I recently
came across Rock Art and Ritual by
Brian Smith and Alan Walker, (subtitled Interpreting
the Prehistoric landscapes of the North York Moors. Stroud: History Press
2008. 38.). It tells the story: Following a wildfire of many square miles of
the North Yorkshire Moors, thought ecologically devastating, those interested
in its few decorated stones headed out to see how these antiquities had fared.
Background
Fire had revealed many more stones carrying rock art or in organised
groups. An urgent archaeological effort would be required before the inevitable
regrowth of vegetation.
Figure 1 Neolithic stone from Fylingdales Moor | Credit: Graham Lee, North York Moors National Park Authority.
A photo of one
stone in particular attracted my attention, at a site called Stoupe Brow
(a.k.a. Brow Moor) near Fylingdales, North Yorkshire.
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.
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.
