Category: Prehistoric

5000-2000 BC: Quantifying astronomical time and geophysical space, using alignment, counting and geometry.

Gavrinis R8: Diagram of the Saros-Metonic Cycle

The Saros cycle is made up of 19 eclipse years of 364.62 days whilst the Metonic cycle is made up of 19 solar years of 365.2422 days. This unusually small number of years, NINETEEN, arises because of a close coupling of most of the major parameters of the Earth-Sun-Moon system which acts as a discrete system, a system also commensurate with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Venus. It is this type of coherent cyclicity which lies at the centre of what the megalithic were able to achieve through day-inch or similar counting of visible time periods and comparing of counts using geometric means. [see my books, especially Sacred Number and the Lords of Time, for a fuller discussion].

It would have been relatively easy for megaithic astronomy to notice that eclipses occur in slots separated by eclipse seasons of 173.3 days and also to see that the difference between lunar and solar years resolves over the 19 year of the Metonic so that lunar orbits, lunar months, the starry sky and the rotation of the earth provide a close repetition of alignments over 19 solar years which equal 235 lunar months and 254 lunar orbits. The Saros period is 223 lunar months long and is therefore one lunar year of 12 months short of the Metonic of 235 lunar months.

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What stone L9 might teach us

image of stone L9, left of corridor of Gavrinis Cairn,
4Km east of Carnac complex. [image: neolithiqueblog]
This article was first published in 2012.

One test of validity for any interpretation of a megalithic monument, as an astronomically inspired work, is whether the act of interpretation has revealed something true but unknown about astronomical time periods. The Gavrinis stone L9, now digitally scanned, indicates a way of counting the 18 year Saros period using triangular counters  founded on the three solar year relationship of just over 37 lunar months, a major subject (around 4000 BC) of the Le Manio Quadrilateral, 4 Km west of Gavrinis. The Saros period is a whole number, 223, of lunar months because the moon must be in the same phase (full or new) as the earlier eclipse for an eclipse to be possible. 

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Astronomy 3: Understanding Time Cycles

above: a 21-petal object in the Heraklion Museum which could represent the 21 seven-day weeks in the 399 days of the Jupiter synod. [2004, Richard Heath]

One of the unfortunate aspects of adopting the number 360 for calibrating the Ecliptic in degrees is that the megalithic counted time in days and instead saw the ecliptic as divided by the 365¼ days. In transferring to the number 360, with all of its easy factors, 8 x 9 x 5, moderns cannot exploit a key advantage of 365¼ days.

If the lunar orbit takes 27.32166 days then each day the moon moves by 1/27.32166 of the ecliptic every day. For this reason, after 27.32166 days the orbit completes because the Moon’s “year” then equals one as the angular motion has been 27.32166/ 27.32166 = 1.

The same is true of the lunar nodes, which retrograde to the east along the ecliptic in 18.618 years. For this reason one can say, the lunar nodes move by 1/18.618 DAYS (in angle) every day and to travel one DAY in angle, the nodes take 18.618 DAYS per day (needing the new term “node day” equal the 18.618 days.*** A solar year takes 19.618 node days (since 365¼ equals 18.618 x 19.618) and an eclipse year takes 18.618 x 18.618 – 346.62 days

*** These are average figures since the moon comes under variable gravitational influences that are episodic.

A general rule emerges in which the larger, whole cycles, lead to reciprocals which can be numerically characterized by knowing the number of the days in the larger period.

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Astronomy 2: The Chariot with One Wheel


What really happens when Earth turns? The rotation of Earth describes periods that are measured in days. The solar year is 365.242 days long, the lunation period 29.53 days long, and so forth.

Extracted from Matrix of Creation, page 42.

Earth orbits the Sun and, from Earth, the Sun appears to move through the stars. But the stars are lost in the brightness of the daytime skies and this obscures the Sun’s progress from human view. However, through observation of the inexorable seasonal changes in the positions of the constellations, the Sun’s motion can be determined.

The sidereal day is defined by the rotation of Earth relative to the stars. But this is different from what we commonly call a day, the full title of which is a tropical day. Our day includes extra time for Earth to catch up with the Sun before another sunrise. Our clocks are synchronized to this tropical day of twenty-four hours (1,440 minutes).

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Astronomy 1: Knowing North and the Circumpolar Sky

about how the cardinal directions of north, south, east and west were determined, from Sacred Number and the Lords of Time, chapter 4, pages 84-86.

Away from the tropics there is always a circle of the sky whose circumpolar stars never set and that can be used for observational astronomy. As latitude increases the pole gets higher in the north and the disk of the circumpolar region, set at the angular height of the pole, ascends so as to dominate the northern sky at night.

Northern circumpolar stars appearing to revolve around the north celestial pole. Note that Polaris, the bright star near the center, remains almost stationary in the sky. The north pole star is constantly above the horizon throughout the year, viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. (The graphic shows how the apparent positions of the stars move over a 24-hour period, but in practice, they are invisible in daylight, in which sunlight outshines them.)
[courtesy Wikipedia on “circumpolar star”, animation by user:Mjchael CC-ASA2.5]

Therefore, the angular height of the pole at any latitude is the same angle we use to define that latitude, and this equals the half angle between the outer circumpolar stars and the pole itself. For example, Carnac has a latitude of 47.5 degrees north so that the pole will be raised by 47.5 degrees above a flat horizon, while the circumpolar region will then be 95 degrees in angular extent.

It is perhaps no accident that the pole is called a pole since to visualize the polar axis one can imagine a physical pole with a star on top, like a toy angel’s wand. The circumpolar region is “suspended” around the pole like a plate “held up” by the pole. Therefore, a physical pole, set into the ground, can be used to view the north pole from a suitable distance south (i.e., with the pole’s top as a foresight for the observer’s backsight). Such an observing pole would probably have been set at the center of a circle drawn on the ground, representing the circumpolar region around the north pole. This arrangement, a gnomon,* existed throughout history but usually presented as part of a sun dial.

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The Discovery of a Soli-Lunar Calendar Device at Le Manio

by Robin Heath

In 2009 I returned to Plouharnel, again for the Solstice Festival, and undertook my own research both before and after the four day event. Howard Crowhurst had undertaken a great deal of theodolite and tape work at a well known site called Le Manio. This collection of surviving monuments forms an exceptionally rich group of astronomical alignments which together carry enormous ritual significance in that these sites hold information about human conception, the gestation period and ritual use of geometry and metrology. Howard understands the site to the point where his three hour workshop covered much of this material, and the implications of it were clearly understood by non-specialists. Those readers who have the chance to attend the Festival, and who speak either English or French, should regard this experience as a megalithic ‘must’. Howard is an exceptionally good communicator of what are often seen as difficult areas of megalithic research, and he is astonishingly good at passing these ideas on to his audience with a great deal of clarity, enthusiasm and humour.
It was during Howard’s seminar/workshop that he invited me to set up his theodolite within the Le Manio Quadrilateral, a curious site near the 6.5 metre high ‘Giant of Le Manio’. This done, I noticed something I had been searching for for twenty years. Read on…!