The old yard was almost identical to the yard of three feet, but just one hundredth part smaller at 2.87 feet. This gives its foot value as 99/100 feet, a value belonging to a module very close to the English/Greek which defines one relative to the rational ratios of the Historical modules.
So why was this foot and its yard important, in the Scottish megalithic and in later, historical monuments?
If one forms a square with side equal to the old yard, that square can be seen as containing 9 square feet, and each of those has side length 99/100 feet. This can be multiplied by the rough approximation to 1/√ 2 of 5/7 = 0.714285, to obtain a more accurate 1/√ 2 of 99/140 = 0.70714285.
Presenting important information clearly often requires the context be shown, within a greater whole. Map makers often provide an inset, showing a larger map at a smaller scaling (as below, of South America) within a detailed map (of Southern Mexico).
This map is shown in the context of South America with a yellow rectangle which is the part blown up in scale. The subject is the Quetzal birds range which corresponds well to the Olmec then Maya heartlands leading to the god named Quetzalcoatl or Feathered Serpent. (see chapter 8 of Heath, 2018.)
Megalithic astronomy generated maps of time periods, using lines, triangles, diameters and perimeters, in which units of measure represented one day to an inch or to a foot. To quantify these periods, alignments on the horizon pointing to sun and moon events were combined with time counting between these events,where days, accumulated as feet or inches per day, form a counted length. When one period was much longer than another, the shorter could be counted in feet per day and the smaller in inches per so that both counts could share the same monumental space. In this article we find the culture leading to megalithic astronomy and stone circles, previously building circular structures called henges, made of concentric banks and ditches.
Extracted from The Structure of Metrology, its Classification and Application (2006) by John Neal and notes by Richard Heath for Bibal Group, a member of which, Petur Halldorsson, has taken this idea further with more similar patterns on the landscape, in Europe and beyond. Petur thinks Palsson’s enthusiasm for Pythagorean ideas competed with what was probably done to create this landform, as he quotes “Every pioneer has a pet theory that needs to be altered through dialogue.” Specifically, he “disputes the Pythagorean triangle in Einar’s theories. I doubt it appeared in the Icelandic C.I. [Cosmic Image] by design.” Caveat Emptor. So below is an example of what metrology might say about the design of this circular landform.
Figure 1 of Palsson’s (1993) Sacred Geometry in Pagan Iceland
image: Jupiter with now-shrunken red spot – Hubble Space Telescope
Though megalithic astronomers could look at the
sky, their measurement methods were only accurate using horizon events. Horizon
observations of solstice sunrise/set each year, lunar extreme moonrises or settings
(over 18.6 years) allowed them to establish the geometrical ratios between
these and other time periods, including the eclipse cycles. In contrast, the
synod of Jupiter is measured between its loops in the sky, upon the backdrop of
stars, in which Jupiter heads backwards each year as the earth passes between
itself and the Sun. That is, Jupiter goes retrograde relative to
general planetary direction towards the east. Since such retrograde movement
occurs over 120 days, Jupiter will set 120 times whilst moving retrograde. This
allowed megalithic astronomy to study the retrograde Jupiter, but only when the
moon is conjunct with Jupiter in the night sky and hence will set with Jupiter
at its own setting.
Natural time periods between celestial phenomena
hold powerful insights into the numerical structure of time, insights which
enabled the megalith builders to access an explanation of the world unlike our
own. When looking at two similarly-long time-periods, the megalithic focussed
on the difference between them, these
causing the two periods to slide in and out of phase, generating a longer
period in which the two celestial bodies exhibit a complete ensemble of
variation, in their relationship to each other. This slippage of phase between
celestial periods holds a pattern purely based upon number, hidden from the
casual observer who does not study them in this way. Such numerical patterns
are only fully revealed through counting time and analysing the difference between
periods numerically.
For example, the solar year is
longer than the lunar year by 10 and 7/8 days (10.875 days) and three solar
years are longer than three lunar years by three times 10.875 days, that is by 32
and 5/8th days (32.625 days), which is 32/29 of a single lunar month
of 29.53 days.
The earliest and only explicit evidence for such
a three year count has been found at Le Manio’s Quadrilateral near Carnac (circa
4,000 BCE in Brittany, France) used the inches we still use to count days, a “day-inch”
unit then widespread throughout later megalithic monuments and still our inch,
1/12 of the foot [Heath & Heath. 2011]. The solar-lunar difference found
there over three years was 32.625 day-inches, is probably the origin of the
unit we call the megalithic yard and the megalith builders appear to have
adopted this differential length, between a day-inch count over three lunar and
solar years, in building many later monuments.
A fuller treatment of this article can now be found in Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels (2021).
Figure 1 The entrance of Crucuno’s cromlech, which opens to the south-east [Summer Solstice, 2007]
It is not immediately obvious the Crucuno dolmen (figure 1) faces the Crucuno rectangle about 1100 feet to the east. The role of dolmen appears to be to mark the beginning of a count. At Carnac’s Alignments there are large cromlechs initiating and terminating the stone rows which, more explicitly, appear like counts. The only (surviving) intermediate stone lies 216 feet from the dolmen, within a garden and hard-up to another building, as with the dolmen (see figure 2). This length is interesting since it is twice the longest inner dimension of the Crucuno rectangle, implying that lessons learned in interpreting the rectangle might usefully apply when interpreting the distance at which this outlier was placed from the dolmen. Most obviously, the rectangle is 4 x 27 feet wide and so the outlier is 8 x 27 feet from the dolmen.
