Tag: Metonic

The Metonic Period at Ushtogai Square

If one takes the figure of 940 feet (that is, 286.512 meters) as the side length factorizing 940 gives 20 x 47 and 47 (a prime number) times 5 gives 235 which is the number of lunar months in 19 solar years: the Metonic period. image by Google Earth

This is the larger of three bounding periods for the sun, moon, and earth. The lower boundary is exactly 19 eclipse years, called the Saros eclipse period of 18.03 solar years. . Within that range of 18-19 years lies the moon’s nodal period of 18.618 years, this being the time taken for the two lunar nodes, of the lunar orbit, to travel once backwards around the ecliptic. It is only at these nodal points that eclipses of sun and moon can occur, when both bodies are sitting on the nodes.

The first article on Ushtogai showed how, by daily counting all the tumuli in a special way, the 6800 days of the nodal period would keep a tally in days, to quantify where the nodes were on the ecliptic as well as predicting the lunar maximum and minimum standstills.

It now seems that, if the absolute size of the monument’s perimeter was able to count the 19-year Metonic, not by counting days but rather, counting the 235 lunar months of the Metonic period. The lunar month would then be 16 feet long. And, within that counting, one could also have counted the 223 lunar months between eclipses having the same appearance. The diameter of a circle drawn within the square would then have a diameter of 235 (lunar months) divided by 4 = 58.75 lunar months which, times the 16 feet per month, is the 940 feet of the square’s side length.

Figure 1. The size of Ushtogai Square, side length 940 feet, is 235 x 4 feet, making its perimeter able to count 235 lunar months of 16 feet.

In Cappadocia, present-day Turkey, this type of geometrical usage can be seen within a rock-cut church called Ayvali Kelise, only then in miniature to form a circular apse, just over 100 times smaller! The church was built in the early Christian period (see figure 2).

Figure 2 The Apse of Ayvali Kelise in Cappadocia, which presented the same geometry in miniature. [part of figure 7.5 from Sacred Geometry in Ancient Goddess Cultures.]

The Ushtagai Square has the basic form for the equal perimeter geometry. If so, that would form a tradition at least 10,000 years old. As a counting framework for the 18-19 solar year recurrences of aspects between the the Sun, Moon, Earth, eclipses and nodes the Square appears to be both a tour-de-force in a form of astronomy now largely forgotten.

Figure 3 Showing the circle equal in perimeter to the Ushtagai Square, the size of the Earth (in-circle of diameter 11) and Moon (four circles of diameter 3.)

As an earthwork where tumuli punctuate geometrical lines, it is a highly portable symbol of great time and a highly specific astronomical construction. It was an observatory and also a snapshot within celestial time, built just after the Ice Age had ended.

A Mexican Triple Square at Teotihuacan

image: Ricardo David Sánchez for Wikipedia 

This article is from June 2012 on my past Matrix of Creation site where it was read 548 times at the time of last backup. It led to another article and so I repeat it here.

The late Hugh Harleston Jr revealed the famous Mexican pyramids at Teotihuacan as being the manifestation of a very advanced megalithic culture, the Olmec as a root culture for New World Megalithism of Mexico and South America (that led to the Maya nearly a millennium later, the Aztec and the Inca) . The Teoti city-building culture started around 200 BCE but it is not exactly clear when the great city started to be built or what it represented. However, Carnac’s megalithic geometries, its day-inch counting within monuments and evident use of circumpolar astronomy suggests important new clues in the interpretation of this sacred city’s design.

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Locmariaquer 1: Carnac’s Menhirs and Circumpolar Stars

Read 1458 times when last published on MatrixOfCreation.co.uk, Wednesday, 16 May 2012 14:22

At megalithic sites, the only alignment of note on the northern horizon has usually been the direction of the north pole or “true” North on the site plan. “Megalithic” cultures worldwide, both the later manifestations in the Americas or the old world cultures of Northwest Europe or Egypt, built structures oriented in a very accurate way to North. The builders of the Great Pyramid for example or of the geo-glyphs of the Amazon rainforest, seemed to have had an unexpectedly good method for determining North, no easy task when a pole star is never exactly north and, in many epochs, there is no star near to the pole.

