Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery

by Christopher Knight

  The Pyramids

  Of course the same problem also exists regarding the pyramid footprint and the placement of the middle pyramid. Yet, it stands to reason that if the Stone Age astronomers of Britain had solved the problem, their Bronze Age counterparts could simply repeat the exercise 1,000 years later in Egypt.

  Appendix 4

  •

  USING THE MEGALITHIC PENDULUM

  About Pendulums

  A pendulum is one of the simplest devices imaginable. In its most basic form it is nothing more than a plumb line – a weight suspended on a piece of twine or hair. If allowed to hang, the weight will pull its string into a perfectly vertical position. Certainly the megalithic people could never have constructed any of the major sites to be found all over Britain, Ireland and Brittany without the use of this device. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that if they possessed a plumb line, then they also possessed a pendulum.

  Although the device had been around for a long time, it was the 16th century genius Galileo who seems to have been the first person to look seriously at the attributes of pendulums (or at least the first of whom we have a record). He is reported to have been bored in church one day when his attention was caught by a large incense burner, suspended from high above by a chain or a rope, gently swinging back and forth and forming a natural pendulum. Galileo realized that the swings of the pendulum were equal in terms of time, and he counted them against the beat of his own pulse.

  Only two factors are of importance in the case of a simple pendulum. These are the length of the string and the gravitation of the Earth, which constantly exerts a force that will eventually bring the pendulum back to a vertical and resting position. The height of the swing of a pendulum is, to all intents and purposes, irrelevant because its time period from one extremity to the other will always be the same. In other words, if the pendulum is excited more vigorously it will swing higher but its time period will remain the same.

  It was recognition of this constant nature of a pendulum that made it the basis of the clock. In modern timepieces the pendulum has been superseded, but for many centuries it ensured the smooth running of clocks all over the world. It can still be found in high-quality clocks. Clock pendulums were eventually fitted with some devices to prevent them from swinging too high, and others to regulate the nature of their arc of swing, but they are still, essentially, only animated plumb lines.

  The Megalithic Yard

  The Megalithic Yard was discovered by Alexander Thom as part of the composition of megalithic sites from the northernmost part of Scotland, right down to Brittany in the South. The main problem with its use, and the reason archaeologists still doubt its veracity, lies in the fact that it remained absolutely accurate across thousands of square miles and many centuries. This would appear to be impossible in the case of a culture that was, at least in its early stages, devoid of metals to make a reliable ‘standard’ against which others could be set. Alexander Thom himself could think of no reliable way of passing on the Megalithic Yard without some variation being inevitable across time.

  We reasoned that it would be possible to turn ‘time’ into ‘distance’ by way of the turning Earth. The speed of the Earth on its axis is the only accurate measure available from nature that can be constantly repeated with the same results. Of course we cannot see the Earth turning, but we can see its effects as the Sun, Moon and stars appear to rise from below the horizon in the east, to pass over our heads and then to set in the west. In fact, although the Moon and planets do have independent movement, the Sun and the stars are not really moving at all (actually they are moving slightly, but we need not concern ourselves with this for our present purposes).

  The apparent motion of the stars is caused by the Earth turning on its axis and it is this fact that offers us an accurate clock which, with a little ingenuity, we can turn into a replicable linear unit of measurement. In the case of the Megalithic Yard we eventually discovered that the pendulum upon which it is based was set not by viewing any star but the planet Venus. Venus is, like the Earth, orbiting the Sun. As a result, when seen from the Earth, it has a complex series of movements against the backdrop of the stars. Sometimes Venus rises before the Sun, at which times it is called a morning star, and at other times it rises after the Sun and is then known as an evening star. This is purely a line of site situation, caused by the fact that both Venus and the Earth are orbiting the Sun. When Venus crosses the face of the Sun to become an evening star, it is moving ‘against’ the direction followed by the backdrop of stars. It is within this observable fact that setting the megalithic pendulum becomes possible.

  In order to create the Megalithic Yard, one has to follow the simple rules below:

  Venus must be observable as an evening star, setting after the Sun and during that period at which it is moving at its fastest counter to the backdrop of stars.

  The sky is divided into 366 parts. This can be achieved by trial and error, as explained in Uriel’s Machine1 and also in Civilization One,2 but it is also achievable through a neat little mathematical trick, as demonstrated below.

  1. Stand in an unobstructed position on a wide-open piece of ground with a good view of the western horizon.

  2. Place a stick in the ground (stick A) and stand facing west with one of your heels touching the stick.

  3. Now take 233 steps, heel to toe, towards the west. Upon completing the 233 steps, place a second stick in the ground (stick B) in front of your toe.

  4. Turn to the north and place your heel against stick B. Now take four heel-to-toe steps to the north and then place a third stick (stick C) in the ground in front of your toe.

  5. The distance between sticks B and C, when viewed from A, will now be 1/366th of the horizon.

  This method relies on the fact that any circle with a diameter of 233 units will have a circumference of 732 (2 × 366) units. It was entirely theoretical on our part, but our research for this book has introduced us to a number of henges and other structures in which this theory has clearly been recognized and used.

