Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was (26 page)

The all-important numbers 366 and 360 are curiously linked by a combination of pi and phi because 360 divided by 5 gives a result of 72 and 366 divided by pi x phi also gives the result of 72. This suggests that the relationship between the two Megalithic numbers has a fundamental resonance with these two very special ratios.

When we turned to the subject of music we found that Megalithic mathematics produces its own structure. Sound is normally measured in cycles per modern second, known as hertz (Hz), but we considered using cycles per Megalithic Second, which we called Thoms (Th). A frequency of 366 Th is the same as 560 Hz, which places our Megalithic note just slightly above C sharp in modern concert tuning. This is effectively the ‘sound of the Earth turning’ because the planet rotates at a rate of one Megalithic Yard per beat at the equator.

We found that indigenous Australians consider a didgeridoo with a note equal to 366 Th capable of creating sacred Earth music. Further investigation of other indigenous music also revealed Megalithic rhythm and pitch correspondences. It appears that there is an instinctive relationship between the rotating mass of the planet and human music. It may indeed have been this ‘involuntary’ sense that the mystic and mathematician Pythagoras came to call ‘the harmony of the spheres’.

When we looked at human sight we found that the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum forms an octave rather like music. What is more, if we move exactly 40 octaves up the frequency scale from a note of 366 Th we get to blue light. While nearly all scientists believe that light and sound are not connected, we tentatively feel that there might be a resonance between the two that is picked up by human perception.

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http://twm.co.nz/Benv_bio.htm

It was clearly time to sit and take stock again. We had a series of face-to-face meetings in order to review our data and some of the remarkable findings that had resulted from our investigation. We were agreed that we found ourselves faced by certain irreconcilable facts. The association of the numbers 366 and 360 had proved to be far more puzzling than we could have possibly expected. What is more, we were now aware that we were not the first investigators to associate knowledge of both pi and phi with the data Alexander Thom had collected in his long investigations of the Megalithic sites.

The challenge we now faced was to try and understand how Neolithic Man could have devised a unit that was obviously central to a gloriously holistic system of measurement that seems to emanate from the Earth itself. Did they invent it? Was it given to them by some unknown previous but more advanced culture, or does everything come from the human condition, in which simple observation of our environment will intuitively link us to a natural rhythm of 366?

We had constantly tried to stand back to try and understand what sort of ‘magic’ was driving a system that was in some ways far in advance of the best we have today – yet existing more than 5,000 years ago. We had the feeling that there was far more here than simply good astronomical observation or the fruits of the efforts of a group of early sky watchers who just got outrageously lucky. At each stage we had found that the Great Underlying Principle had astonishing powers of cohesion to make all aspects of life work as one. Its existence had been made clear to us while others had not found it, probably because we did not impose the limitations of our expectations or preferences on the possibilities.

We had uncovered an integration of ancient units that had no right to exist according to standard opinions of the past. The reality of the Minoan foot and its correspondence to the Megalithic Yard indicated a science that was deliberately and intentionally amended to meet new requirements. The Minoan foot is nowhere near the same linear measurement as the Megalithic Yard, yet it was clearly intended that 1,000 Minoan feet should represent the same linear distance as 366 Megalithic Yards, which itself is exactly one Megalithic Second of arc of the polar circumference of the Earth.

But where, we mused, was the start of this puzzle? Where exactly was the entry point for this impossibly brilliant system that made all modern approaches to working with nature look awkward and entirely compromised. Having more or less exhausted our ideas as to where we could turn next, we looked outwards – towards the heavens themselves.

The first object we considered was Earth’s companion in space, that rocky body we simply call the Moon. As inhabitants of planet Earth we should all be eternally grateful to the Moon for orbiting our beautiful blue planet in the way it does. Atypically for the solar system at large, Earth’s Moon has large dimensions for a planetary satellite but it has a very low mass because it contains almost no iron or other heavy metals. There is no theory of the Moon’s origin that fits all the available facts but it is generally accepted that it is composed of the same materials as the Earth though without the heavy elements. This gives it a density that is around 60 per cent of our own world.

The Moon is a great deal more than a shining disc that conveniently lights up the night sky. Several leading biologists working with astrophysicists who study our nearest neighbour in space have come to the conclusion that life on Earth may never have established itself at anything more than a primordial aquatic level if the Moon had not been in place.

The Earth has a very active and unstable core and therefore wobbles in several different ways as it spins. It is has been suggested by some scientists that the Moon acts rather like the stabilizer on a child’s bicycle, in that its gravitational presence prevents the Earth from regularly toppling over in relation to its solar orbit. If it did so, any complex life form would be wiped out in the resulting turmoil. In addition, the strong gravitational pull of so massive an object creates by far the largest proportion of the tides we experience.

Biologists have argued that it was the regular cycles of the tides that allowed aquatic life to eventually take up residence on land. For example, some species may have occupied an evolutionary niche provided by tidal pools. If such pools are created during a particularly high tide, it may be some days or even weeks before the sea would replenish them. Natural evaporation would eventually remove the water in the pools, leaving their inhabitants either to die – or to adapt. Creatures exploiting this niche would have been subject to evolutionary forces, which eventually led to the formation of primitive organs for breathing in a part-air/part-water environment. Ultimately, these organs would have become lungs, while fins for swimming evolved into proto-limbs. This is a persuasive theory of how life left the oceans and ultimately evolved into humankind.

By some absolutely incomprehensible quirk of nature, the Moon also manages to precisely imitate the movements of the Sun when both are viewed from Earth. Practically every phenomenon of the Moon replicates, in a month, what the Sun appears to do in a full year. In addition, the magic of the Moon causes it to move in a mirror image of the Sun, in that the midsummer full Moon will set at the same angle and in the same place on the horizon as the midwinter sunset. Then the midwinter Moon sets where the midsummer Sun sets, and at the equinoxes the Moon takes the same setting line as the Sun. This is very, very odd – but it is observably true.
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The realities of the Moon are highly improbable for many reasons but we accept them because of what is known as the ‘Anthropic Principle’. This states that things have to be as they are or we humans would never have developed to witness them – in other words, our environment exists in its current form because we observe it. To us this seems a rather circular argument that appears to be a handy mechanism to stop us from worrying too much about the extreme improbability of the human species existing at all. When one considers the nature of the Moon, it has to be agreed that no-one could have done a better job if they had sat down and thoughtfully designed the thing!

The orbit of the Moon.

We decided to consider the movements of the Moon more closely. Because it always has the same side facing Earth, one lunar day is exactly the same as a rotation around the Earth. This is because the Moon rotates once on its axis as it makes one orbit of the Earth.

The so-called ‘dark side’ of the Moon is not actually dark, it is simply that one side always faces away from us, like a shot-putter’s weight on the end of a line. The Moon orbits the Earth at an average distance of 384,403 kilometres and at an average speed of 3,700 kilometres per hour, and it completes one revolution in an elliptical orbit about the Earth in 27.3217 days. But this is a very human description of events, seen from an Earth-bound perspective. A better way of describing what is happening is to say that the Earth experiences 27.3217 mean solar days for every one of the Moon’s days, and this leads to a very surprising outcome:

Why should this be? This connection by way of the key Megalithic value of 366 is surely no coincidence?