366 geometry
Encyclopedia
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366 geometry or 366-degree geometry (also called megalithic geometry) is the name given to an hypothetical geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
supposedly used and perhaps created by an alleged megalithic civilization of Britain and Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
, France, according to British authors Alan Butler and Christopher Knight
Christopher Knight (author)
Christopher Knight is an author who has written several pseudoarcaeological and pseudohistorical books dealing with theories such as 366-degree geometry and the origins of Freemasonry...
, and French author Sylvain Tristan. This geometry, whose origin is claimed to go back to c. 3500 BC, would have used a 366-degree
Degree (angle)
A degree , usually denoted by ° , is a measurement of plane angle, representing 1⁄360 of a full rotation; one degree is equivalent to π/180 radians...
circle rather than a 360-degree circle as we do today.
366 geometry is mainly viewed as pseudoscience
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
by mainstream science; defenders of the theory claim that anyone (scholars and laymen alike) may easily verify the truthfulness of their assertions, the "facts" being, in their terms, "fully testable and checkable" for "anyone with internet access."
"Megalithic geometry"
One of the first persons to associate megalithMegalith
A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. Megalithic describes structures made of such large stones, utilizing an interlocking system without the use of mortar or cement.The word 'megalith' comes from the Ancient...
builders with geometry was Scottish Professor Alexander Thom
Alexander Thom
Alexander "Sandy" Thom was a Scottish engineer most famous for his theory of the Megalithic yard, categorization of stone circles and his studies of Stonehenge and other archaeological sites.- Life and work :...
(1894–1985). Although he never hypothesised any 366-degree geometry himself, he strongly suspected the Megalith builders of Britain and Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
had great astronomical and mathematical knowledge that they used when building the stone rings of Britain: "geometrical shapes [were] used for the rings, i.e. circles, flattened circles, egg shapes, ellipses, and other more complicated designs."
According to him, these stone arrangements had astronomical alignments, and they used Pythagorean triples and "geometrical figures which had as many dimensions as possible arranged to be integral
Integral
Integration is an important concept in mathematics and, together with its inverse, differentiation, is one of the two main operations in calculus...
multiples of their unit of length." (this idea of Pythagorean geometry used by Megalithic builders has recently been proposed by Oxford University expert Anthony Johnson about Stonehenge).
After several decades of research Thom arrived at the conclusion that the Megalithic builders used a standard unit of measurement which he dubbed the Megalithic yard
Megalithic Yard
A Megalithic Yard is a unit of measurement, about , that some researchers believe was used in the construction of megalithic structures. The proposal was made by Alexander Thom as a result of his surveys of 600 megalithic sites in England, Scotland, Wales and Britanny...
. According to him, the length of this unit was 2.72 Imperial feet
Foot
The foot is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made up of one or more segments or bones, generally including claws...
or 82.96 cm.
According to Alan Butler this geometry was based on the Earth's polar circumference
Circumference
The circumference is the distance around a closed curve. Circumference is a special perimeter.-Circumference of a circle:The circumference of a circle is the length around it....
. The Megalithic degree is the 366th part of it, i.e. 40,008 / 366 = 109.31 km; the Megalithic arcminute is the 60th part of the Megalithic degree, i.e. 109.31 / 60 = 1.82 km; the Megalithic arcsecond is the 6th part of the Megalithic minute, i.e. 1.82 / 6 = 0.3036 km; if this Megalithic arcsecond is in turn divided into 366 equal segments, the length arrived at is 0.8296 m, which is the presumed length of the Megalithic Yard, the supposedly ancient unit of measurement independently discovered by professor Alexander Thom in the 1950s. It is precisely this apparent coincidence that prompted Butler to think that the Megalith builders could have been cognizant with an Earth-based 366-degree geometry.
