Megalithic
Site Name: Stonehenge
Nation/Country/State:
United Kingdom, England
District/Region/Parish/County:
Salisbury, Amesbury
Local Location:
Salisbury
Plain
GPS:
51°10'44" N,
1°49'35" W
Grid:
SU 1224 4218
Monument No.:
SU 14 SW 4
Unique Identifier:
219434
Directions: On
the A344 off
the A303, 2 miles W of Amesbury
& 9 miles N of Salisbury
Site
Access: English
Heritage & National Trust Members
admitted free. Adults £5.90. Children £3.00.
Concession
£4.40. Family (2 adults + 3 children) £14.80.
Closed Dec. 24-26 & Jan. 1. Opens daily 9:30 a.m.
(9:00 June 1 - Aug. 31). Closes 4:00 p.m. (Oct. 16 - March 15), 6:00
p.m. (March 16 - May 31, Sep. 1 - Oct. 15), 7:00 p.m. (June 1 - Aug.
31).
Administration:
English
Heritage, The National Trust
Protection
Status: World
Heritage Site
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STONEHENGE
DECIPHERED: | Barrows
| Groundplan
| Sarsens
| Trilithons
| The
Book |
THE
GROUND PLAN OF STONEHENGE
Photographs and illustrations of Stonehenge often
do not provide
precise geographic orientation for the normal viewing reader, who in
his mind's eye may then tend to see Stonehenge more as a simple stone
circle rather than as a group of differentiable megaliths
intentionally positioned by ancient man to serve a specific function.
The first graphic consists of a modern photo by us (2005) plus an
illustrated
ground
plan of Stonehenge as it appears today (both by Andis Kaulins).
STONEHENGE
TODAY
STONEHENGE
YESTERDAY
The middle graphic is a scan
by Andis
Kaulins of a fold-out Stonehenge survey map from the year
1810. One scan was
made of each map half and both then pasted together on a PC using
graphics software to create one image. That original survey
map is found glued to
the inside margin of page 55 of William Long's
book, Stonehenge and its Barrows,
published in Devizes in 1876 from the original publication in Wiltshire
Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, vol. xvi, Wiltshire
Archaeological and Natural History Society. The
Stonehenge map in Long gives the same
view from the bottom
upwards as our
photograph and illustrated ground plan above it. These two graphic
images thus provide an excellent
frontal view of Stonehenge combined with a matching "aerial"
perspective of the larger megalithic site. Stonehenge is thereby viewed
along its main axis, which is the Stonehenge
Avenue, usually just called the Avenue. Gerald S.
Hawkins in his book Stonehenge
Decoded (p. 54) writes that the 30 sarsens were
spaced uniformly as an outer circle with an average error of less than
4 inches, but "At
the northeast, precisely--as might be expected--on the midsummer
sunrise line, there was an entrance to this circle, made by spacing two
stones (1 and 30) 12 inches farther apart than average". This
gap is quite apparent in the photograph above.
In
that photograph The large fallen stone a bit to
the left at the
top of the avenue is the Slaughter Stone,
which is not as famous as the Heel Stone,
not pictured here because yours truly, the photographer, like
the rising sun, is standing at the location of that Heel
Stone looking down the Avenue toward the awaiting Stonehenge sarsens
and trilithons. The
survey map has a main caption reading "Ground
Plan of Stonehenge" and thereunder the words: "Transfered
to Stone, from the Original Copper Plates, by the kind permission of J.
Bruce Nichols Esqre".
STONEHENGE
ORIGINAL PLAN
Our graphic below shows how Stonehenge must have looked when all stones
were intact in their places ca. 1749 B.C. by our calculations. Note
that Stonehenge was a lunisolar calculating machine. The 30 Sarsens
marked the moon stations in the stars, and the applicable stars are
shown by figures, marks and holes in the sarsens. 10 Constellations
were represented by the Trilithons along the ecliptic, with the open
end of the horseshoe excluding Hydra (Cancer) and Leo
toward the Sommer Solstice point. 19 Bluestones makred the
Metonic Cycle. 30 "Y" Holes marked "full" months of 30 days. 29 "Z"
Holes marked "defective" months of 29 days. The "new moon" month is
29.53 days, so the ancients used some form of alternation between these
two rings. 56 Aubrey Holes were used for eclipse prediction based on
the ca. 18.6-year cycle of eclipses x 3. The Avenue pointed toward the
Summer Solstice point at the Heelstone on a line running from the North
Celestial Pole through (or slighltly past) the tip of Ursa Minor and
through Ursa Major, marked by the Slaughter Stone..
Choice
of the Stonehenge Site by Astronomy
Gerald S. Hawkins in Stonehenge Decoded, Doubleday, 1965, writes that "Newham and Charriere ... have both commented
... that the
latitude of Stonehenge is practically optimum for sun-moon rectangular
alignment.... [I]n the northern hemisphere there is only one latitude
for which, at their extreme declinations, the sun and moon azimuths are
separated by 90 degrees. Stonehenge is within a few miles of that
latitude."
As Hawkins notes, the replica of Stonehenge at Maryhill, Klickitat
County, Washington, USA, is at the wrong latitude 5 degrees too far
south, and hence the luni-solar alignments do not work properly. That
is what happens when well-meaning people do not properly
understand the astronomy of the megaliths.
Astronomical
Seriousness of Stonehenge
Stonehenge was thus not just erected by chance as some kind of a
"religious" object as erroneously thought by mainstream scholars
ignorant of ancient astronomy, but was located pursuant to strict
astronomical considerations. That is why the ancients transported giant
stones over hundreds of
miles from the quarries to this location, rather than to build their
astronomical clock in situ.
Purpose of Stonehenge in Historical Writings
Diodorus Sicilus (1st century BC) writes in Book II, Loeb Library
translation, concerning the "Hyperboreans" and
their royal kings and priests, the "Boreades" (Brits), as follows:
"And there is also on the
island
both a magnificent sacred precinct of
Apollo [the SUN] and a notable temple which is adorned with many votive
offerings and is SPHERICAL in shape....
They say also that the moon, as viewed from this island, appears to be
but a little distance from the earth and to have upon it prominences,
like those of the earth, which are visible to the eye.
The account is also given that the god visits the island every nineteen
years, the period in which the return of the stars to the same place in
the heavens is accomplished; and for this reason the nineteen-year
period is called by the Greeks the 'year of Meton'.
At the time of this appearance of the god he both plays on the
cithara and dances continuously the night through from the vernal
equinox until the rising of the Pleiades....
"
The purpose of Stonehenge is thus quite clear from ancient writings as
well as from modern computer studies of alignments, ala Hawkins.
It was an astronomical instrument erected in the Stone Age era at a
specific location designed for its purpose by earth and sky.
STONEHENGE DECIPHERED: | Barrows
| Groundplan
| Sarsens
| Trilithons
| The
Book |
Legal
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The
owner and webmaster of Megaliths.net is
Andis
Kaulins
B.A.
University of
Nebraska;
J.D. Stanford
University Law School
Former
Lecturer in Anglo-American Law, FFA,
Trier Law School
Author
at Langenscheidt
Fachverlag,
Germany
Alumnus
Associate of Paul,
Weiss, Rifkind,
Wharton & Garrison, NYC
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