  It is now necessary to make a braced wooden frame, of the type shown below, which is as wide as the gap between B and C. This must be set on poles in such a way that it gains significant height and can be altered in its angle.

  The purpose of this exercise is so that the angle of the braced wooden frame can be identical to that of the planet Venus as it falls towards its setting position.

  Standing at A it is now necessary to observe Venus, passing through the gap in the braced frame, whilst swinging a pendulum and noting the number of swings achieved as Venus passes through the gap. A pendulum that swings 366 times during this occurrence must be half of a Megalithic Yard in length (41.48 cm). A cord of this length represents the full Megalithic Yard of 82.966 cm in length.

  Figure 25. Braced wooden frame for tracking planets or stars

  In this way the Megalithic Yard can be reproduced on any site where observation of Venus at the right part of its cycle can be achieved. We are grateful to Archie Roy, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at Glasgow University, for suggesting the idea of the angled braced frame.

  Although pendulums differ slightly with latitude and altitude, because gravity also alters slightly, we have shown that the Megalithic Yard achieved using this method will remain within the tolerances discovered by Alexander Thom from Orkney in the north to Brittany in the south – in other words across the whole area containing monuments surveyed by Alexander Thom.

  The One-Second-One-Metre Pendulum

  We now know that two different lengths of pendulum were available to our megalithic ancestors. These were the half Megalithic Yard pendulum, described above, and another that measured very close to one modern metre, which had a beat of extremely close to 1 modern second of time. We also now know that they were used in a number of different ways to solve different problems.

  It was possible to time the rising of groups of stars using a pendulum. This was certainly the case with Orion’s
Belt – required for the building of both the Thornborough henges and the three major Giza pyramids. It was also possible to time stars across a given point, as was the case when it came to establishing the true position of the middle star of Orion’s Belt (Alnilam) in relation to its companions.

  Pendulums and Linear Distance on the Ground

  Both in the case of the building of the Thornborough henges and the footprint for the Giza pyramids there is a direct relationship between the result obtained using a pendulum (whilst observing the rise of Orion’s Belt) and the linear distances used on the ground.

  What appears to have happened is that the length of the pendulum string, multiplied by the number of swings observed during the rising of Orion’s Belt, was used in the construction of the monuments. In the case of the Thornborough henges the results were enlarged, so for example 366 Megalithic Yards became 366 Megalithic Rods, though in the case of the pyramid footprint the exact pendulum string results were used (though this was a metre pendulum). We can probably speculate that the pendulum length was considered to be divinely inspired and that the linear units used were therefore considered to be ‘holy’.

  Appendix 5

  •

  THE MINOAN FOOT AND THE STANDARD FOOT

  About the Minoans

  Back in 1997 Alan researched and wrote a book about the Minoans, Europe’s first super-civilization.1 The Minoans inhabited the island of Crete in the eastern Mediterranean, and the civilization was at its height from around 2000 BC to 1500 BC.

  In all sorts of ways the Minoans reveal themselves to have been very much a part of the megalithic culture that flourished in Britain, parts of France and in several of the larger Mediterranean islands. The Minoans, however, reached a very high degree of civilization in terms of their trade links, domestic architecture, farming and metalwork – they even had a form of writing (which is still not understood).

  In the 1960s a Canadian archaeologist, J Walter Graham, carried out an intensive study of the remaining grand buildings of Minoan Crete, known as palaces. As a result of these studies it was possible for him to ascertain that the Minoans had used a fixed system of linear measurements. These were based upon a unit that Graham called the Minoan Foot – and he did so with good reason. Graham could achieve great accuracy in his reconstruction of the Minoan Foot because he had many foundations and even existing walls available for measurement. He concluded that the Minoan Foot had been 30.36 cm in length. Meanwhile the statute foot, still used in Britain and the United States, is 30.48 cm in length. The difference between the Minoan Foot and the statute foot is therefore about 1mm.

  This would be a fairly surprising correspondence on its own, but one fact that revealed itself early on in our research is that there is a direct relationship between the Minoan Foot and the Megalithic Yard, even though this isn’t immediately apparent. The reason it doesn’t stand out is that the relationship is based on geometry, and what is more geometry of the 366° version.

  A distance of 1 Megalithic Second of arc of the Earth’s polar circumference is equal to 366 Megalithic Yards (303.65 metres). If we divide the Minoan Foot into this distance the result is 1,000. In other words the Minoan Foot is simply a decimalized version of the Megalithic Yard, in that it uses the same number of degrees for the Earth.

  The fact that the Minoans had so much else in common with their British counterparts strongly hints at a cultural relationship and it is suggested by a few outsiders in ancient history studies, with a great deal of evidence to back up the suggestion, that the Minoans may have visited Britain on a regular basis. The Minoans were great sailors and traders, but two of the commodities their island home lacked were the metals copper and tin, which are necessary in order to create bronze. The Minoans could obtain copper from the mainland around the Mediterranean but tin was a different matter altogether. No matter where their tin came from they had to travel a significant distance to obtain it. One place where it existed in abundance was in the southwest of England and, although it cannot be absolutely proven, it is highly likely that the Minoans visited England to obtain tin.