Clive Ruggles has said that both classical and Bayesian statistical reassessments of Thom's date "reached the conclusion that the evidence in favour of the MY was at best marginal, and that even if it does exist the uncertainty in our knowledge of its value is of the order of centimetres, far greater than the 1mm precision claimed by Thom. In other words, the evidence presented by Thom could be
adequately explained by, say, monuments being set out by pacing, with the 'unit' reflecting an average length of pace." David Kendall
David George Kendall
David George Kendall FRS was an English statistician, who spent much of his academic life in the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. He worked with M. S...
had previously argued that pacing would have created a greater difference in measurements between sites.
Douglas Heggie casts doubt on Thom's suggestion as well, stating that his careful analysis uncovered "little evidence for a highly accurate unit" and "little justification for the claim that a highly accurate unit was in use".
366-day calendar
Phaistos Disc
The Phaistos Disc is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age . It is about 15 cm in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols...
, which has been interpreted by some as a Minoan
Minoan civilization
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BC to the 15th century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans...
calendar based on a 366-day year, the Phaistos Disc having 30 divisions on one side and 31 on the other. This calendar would have been working on 40-year cycles, because a 366-day calendar needs one intercalary month in 40 years.
Thom had also hypothesized that the Megalithic Yard was divided into 40 Megalithic inches, a number that indirectly echoes the 40-year cycles of the presumed Minoan calendar in ancient Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
.
Butler also noticed that the division of the same Megalithic arcsecond into 1,000 equal parts yielded a length of 30.36 cm, which is curiously that of the Minoan foot, a unit of length used in the Cretan palaces built roughly at the same time as the Phaistos Disc was made, and independently discovered by Canadian archaeologist J. Walter Graham.
"Megalithic pendulum"
In another book (Civilization One) coauthored with English writer Christopher Knight, Butler wrote that the length of a pendulumPendulum
A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced from its resting equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position...
giving 366 beats (or 183 periods) during one 366th of a day (which is approximately the time it takes to the Earth to spin one Megalithic degree) is one half-Megalithic Yard long. From that the authors suggested that such a pendulum could well have been used by these ancestral people to accurately reproduce the length of their yard.
Such a pendulum has never been discovered to this day. It should be noted, however, that in a book coauthored with Robert Lomas
Robert Lomas
Roberto Lomas is a British writer and business studies academic. He writes primarily about the history of Freemasonry as well as the Neolithic period, ancient engineering and archaeoastronomy...
in 1999 in which the question of the Megalithic pendulum is discussed, Christopher Knight mentions the existence of what he calls ‘stone things’ (these are normally referred to as ‘carved stone balls’) from the Neolithic that have been found in numerous places of Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
(more particularly in Skara Brae
Skara Brae
Skara Brae is a large stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, Orkney, Scotland. It consists of ten clustered houses, and was occupied from roughly 3180 BCE–2500 BCE...
, cited by French author Sylvain Tristan as being located along the 60th Megalithic parallel—see the section ‘Salt Lines’ below) and whose meaning is unclear, but that could have been pendulum weights.
Volumes and masses
In the book Civilization One, Butler and Knight contend that the basic units of volumeVolume
Volume is the quantity of three-dimensional space enclosed by some closed boundary, for example, the space that a substance or shape occupies or contains....
and mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
of the imperial system, the imperial pint
Pint
The pint is a unit of volume or capacity that was once used across much of Europe with values varying from state to state from less than half a litre to over one litre. Within continental Europe, the pint was replaced with the metric system during the nineteenth century...
and the avoirdupois pound, are also derived from the Megalithic Yard. Just like the litre
Litre
pic|200px|right|thumb|One litre is equivalent to this cubeEach side is 10 cm1 litre water = 1 kilogram water The litre is a metric system unit of volume equal to 1 cubic decimetre , to 1,000 cubic centimetres , and to 1/1,000 cubic metre...
is the tenth part of the metre to the cubic power, the tenth part of the Megalithic Yard to the cubic power produces a volume of ( 82.96 cm / 10 ) third power = 570.96 mL, a very close approximation of the modern pint of 568.26 mL.
