Ancient Metrology – Page 2 – Numbers of a Living Planet

Geometry 2: Maintaining integers using fractions

understanding the megalithic: circular structures: part 2

The megalithic sought integer lengths because they lacked the arithmetic of later millennia. So how did they deal with numbers? There is plenty of evidence in their early monuments that today’s inch and foot already existed and that these, and other units of measure, were used to count days or months. From this, numbers came to be known by their length in inches and later on as feet, and longer lengths like a fathom of five feet, the cubit of 3/2 feet and, larger still, furlongs and miles – to name only a few.

So megalithic numeracy was primarily associated with lengths, a system we call metrology. Having metrology but not arithmetic, the integer solutions to problems became a necessity. Incidentally, it was because of their metrological numeracy that the megalithic chanced upon a rich seam of astronomical meaning within the geocentric time world that surrounds us, a seam well-nigh invisible to modern science. Their storing of numbers as lengths also led to their application to the properties geometrical structures have, to replicate what arithmetic and trigonometry do, by using right triangles and a system of fractional measures of a foot (see later lesson – to come). In what follows, for both simplicity and veracity, we assume that π was too abstract for the megalithic, since they first used radius ropes to create circles, so that 2π was a more likely entity for them to have resolved.

Units within the Great Pyramid of Giza

There is a great way to express pi of 22/7 using two concentric circles of diameter 11 and 14 (in any units). Normally, a diameter of 7 gives rise to a circumference of 22, when pi is being approximated as 22/7 (3.142587) rather than being the irrational number 3.141592654 … for then, the 14 diameter should have a circumference of 44, which is also the perimeter of the square which encloses a circle of diameter 11.

The square of side 11 and
the circle of diameter 14
will both have the same perimeter.

Figure 1 The Equal Perimeter model of two circles, the smaller of which has an out-square of equal perimeter to the greater circle

A Brief Introduction to Ancient Metrology (2006)

appended to
Sacred Number and the Origin of Civilisation

There used to be an interest in metrology – the Ancient Science of Measures – especially when studying ancient monuments. However the information revealed from sites often became mixed with the religious ideas of the researcher leading to coding systems such as those of Pyramidology and Gematria. The general effect has been that metrology, outside of modern engineering uses, has been left unconsidered by modern scientific archaeology.

Silbury Hill: Metrological Key to the Model of the Earth between Stonehenge & Avebury

Archived: 11 August 2012

The exact location of Silbury Hill is as mysterious as the purpose of the Hill itself, a thirty degree cone, only recently with a flat top, overlooking Avebury and the surrounding hills. The Hill figures in John Michell’s model of the Earth between Stonehenge and Avebury in which one quarter of a degree of latitude, between the two henges, appears to have been measured by a type of Persian foot so as to make the number of feet, in between, equal numerically to that required to perfectly model the Earth using 864:866:867 double triangle.

The double triangle model of the size of the Earth between Stonehenge and Avebury

There are 86400 Persian feet of 1.056 feet (south to north) between Stonehenge and Avebury Ridgeway enabling the Avebury henge to be 86600 of these Persian feet from Stonehenge, then to represent the Mean Earth radius (see Initial Article – missing link). The Avebury henge appears to have been specifically tied to the distinct Latitude of 360/7 degrees.

Old Yard’s Mastery of the Square Root of 2

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.

*Figure 1 Forming a Square with the Old Yard.* The diagonal of the foot squares is then 7/5, the simplest approximation to √ 2.

Models of Time within Henges and Circles

image: composite, see figure 1 below

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.

understanding the megalithic: circular structures: part 2

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Archived: 11 August 2012

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