In previous posts, it has been shown how a linear count of time can form a square and circle of equal perimeter to a count. In this way three views of a time count, relative to a solar yearFrom Earth: the time in which the sun moves once around the Zodiac, now known to be caused by the orbital period of the Earth around the Sun. count, showed the differences between counts that are (long-term average) differential angular motion between sun and the moon’s cycle of illumination. Set within a year circle, this was probably first achieved with reference to the difference between the lunar year of 12 months (29.53 days) and the solar year of 12 average solar months (30.43 days). Note that in prehistory, counts were over long periods so that their astronomy reflected averages rather than moment-to-moment motions known through modern calculations.
The solar year was a standard baseline for time counting (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. naturally viewed as 365.25 days-in-angle, due to solar daily motion, later standardized as our convenient 360 degrees). Solar and other years became reflected in the perimeters of many ancient square and circular buildings, and long periods were called super years, even the Great Year of Plato, of the precession of the equinoxes, traditionally 25920 years long! The Draconic year, in which the Moon’s nodes travel the ecliptic, backwards, is another case.
At Le Manio’s southern curb, the excess of the solar year over the lunar year, over 3 years, is 32.625 (32 and 5/8ths) day-inches, which is probably the first of many megalithic yards of around 2.72 feet, then developed for specific purposes (Appendix 2 of Language of the Angels). At Le Manio, the solar year count was shown above the southern curb, east of the “sun gate”, but many other counts were recorded within that curb, as a recording of many lengths, though the lunar year was the primary baseline and the 14 degree sightline above the curb aligned to the summer solsticeThe extreme points of sunrise and sunset in the year. In midwinter the sun is to the south of the celestial equator (the reverse in the southern hemisphere) and in midsummer the sun is north of that equator, which is above the geographical Equator). sunrise.
Numbers-as-symbols, and arithmetic, did not exist. Instead, numbers-as-lengths, of constant units such as the inch, were generated as measurements of different types of year. To know a length without our numeric system required the finding of how a given number of units divided into a length, in an attempt to know the measurement through its observed factorization. This habit of factorization could start with the megalithic yardAny unit of length 2.7-2.73 feet long, after Alexander Thom discovered 2.72 ft and 2.722 ft as units within the geometry within the megalithic monuments of Britain and Brittany. itself as having been naturally created from the sky, as Time. In this case, when the megalithic yard was divided into the three lunar year count of 1063.1 days, the result was 10.875 (10 and 7/8th) “times” 32.625 day-inches. which is one third of the megalithic yard, and is the number of day-inches of the excess for a single solar year.
The lunar year is the combined result of lunar motion, in its orbit, and solar motion along the ecliptic, of average of one day-in-angle per solar day. The lunar year is the completion of twelve cycles of the moon’s phases. The counting at Le Manio hinged upon the fact that, in three solar years there was a near-anniversary of 37.1 lunar months. This allowed the excess to be very close to the invariant form of the solar-lunar triangle which can be glimpsed for us by multiplying the lunar month (29.53059 days) by 32/29Ratio between the astronomical megalithic yard (AMY) as 945/29 and the lunar month of 29.53125 as 945/32 day-inches. to give 32.58548. (see also these posts tagged 32/29).
The excess of the solar year, in duration and hence in measured length, the 0.368 (7/19) lunar months (over 12), almost exactly equals the reciprocal of the megalithic yard (19/7 feet) so that, when lunar months are counted using megalithic yards, the excess becomes 12 inches which is 32/29 of 10.875 day-inches. From this it seems likely that the English footThe standard prehistoric foot (of 12 inches) representing a unity from which all other foot measures came to be formed, as rational fractions of the foot, a fact hidden within our historical metrology [Neal, 2000]. and megalithic yard were generated, as naturally significant units, when day-inch countingThe practice of counting the days, using inches or other small units, between synodic phenomena such as years or planetary loops. was applied to the solar and lunar years.
The Manio Quadrilateral may have been like a textbook, a monumental expression of Megalithic understanding, originally built over the original site of that work or, carried from a different place in living memory. It presents all manner of powerful achievements, such as the accurate approximation of the lunar month as 29.53125 (945/32) days, the significance of the eclipse yearthe time taken (346.62 days) for the sun to again sit on the same lunar node, which is when an eclipse can happen., alignment to the solstice maximum and lunar minimum standstill, the whole number count over 4 years of 1461 days – then available as a model of the ecliptic, and a circular Octon simulator – and much else besides. This megalithic period preceded the English stone-circle culture initiated by Stonehenge 1 around 3000 BC but was somewhat contemporary with the Irish cairn and dolmenA chamber made of vertical megaliths upon which a roof or ceiling slab was balanced. building culture. MetrologyThe application of units of length to problems of measurement, design, comparison or calculation. is presented near CarnacAn extensive megalithic complex in southern Brittany, western France, predating the British megalithic. as a work-in-progress, based closely on astronomy rather than land measurement as such.
My work on the Megalithic tools-and-techniques can be read in my Lords of Time and in Language of the Angels, further considered as a tradition inherited by ancient world monumentalism. This post will be followed soon by more on vectors in prehistory.