Similarly, this theoretical Megalithic pint, if filled with barley dry seeds, weighs on average a number close to 453.59 grams, which is the exact value of the avoirdupois pound.
Stranger still, the division of the Earth mass into 366 equal parts, then again into 60 equal parts, and then again into 6 equal parts, yields a result that is almost exactly 10 to the 20th avoirdupois pounds : 5.9736 X ( 10 to the 24th ) kg / ( 366 X 60 X 6 ) = 4.5337 X ( 10 to the 19th ) kg = 9.995 X (10 to the 20th) avoirdupois pounds.
Said differently, a one-Megalithic-arcsecond-thick ‘slice’ of Earth (at the equator) weighs almost exactly 10 to the 20th pounds, as though, according to the authors, the exact value of the pound had been adjusted so as to be a round subdivision of a one-arcsecond-thick slice of Earth in the Megalithic geometry.
"Fundamental numbers"
Still in the same book, Butler and Knight claim that the Megalithic Yard is a fundamental number for the Sun, the Moon and the Earth. The Megalithic arc second as measured on the Earth equatorEquator
An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass....
is very close to 366 Megalithic Yards, while the lunar Megalithic arc second as measured on the Moon equator is very close to 100 Megalithic yards, and the solar Megalithic arc second as measured on the Sun equator is very close to 40,000 Megalithic Yards.
In a book published in France and Canada in 2007 French author Sylvain Tristan suggests that the numbers 366, 40 and 10 are not only fundamental to the Earth, the Moon and the Sun, but also to the human body and water. In the water-based Celsius temperature measurement system, which is directly linked to base-10 numeration, the average human body temperature is 36.6 degrees (according to Russian medicine), whereas the maximal density of water, Tristan says, is 4.0 degrees (whereas it is in fact 3.98 degrees ).
More recently Butler and Knight claimed that, on a scale where the absolute zero
Absolute zero
Absolute zero is the theoretical temperature at which entropy reaches its minimum value. The laws of thermodynamics state that absolute zero cannot be reached using only thermodynamic means....
is defined as being minus 1,000 degrees
Degree (temperature)
The term degree is used in several scales of temperature. The symbol ° is usually used, followed by the initial letter of the unit, for example “°C” for degree Celsius...
, water boils at the temperature of 366 degrees, an "utterly remarkable" result according to the authors, which again points at something intrinsically fundamental in these numbers.
"Salt Lines"
Alan Butler also asserts that 366-degree geometry has been materialised on the Earth by what he terms Salt Lines – 366 meridiansMeridian (geography)
A meridian is an imaginary line on the Earth's surface from the North Pole to the South Pole that connects all locations along it with a given longitude. The position of a point along the meridian is given by its latitude. Each meridian is perpendicular to all circles of latitude...
and 183 parallels
Circle of latitude
A circle of latitude, on the Earth, is an imaginary east-west circle connecting all locations that share a given latitude...
crisscrossing the globe at regular intervals (the equivalents of modern-day 360 meridians and 180 parallels).
The term Salt Line was created by Xavier Guichard
Xavier Guichard
Xavier Guichard was a French Director of Police, archaeologist and writer.His 1936 book Eleusis Alesia: Enquête sur les origines de la civilisation européenne is an early example of speculative thinking concerning Earth mysteries, based on his observations of apparent alignments between...
, who was the first person to posit the existence of such lines in the 1920s and 1930s. After having looked at a map of France, Guichard had noticed a recurrent name which he linked to Alesia
Alesia
-Places:France*Alesia , an ancient city in Gaul**Battle of Alesia*Alésia , a station in the Paris Métro*Rue d'Alésia, Paris*Le quartier Alésia, an unofficial district of Paris that mostly overlaps Petit-MontrougeUnited States...
