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.
Continue reading “Geometry 2: Maintaining integers using fractions”