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The Avebury Square within it’s Southern Circle

Soil resistance work (“geophys”), by archaeologists from the University of Leicester, of the land inside the southern stone circle of Avebury Henge, has revealed more about the Obelisk and lines of standing stones, which appear to have formed a near-square rectangle. Information can be hard to obtain when work is yet to be published but a press release to the Guardian and others many months ago (December 27th 2019) enabled figures from a media set to be viewed with public access. This has enabled me to so some site interpretation, using the (as-yet damned) numerical technique called ancient metrology. My results are fascinating and build upon the megalithic use of counting time as length to track important time-cycles such as the Nodal Period of 6800 days, between lunar maxima and minima, and the Metonic period of both 19 years and 235 lunar months, within which all of the varied orientations of Sun Moon and Sky are recycled.

Figure 1 Avebury Henge from the North with major features labelled
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Erdeven Alignment’s counting of Metonic and Saros Periods

first published in March 2018

The word Alignment is used in France to describe its stone rows. Their interpretation has been various, from being an army turned to stone (a local myth) to their use, like graph paper, for extrapolation of values (Thom). That stone rows were alignments to horizon events gives a partial but useful explanation, since menhirs (or standing stones) do form a web of horizon alignments to solstice sun and to the moon’s extreme rising and setting event, at maximum and minimum standstill. At Carnac the solstice sun was aligned to the diagonal of the 4 by 3 rectangle and maximum and minimum standstill moon aligned to the diagonal of a single or double square, respectively.

It seems quite clear today that stone rows at least represented the counting of important astronomical time periods. We have seen at Crocuno that eclipse periods, exceeding the solar year, are accompanied by some rectalinear structures (Le Manio, Crucuno, Kerzerho) which embody counting in miniature, as if to record it, and it has been observed that cromlechs (or large stone kerb monuments) were built at the ends of the long stone rows of Carnac and Erdeven. Sometimes, a cromlech initiated a longer count,with or without stone rows, that ended with a rectangle (Crucuno). The focus on counting time naturally reveals a vernacular quite unique to this region and epoch. We have seen that the Kerzerho alignments were at least a 4 by 3 rectangle which recorded the 235 lunar months in feet along its diagonal to midsummer solstice sunset. After that rectangle there follows a massive Alignment of stone rows to the east,ending after 2.3 km having gradually changed their bearing to 15 degrees south of east. Just above the alignments lies a hillock with multiple dolmens and a north-south stone row (Mané Braz) whilst below its eastern extremity lies the tumulus and dolmen,”T-shaped passage-grave” (Burl. Megalithic Brittany. 196) called Mané Groh.


Figure 1 The intermittent extent of the Erdevan Alignments, and associated dolmens
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Kerherzo Rectangle near Erdeven & Crucuno

first published in March 2018

In 1973, Alexander Thom found the Crucuno rectangle to have been “accurately placed east and west” by its megalithic builders, and “built round a rectangle 30 MY [megalithic yards] by 40 MY” and that “only at the latitude of Crucuno could the diagonals of a 3, 4, 5 rectangle indicate at both solstices the azimuth of the sun rising and setting when it appears to rest on the horizon.” In a recent article I found metrology was used between the Crucuno dolmen (within Crucuno) and the rectangle in the east to count 47 lunar months, since this closely approximates 4 eclipse years (of 346.62 days) which is the shortest eclipse prediction period available to early astronomers.


Figure 1 Two key features of Crucuno’s Rectangle

About 1.22 miles northwest lie the alignments sometimes called Erdeven, on the present D781 before the hamlet Kerzerho – after which hamlet they were named by Archaeology. These stone rows are a major complex monument but here we consider only the section beside the road to the east. Unlike the Le Manec Kermario and Kerlestan alignments which start north of Carnac, Erdevan’s alignments are, like the Crucuno rectangle accurately placed east and west. 


Figure 2 Two stones, angled to the diagonal of a 3-4-5 triangle 235 feet from north west stone and setting sun at summer solstice
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