, the place where Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
defeated Gaulish leader Vercingetorix
Vercingetorix
Vercingetorix was the chieftain of the Arverni tribe, who united the Gauls in an ultimately unsuccessful revolt against Roman forces during the last phase of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars....
in 52 BC. At the time, Guichard thought the Bronze Age people had invented the 360-degree circle. But because the intervals between the lines were seemingly too small, nobody took him seriously at the time. It was only in the late 1990s that someone (namely Alan Butler) had a second look on Guichard's tentative hypothesis.
Butler explains the smaller intervals between the lines by the fact that in a 366-degree circle, you get a few more lines than in a 360-degree circle, which of course entails a slight decrease of the interval between two lines.
Capital City
Capital City was a television show produced by Euston Films which focused on the lives of investment bankers in London living and working on the corporate trading floor for the fictional international bank Shane-Longman....
or sanctuaries of late prehistory and antiquity are located on the course of Salt Lines: it includes Stonehenge
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...
, Avebury
Avebury
Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles which is located around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, south west England. Unique amongst megalithic monuments, Avebury contains the largest stone circle in Europe, and is one of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain...
, the Ring of Brodgar
Ring of Brodgar
The Ring of Brodgar is a Neolithic henge and stone circle on the Mainland, the largest island in Orkney, Scotland...
and Skara Brae
Skara Brae
Skara Brae is a large stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, Orkney, Scotland. It consists of ten clustered houses, and was occupied from roughly 3180 BCE–2500 BCE...
(both of which are located on the 60th Megalithic parallel), Babylon
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
, Assur
Assur
Assur , was one of the capitals of ancient Assyria. The remains of the city are situated on the western bank of river Tigris, north of the confluence with the tributary Little Zab river, in modern day Iraq, more precisely in the Al-Shirqat District .Assur is also...
, Niniveh, Thebes
Thebes, Egypt
Thebes is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile within the modern city of Luxor. The Theban Necropolis is situated nearby on the west bank of the Nile.-History:...
, Abu Simbel
Abu Simbel
Abu Simbel temples refers to two massive rock temples in Abu Simbel in Nubia, southern Egypt on the western bank of Lake Nasser about 230 km southwest of Aswan...
, Harappa
Harappa
Harappa is an archaeological site in Punjab, northeast Pakistan, about west of Sahiwal. The site takes its name from a modern village located near the former course of the Ravi River. The current village of Harappa is from the ancient site. Although modern Harappa has a train station left from...
, Mycenae
Mycenae
Mycenae is an archaeological site in Greece, located about 90 km south-west of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. Argos is 11 km to the south; Corinth, 48 km to the north...
, Athenes, Hattusa
Hattusa
Hattusa was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. It was located near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the great loop of the Kızıl River ....
, Alesia
Alesia
-Places:France*Alesia , an ancient city in Gaul**Battle of Alesia*Alésia , a station in the Paris Métro*Rue d'Alésia, Paris*Le quartier Alésia, an unofficial district of Paris that mostly overlaps Petit-MontrougeUnited States...
, Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan – also written Teotihuacán, with a Spanish orthographic accent on the last syllable – is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas...
(20th Megalithic parallel), Chichén Itzá
Chichen Itza
Chichen Itza is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Municipality of Tinúm, Yucatán state, present-day Mexico....
, Tiwanaku
Tiwanaku
Tiwanaku, is an important Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia, South America. Tiwanaku is recognized by Andean scholars as one of the most important precursors to the Inca Empire, flourishing as the ritual and administrative capital of a major state power for approximately five...
and Caral
Caral
Caral was a large settlement in the Supe Valley, near Supe, Barranca province, Peru, some 200 km north of Lima. Caral is the most ancient city of the Americas, and is a well-studied site of the Caral civilization or Norte Chico civilization.- History :...
. According to the author, such a situation challenges probability laws and can hardly been explained away by chance only, and thus is the result of some common knowledge held by the Megalithic civilisation that might have spread to different parts of the globe.
