Sacred Number and the Lords of Time interpreted Thom’s megalithic fathom of 6.8 feet (as 2.72 feet times 2.5) found at Carnac’s AlignmentsA name special to Carnac's three successive groups of parallel rows of stones, starting above Carnac called Le Menec, Kermario, and Kerlescan and another found near Erdevan. as a useful number of 82 day-inches between stones in the stone rows of Le Menec. After 82 days, the moon is in almost exactly the same place, amongst the stars, because its orbit of 27.32166 days is nearly 27 and one third days. Three orbits sums to nearly 82 days. But the phase of the moon at that repeated place in the sky will be different.
At Le Menec, my interpretation of the stone rows depends on being able to measure moon rise on the eastern horizon, at the same point in the orbit. The 82-day period allowed time to flow eastwards and when the moon rose on the horizon, the next stone would be placed 82 day-inches further east. Observations were made at the egg-shaped cromlechBreton word for a rounded kerb monument or stone circle. which now envelopes the little hamlet of Le Menec, at the western start of the Alignments. The stone rows were consequently not straight because the moon rose early or late due to the angle of its orbit relative to the eclipticThe path of the Sun through the sky along which eclipses of sun and moon can occur, traditionally divided into the 365¼ parts of the solar year, each part then a DAY in angle rather than time.. The alignments therefore recorded the movements of the moon’s orbital nodes as a phenomenon affecting moonrises during the node’s 18.618 year (6800 day) rotation around the Earth.
The 82 day-inch cycle was first noticed at Le Manio, where stones in the walkway appear to have formed part of a regular circle of 82 flat stones to form a simulator of the Moon upon the Ecliptic. That simulator is one of only two types of megalithic simulators based upon number coincidences; the other being the 56-hole Aubrey circle at Stonehenge. In a simulator, celestial bodies have a marker that is moved according to rules and, in the Le Manio simulator, the rule is to move a moon marker through the Ecliptic circle by three stones every day, anticlockwise. After 82 days the moon marker will return to same stone.
Releasing the Ecliptic from the Horizon
The simulator at Le Manio had 82 stones (3 x 27 +1) rather than the 27 or 28 nakshatras on the ecliptic or (due to Jupiter) the 12 of the ZodiacThe 12 constellations through which the sun passes in the solar year of 365.2422 days. Either nakshatras or zodiacal constellations were to be seen, on the horizon, as they rose in the east. Once the number 82 was understood, the form of what is seen at Le Manio, Le Menec and elsewhere can be understood, as form following (celestial) function. But this cannot be realized unless one sees the numerical coincidence as having informed megalithic “monuments”. That is, one has to be willing to recognise the role of numerical coincidences within megalithic astronomy.
The megalithic pattern of 27/28 constellations in Indian astronomy from Vedic times (possibly 1500-1000 BC), were called nakshatras. In the Mahabharata, characters can say they left somewhere on a given nakshatra, when the moon was in that part of the sky, and return when the moon was in another nakshatra. From this, one could know they were away so many days – days being identified by the nakshatra in which the moon sat. A confusion has arisen as to whether there were 27 or 28 but this arose because three orbits equal 82 days: 27 + 27 + 28.
This new article category of megalithic astronomy is a work in progress, aimed at providing a retrospective on work done.
Richard