – and at the same they time start a pendulum swinging and count the beats. As the next team along the line see the light of the Lincoln fire they drop their northern screen, and so on along the chain until the relayed signal reaches Thornborough. The Thornborough team immediately drop the screen facing back towards Lincoln.’

Alan could see what was coming. ‘Wow – I see where you’re heading.’

‘Yes, as Jim has suggested – the message goes back along the line as each station drops their opposite screen for a few seconds. Once the signal is received at Lincoln they note how many beats have passed at that point. But they still keep the pendulum going.’ Alan’s drawing was getting quite busy on his notepad.

Chris continued. ‘The split-second that the Thornborough team see Alphard rise they send a second flash from their beacon fire. When this is relayed to Lincoln the team there stop counting. Now for the really clever bit that Jim came up with. The two teams are 127 km away from each other – how quickly do you think they could compare notes on their timings of Alphard rising, and how accurate in terms of pendulum beats do you think they could be in measuring the difference?’

Alan paused before answering. ‘I was going to say that the Lincoln team would have to send a person back to Thornborough with their information but they must have been able to use the fire signals in some way to communicate. And somehow, as we have just found out, they were spot-on accurate.’

‘You’re right. They were accurate to within a single beat and the entire communication took seconds not hours or even days.’

‘What?’ said Alan. ‘That speed is incredible!’

‘It certainly is. I doubt we could improve on it today using mobile phones. The trick was that they had designed into their experiment a brilliant correction method to compensate for the inevitable time delay in signalling. When the first signal came back from Thornborough to confirm receipt of the original signal from Lincoln, the team noted how long it took – say 22 beats, i.e. 22 seconds. They then halved that to 11 seconds as the known time it took for the message to transmit one-way between the two locations.’

‘So, hold on there a moment,’ said Alan, as he made some further calculations. ‘When the team at Lincoln see the second signal flash …’ He paused briefly ‘… they would have counted 251 beats since they first saw Alphard then deduct the 11 beats taken by the signal fires and they know they are 240 seconds east of Thornborough. And because they knew that Alphard is visible in winter for half of the Earth’s turn they could quickly calculate the precise distance east.’

‘We cannot know for sure that they actually did it this way,’ Chris admitted. ‘But given that there now can be no doubt that they did measure the Earth and understood the concepts of latitude and longitude, they must have used a technique like this.’

‘One other thought,’ said Alan. ‘The team at Lincoln could also have informed the Thornborough lot about the result of the experiment pretty quickly by using the fire transmission method – long fire exposures to indicate minutes and short flashes for the seconds. But we now know that they only needed four long flashes – if they used minutes of time like we do today, which seems highly likely. It looks like the Sumerians must have learned of these units from the people of Britain.’

What we could see was a culture that understood a great deal about how the heavens worked – the stars, the Moon, the Sun, the Earth and probably the planets. Most importantly, they clearly understood how to map the heavens down onto the Earth – with stunning accuracy. They had produced a perfect and gigantic copy of the stars of Orion’s Belt and their apparent version of Sirius 10,000 m away. And that had apparently been planned at another henge hundreds of kilometres away in Oxfordshire.

Who were these people? All of the evidence points to an integrated powerbase; an astronomer-priesthood who planned structures across thousands of square miles and many centuries. The standard archaeological establishment idea that henges were locally conceived places of worship to unknown deities is dead in the water. These people were, first and foremost, astronomers; their understanding of the heavens may well have had a theological component, but giant circles on the face of the Earth were scientific instruments, not proto-churches!

We wonder what archaeologists of the distant future will make of the huge underground structures at CERN, which is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory. The Large Hadron Collider is a 27 km-circumference circular tunnel buried 100 m beneath the Franco-Swiss border. Stripped of its hardware the empty structure could be anything – so it must be a tomb or a place of worship for underworld deities?

In actual fact this rather plain circular structure is a super-scientific instrument serviced by 2,600 locally-based people for the benefit of 7,931 scientists from 580 universities across 80 countries. Amongst the many achievements made at this circular hole is an invention made by Sir Tim Burners-Lee – the internet. And current research is designed to facilitate time travel; albeit only for subatomic particles.

The CERN analogy with Thornborough and other henges across Britain may not be as far-fetched as one might imagine. Could both have been created for the benefit of international scientists? Were the henge creators from the British Isles, or could they have been a broad-based group that came from elsewhere to take advantage of the various astronomical benefits delivered by the latitudes of northwestern Europe?

At this stage, at least, we do not know. All we can say for certain is that they used units, namely metres and seconds, as well as Megalithic Yards. The evidence, such as it is, paints a picture of a people who could use this technology, but we struggle to believe that they created it. It is simply too advanced.

Having extracted as much as we can out of the structures in the British Isles for the time being, we moved on. Our attention now turned to that other supposed model of Orion’s Belt far away on the sands of Giza.

In our own personal libraries we both have a book that dates back to 1994. It is the work we discussed in Chapter 1, namely
The Orion Mystery
, written by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert. They describe how they came to conclude that the three pyramids of Giza were a copy of Orion’s Belt. The notion seemed quite reasonable, but neither of us was either a supporter or a detractor. If we had been asked to express a view at the time we would have been a little sceptical, but fully supportive of the need to investigate the idea further. Certainly, the argument had merit, and the objections of some opponents were less than impressive.