Tristan also thinks that the Salt Lines Prime Meridian
Prime Meridian
The Prime Meridian is the meridian at which the longitude is defined to be 0°.The Prime Meridian and its opposite the 180th meridian , which the International Date Line generally follows, form a great circle that divides the Earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.An international...
could have been the Jordan River, a river that approximately flows in a north-south direction and along which numerous Megalithic sites from the 4th millennium BC
4th millennium BC
The 4th millennium BC saw major changes in human culture. It marked the beginning of the Bronze Age and of writing.The city states of Sumer and the kingdom of Egypt were established and grew to prominence. Agriculture spread widely across Eurasia...
are to be found. Although no solid link has ever been established between Megalithic sites of the Middle East and those of Europe, the Megalithic people are known to have been sailors. It is also known that the first phase of Stonehenge dates from c.3100 BC. Tristan claims that Stonehenge was positioned so as the number of degrees between the monument and the prime meridian be an integer.
Tristan also claims that the lost city of Alesia is not located in the village of Alise-Sainte-Reine
Alise-Sainte-Reine
Alise-Sainte-Reine is a commune in the Côte-d'Or department in Bourgogne in eastern France.It is thought to be the site of the ancient city of Alesia, where Caesar defeated the Gauls under Vercingetorix in the Battle of Alesia...
as mainstream scholars contend, but on the double hill of the Montfault and the Glass Mountain near the village of Guillon in Burgundy. This location was first suggested by Bernard Fèvre in 1982. The hills are located on the course of a Salt Line and stand halfway between the cities of Aalst
Aalst
Aalst can refer to:Place names* Aalst, Belgium, a city and municipality in Belgium* Aalst, Buren, a village in the Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland* Aalst, North Brabant, a village in the Netherlands, in the province of North-Brabant...
, Belgium and Alès
Alès
Alès is a commune in the Gard department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. It is one of the sub-prefectures of the department. It was formerly known as Alais.-Geography:...
, southern France, two cities whose name sound like Alesia and which are located along the same meridian.
Evidence
Google Earth
Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...
. First, the circumference of the henge
Henge
There are three related types of Neolithic earthwork which are all sometimes loosely called henges. The essential characteristic of all three types is that they feature a ring bank and ditch but with the ditch inside the bank rather than outside...
at Stonehenge1 was, according to the authors, exactly 366 Megalithic yards long.
Second, the triple henge
Henge
There are three related types of Neolithic earthwork which are all sometimes loosely called henges. The essential characteristic of all three types is that they feature a ring bank and ditch but with the ditch inside the bank rather than outside...
of Thornborough
Thornborough
Thornborough is the name of more than one place:In the England:*Thornborough, Buckinghamshire*Thornborough, North Yorkshire*Thornborough Henges, North YorkshireIn Australia:*Thornborough, Queensland...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, is claimed to perfectly exhibit Megalithic measurements: the space between the henges is 360 and 366 Megalithic rods respectively (both numbers are "Megalithic" – there are 360 seconds of arc in a Megalithic degree, and 366 degrees in a Megalithic circle); each of the three henges has a circumference of precisely 366 x 2 Megalithic yards (Butler predicted the existence of such "magic" circles with a 233-Megalithic-yard diameter, which naturally results in a 366 x 2-Megalithic yard circumference, without ever finding any for years); and the longitudinal distance between the two outer circles is exactly 4 Megalithic seconds of arc.
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
is 10 times 366 Megalithic yards, whereas there are exactly 8 times 366 Megalithic yards to the centre of the Capitol
United States Capitol
The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall...
.
According to the authors the circle inside which The Pentagon is inscribed is an exact 5 times 366 Megalithic yards.