  No matter what the trade connections between Crete and England may or may not have been, there is no doubt about the relationship in terms of geometry. The relationship of 366 Megalithic Yards and 1,000 Minoan Feet is so close and so significant that it cannot be a random chance event. It is therefore evident that use of 366° geometry was not exclusive to Britain.

  Of course critics are sure to say that, in the case of the measurement known as the foot there is no puzzle as to how it originated because the name tells its own story. It is based upon the length of a body part, an adult male foot. True as this may be in some regards it merely obscures others. Not all human feet are the same length, but the Minoan Foot, as rediscovered by J Walter Graham, never varied. What is more, his findings were validated totally when a new Minoan palace was unearthed ‘after’ he published his conclusions. This new site at Zakros conformed absolutely to his expectations of the Minoan Foot.

  Neither has the modern statute foot got anything to do with the length of anyone’s body parts. Examples of the unit are kept safe under lock and key, made from extremely durable and carefully wrought metals that hardly deviate with temperature and which do not corrode. So, whilst not arguing with the origin of the name ‘foot’ to describe such a unit, any relationship that does exist is peripheral to the truth of the situation.

  Even some experts still suggest that the British standard foot was derived from its Roman counterpart. This is definitely not the case because the Roman foot was also standardized, and in modern terms it measured 29.6 cm, which is almost a full centimetre shorter than the British (and now the American) foot. A centimetre might not seem much but compared to the fineness of touch of the megalithic system it might as well be a mile! It can be clearly seen that the British foot is extremely close to the Minoan Foot. Since the Minoans flourished centuries before the Romans were anything more than goat herders, ‘they’ could hardly have been influenced by the marching feet of the legions.

  What may well have developed from the Roman method of measurement is the British inch, at least as a concept. The Romans did have 12 inches to a Roman foot, though the inch in British terms seems to have little or no relationship with megalithic measurements or the 366° system of geometry. The word ‘inch’ comes from the Latin uncia and simply meant something that was 1/12th of something else.

  Alexander Thom coined the name ‘Megalithic Inch’ for a unit that was 1/40th of a Megalithic Yard, but he was simply copying terminology regarding a unit that very roughly corresponded to a modern inch. In reality the statute inch and the Megalithic Inch are quite different in length.

  What we can draw from all of this is that the modern foot is as close as makes no difference to a unit that was in existence at least as early as around 1800 BC and probably long before that. It is a metric version of a geometrical slice of the Earth’s polar circumference when using 366° geometry.

  Appendix 6

  •

  ESTIMATING THE CIRCUMFERENCE

  OF THE EARTH

  James Russell BSc C. Eng. M.I.E.I.

  There is growing evidence that an elite group of Neolithic peoples may have known the circumference of the Earth, and derived units of measurement based on this knowledge.

  Thanks to meticulous research by the late Professor Thom, and statistical analysis, it is now believed that the results of a unified measurement system, a Megalithic Yard, possibly based on the circumference of the Earth, can be seen in Neolithic monuments located throughout northern Europe.

  After reading Civilization One written by Christopher Knight and Alan Butler, I began communicating with Chris Knight regarding my proposal of methods to answer an unresolved question in the book, of how Neolithic man could have measured the circumference of the Earth using only materials available in the Neolithic period. The concept raises the question: Why would megalithic man even think the Earth might be spherical? Standing o
n a cliff top with a panoramic view, and looking out to sea, one gets the impression of the curvature of the surface of the sea, and hence that the Earth is spherical. There is also evidence in the Neolithic stone circles that people recognized changes in star positions dependent upon latitude. Observations of stars in the north appearing higher in the sky as they travelled north, and southern stars rising higher in the sky as they travelled south, would have reinforced the idea.

  I have suggested two methods to estimate the Earth’s circumference, a horizontal method and a vertical method. The horizontal method should be much more accurate than the vertical method as the sighting distances can be further apart, but the horizontal method can only be carried out with clear skies at dawn at equinox, whereas the vertical method can be done on any suitable day in the year. Both methods work with either the stars or the Sun to calculate the Earth’s circumference at the observation latitude. Measurements of Polaris’ position are needed to determine the latitude correction and calculate the Earth’s equatorial circumference. Since August 2008 my intention has been to prove both methods by experiment. Due to bad weather there has been no opportunity to prove the horizontal method, but progress has been good with the vertical method. The methods use different first stages, and a common second stage.

  METHOD ONE ‘THE HORIZONTAL METHOD’

  1. Sight through dark glass the perimeter of the Sun at sunrise, at equinox, or a star due east, across two pairs of crossheads A and B. The crossheads should be about 30 m apart and the pairs need to be placed about 30 miles apart east–west, set horizontal, or both at the same inclination. The time interval between the sunrise at A and the sunrise at B can then be used to calculate the Earth’s circumference at the latitude of the measurements.