Tag: counting

The Stonehenge Trilithons (Part 2): Day-Inch Counting

In the previous article, it was shown that the form of the trilithons, of five taller double sarsens approximating to a five-pointed star, matches the astronomical phenomena of the successive morning and evening stars, as Venus approaches Earth from the east and then recedes to the west as the morning pass. On approach, the planet rises in the evening sky and then dives into the evening sun and if one traces this motion it have the appearance of a horn. Venus shoots past the sun and reappears in the morning sky as the sun rises, creating another traced horn shape, symmetrical to the evening.

Figure 1

In support of the form of the trilithons resembling five successive double horns of Venus over 8 years, the width of the inner faces can also be interpreted as to their length being one megalithic rod, that is 2.5 megalithic yards. The distance between each pillar is ¼ of a megalithic rod so that, each inner face is divided by 4 of these units which units are 5/8ths of a megalithic yard, the ratio of the practical year of 365 days relative to the Venus synod of 584 days (365 / 584 = 5/8), the common factor between the two periods being 73 days.

The combined inner width of each pair of supports would therefore symbolize 8 x 73 days, or 584 days. Five of these pairs would then be 5 x 584 days, which equals 2920 days, this time period also being 8 x 365 days or eight practical years.

The inner surfaces lie on an ellipse which can be framed by a 5 by 8 rectangle whose sides are exactly the diameters required to form a day-counting circle for 365 day-inches (116.136 inches) and 584 day-inches (185.818 inches). The 365 day-inch circle (shown red and dashed in figure 4) has its centre in the center of the ellipse and so would have touched the two trilithons at A and B, at a tangent to their faces.

Figure 2 The Venus count of 584 day-inches (shown blue and dashed) was concentric to both the bluestone and sarsen circles, sitting inside of the bluestone circle.

The high degree of correlation between,

  1. the five-fold form of the Venus synod and the five couplets of trilithons,
  2. the summed inner widths of the trilithons as being 5 x 8 = 40 units of 73 days = 2920 days.
  3. the out-rectangle of the inner ellipse being 8 by 5 and
  4. the rectangle’s sides being the diameters of two circles of 584 inches and 365 inches, suitable for day-inch counting,

……. points to the 5-fold horseshoe of trilithons as a “temple” to the unique astronomical behavior of Venus in its synodic relationship to the solar year of 365 whole days.

No other compelling explanation exists, though many interpretions have been proposed such as

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.

For instance, Jupiter has a synodic excess over the solar year of 398.88 days and this means its angular motion is 1/ 398.88 DAYS per day while Saturn’s synod is 378.09 days and its angular motion is 1/ 378.09 DAYS per day. These synods are, by definition, differential to the Sun at 1/ 365.2422 DAYS per day.

Without seeing astronomy as calibrated to day and year cycles, one is robbed of much chance to appreciate the megalithic view of time and the time-factored buildings that came to be built in pursuit of quite advanced knowledge.

Looking from the relatively large cycles to the extremely small, daily angular changes of celestial bodies seen from Earth, reveals a further obscuration created, in this case, by the heliocentric view of the solar system, rather than the geocentric view which is obviously founded on days and years seen from the surface of the planet.

The largest cycle the megalithic could see using their techniques, reverses the direction from large-to-small to small-to-large since the precessional cycle (of the equinoctal nodes of the earth’s obliquity) is around 25,800 ± 100 years long. A star or constellation on the ecliptic appears to move east, like the lunar nodes, and using the angular measure of DAYS, it is possible to estimate that the equinoctal points move by a single DAY, in a given epoch, something like 71 years. The precessional cycle is therefore 71 years multiplied by the 365.2422 DAYS of the whole ecliptic.

The most important benefit of using DAY angles is that knowledge of a few celestial periods opens up a realm in which different scales of time can be derived from first principles. And added to that, the celestial periods appear related to one another so that so-called sacred numbers emerge such as the seven day week which divides into both the Saturn synod (54 weeks), Jupiter synod (57 weeks), the 364 day saturnian year (52 weeks) and others.

To understand the full scope of megalithic astronomy requires a geocentric calibration of the ecliptic as having 365¼ angular DAYS.

Day-inch counting at the Manio Quadrilateral

It is 10 years since my brother and I surveyed this remarkable monument which demonstrates what megalithic astronomy was capable of around 4000 BC, near Carnac. The Quadrilateral is the earliest clear demonstration of day-inch counting of the solar year, and lunar year of 12 lunar months, both over three years. The lunar count was 1063.125 day-inches long and the solar 1095.75 day-inches, leaving a difference of 32.625 day-inches. This length was probably the origin of a number of later megalithic yards, which had different uses.

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paper: The Origins of Day-Inch Counting

ABSTRACT
This paper presents the theory that in the Megalithic period, around 4500-4000 BCE, astronomical time periods were counted as one day to one inch to form primitive metrological lengths that could then be compared, to reveal the fundamental ratios between the solar year, lunar year, and lunar month and hence define a solar-lunar calendar. The means for comparison used was to place lengths as the longer sides of right angled triangles, leading to a unique slope angle. Our March 2010 survey of Le Manio supports this theory.

St Pierre 1: Jupiter and the Moon

The egg-shaped stone circles of the megalithic, in Brittany by c. 4000 BC and in Britain by 2500 BC, seem to express two different astronomical time lengths, beside each other as (a) a circumference and then (b) a longer, egg-shaped extension of that circle. It was Alexander Thom who analysed stone circles in the 20th century as a hobby, surveying most of the surviving stone circles in Britain and finding geometrical patterns within irregular circles. He speculated the egg-shaped and flattened circles were manipulating pi so as to equal three (not 3.1416) between an initial radius and subsequent perimeter, so making them commensurate in integer units. For example, the irregular circle would have perimeter 12 and a radius of 4 (a flattened circle).

However, when the forming circle and perimeter are compared, these can compare the two lengths of a right-triangle while adding a recurring nature: where the end is a new beginning. Each cycle is a new beginning because the whole geocentric sky is rotational and the planetary system orbital. The counting of time periods was more than symbolic since the two astronomical time periods became, by artifice, related to one another as two integer perimeters that is, commensurate to one another, as is seen at St Pierre (fig.3).

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