Finally, the length of a diagonal
Diagonal
A diagonal is a line joining two nonconsecutive vertices of a polygon or polyhedron. Informally, any sloping line is called diagonal. The word "diagonal" derives from the Greek διαγώνιος , from dia- and gonia ; it was used by both Strabo and Euclid to refer to a line connecting two vertices of a...
of the square originally designed as the District of Columbia (no longer a full square) is an exact 75 times 366 Megalithic Yards. According to Butler and Knight, all this is incontrovertible evidence of the continuing existence and (secret) use of 366-degree geometry within modern Freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
(for example, the Ellipse-Capitol-Pentagon ensemble forms a triangle
Triangle
A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or vertices and three sides or edges which are line segments. A triangle with vertices A, B, and C is denoted ....
of 15, 10 and 8 times 366 Megalithic yards respectively, or 33 times 366 Megalithic yards in total, which is said by the authors to echo Freemasonry's 33rd degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
Scottish Rite
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry , commonly known as simply the Scottish Rite, is one of several Rites of the worldwide fraternity known as Freemasonry...
).
Henges
Butler and Knight contend that henges, which exist only in Britain, would have been the world's first star observatories. Circular mounds would have been artificial horizons and inner ditches, when filled with water, would have provided "foolproof way of identifying a perfect levelLevel measurement
Level measurement refers to instrumentation techniques designed to measure the height of a fluid or solid within a containing vessel.- Liquid/fluid measurement techniques :*Radar*Guided radar*Electromechanical*Ultrasonic*Capacitance*Hydrostatic pressure...
.". In the case of Stonehenge, it was possible for its builders to have marked the 366 Megalithic yards of its circumference by woodposts, thus creating one of the first geometric divisions of the heavens, with one degree for each day of the year, and observe the movement of stars.
Critical reception
Publications in pseudoscientific metrologyPseudoscientific metrology
Some approaches in the branch of historic metrology are highly speculative and can be qualified as pseudoscience. Interest in ancient metrology was triggered by research into the various Megalith building cultures and the Great Pyramid of Giza.-Origins:...
receive little, if any, attention from mainstream scholarship, by nature of being intended for the popular mass market.
For French historian Lucien Febvre
Lucien Febvre
Lucien Febvre was a French historian best known for the role he played in establishing the Annales School of history. He has designed the Encyclopédie française together with Anatole de Monzie.-Biography:...
, Xavier Guichard
Xavier Guichard
Xavier Guichard was a French Director of Police, archaeologist and writer.His 1936 book Eleusis Alesia: Enquête sur les origines de la civilisation européenne is an early example of speculative thinking concerning Earth mysteries, based on his observations of apparent alignments between...
's work was "time and effort lost based on wordplay."
Now Guichard is remembered as one of the first researchers in sacred geometry
Sacred geometry
Sacred geometry is the geometry used in the planning and construction of religious structures such as churches, temples, mosques, religious monuments, altars, tabernacles; as well as for sacred spaces such as temenoi, sacred groves, village greens and holy wells, and the creation of religious art...
.
Alexander Thom
Alexander Thom
Alexander "Sandy" Thom was a Scottish engineer most famous for his theory of the Megalithic yard, categorization of stone circles and his studies of Stonehenge and other archaeological sites.- Life and work :...
's theories have been criticized by Ian O. Angell. W. R. Knorr
Wilbur Knorr
Wilbur Richard Knorr was an American historian of mathematics and a professor in the departments of philosophy and classics at Stanford University. He has been called "one of the most profound and certainly the most provocative historian of Greek mathematics" of the 20th century.-Biography:Knorr...
, examining the evidence as presented by Thom, finds no real evidence of the Pythagorean theorem
Pythagorean theorem
In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem or Pythagoras' theorem is a relation in Euclidean geometry among the three sides of a right triangle...
, the ellipse, or a standard unit of distance in Neolithic times. Karlene Jones-Bley also denies the existence of such a precise unit of measurement during the Neolithic period: "the suggestion put forth by Thom that there was a 'megalithic yard' uniform to 0.1mm from Brittany to the Orkneys cannot be accepted" . However, for R. J. C. Atkinson, the British prehistorian and archaeologist (1920–94), the Megalithic yard as defined by Thom is a plausible notion: "An interesting theory is his notion of a megalithic yard and rod, supposedly fairly consistent in Britain and Brittany". According to the analytical methods employed by the British statisticians S.R. Broadbent and D.G. Kendall, Thom's 1955 dataset is unlikely to be the result of chance: "a 1% significance meaning that such a best fit would only occur in 1 in 100 random datasets." A review in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper of Who Built the Moon by Butler and Knight refers to the authors as "an ad man specialising in consumer psychology and an engineer turned astrologer, astronomer and playwright". The review comments on their ideas about megalithic geometry "Here, they suggest, numerical ratios concerning sun, moon and Earth - neatly arrived at by applying the so-called principles of megalithic geometry - are evidence of a message for today's Earthlings. The message is that future humans conquered time travel and went back, way back, to construct the moon to ensure Earth orbits in precisely the right alignment to the Sun to encourage the evolution (yes, they believe in that) of humans - a Mobius strip theory of history. Oh, and they genetically engineered DNA (we know, because that's too complicated for nature alone)."
The first book to ever deal with the possible existence of a 366-degree circle and of a 366-day calendar
Calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
(rather than speaking of "Megalithic geometry" or "Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
geometry"), The Bronze Age Computer Disc by Alan Butler, has not been commented on either by mainstream scientists or the press.
Jean-Claude Carton, after interviewing Sylvain Tristan on a French radio, judged the theory "reliable" and said that it "deserves to be more widely known by general public." French daily paper Le Dauphiné Libéré
Le Dauphiné Libéré
Le Dauphiné Libéré is a provincial daily French newspaper known for its emphasis on local news and events.The paper is produced in 24 different editions covering events in eight French departments, mainly in the region Rhône-Alpes:*Ain...
acclaimed Tristan's book: "An extraordinary investigation into the origin of the first great civilisations of history."
Most scholars and reviewers label Butler and Knight's work as pseudoscience. Aubrey Burl
Aubrey Burl
Harry Aubrey Woodruff Burl MA, DLitt, PhD, FSA, HonFSA Scot is a British archaeologist most well known for his studies into megalithic monuments and the nature of prehistoric rituals associated with them. Prior to retirement he was Principal Lecturer in Archaeology, Hull College, East Riding of...
, a much-published digger of Megalithic sites and a lecturer in archaeology at Hull College
Hull College
Hull College is a further education College in Hull, England. The enrollment of around 28,000students makes it one of the largest schools of its type in the United Kingdom...
of Higher Education, although he coauthored a book with Thom, derided Thom's work, saying that he himself had never "seen a Megalithic Yard." Jason Colavito, in a review in Skeptic Magazine, wrote " Crammed into just over 250 pages are so many unbelievable assertions and unproven speculations that it would take a book-sized rebuttal to do adequate justice to this triumph of numerology over science." He also pointed out "The precision claimed for the length of the Megalithic Yard is surprising given the poor condition of Neolithic monuments today. It is impossible to record their measurements to the ten-thousandth of a millimeter, the standard apparently used to derive this unit of measurement.
Concerning the book Before the Pyramids, the magazine Significance published a letter by civil engineer Edmund Sixmith, who is a supporter of Butler and Knight. Belgian author Robert Bauval
Robert Bauval
Robert Bauval is an author, lecturer, and Ancient Egypt researcher, best known for his Orion Correlation Theory.-Early life:...
, considers Butler and Knight's new discoveries as "major breakthroughs" and as "a stunning discovery [that] could completely change the way we view our remote past", whereas Graham Hancock
Graham Hancock
Graham Hancock is a British writer and journalist. Hancock specialises in unconventional theories involving ancient civilizations, stone monuments or megaliths, altered states of consciousness, ancient myths and astronomical/astrological data from the past...
praised the book, regarding it as "Absolutely fascinating, and very, very convincing."
See also
- http://www.world-mysteries.com/gw_cknight.htm (extracts from a review of Civilization One by Colin Wilson in the London Daily Mail)