Picture 1. Stonehenge summer solstice 2002. This photo was taken while standing centrally between Stones 1 and 30 -- The 'Doorway' through and into the sarsen circle. The picture clearly shows that the sun lines up with Stonehenge, not at pure solstice, but later, and when well clear of the ground. The object was for Stonehenge to capture maximum intensity sunlight and bounce it around like a modern-day LASER.
Stonehenge, at its most basic level, was a poor version of a Hall of Mirrors. Its designers, returning from a trip to Avebury, had seen how the sun turns the Backstone (Stone 2) of Avebury's Cove, a bright red -- not at exact solstice, but about five minutes later, when the sun had escaped earth's atmosphere. So, the thinking behind Stonehenge was this -- what would happen if thirty sarsen stones, like Avebury's Backstone, were placed in a circle, like the sun?
But what did these early designers hope to achieve by building Stonehenge? There are only two possibilities: One: a baby sun might grow inside it. Or two: for Stonehenge itself, to become a sun.
As a ruling hypothesis, the idea of Stonehenge bringing to a baby sun to life, might be a bit too rich for some to swallow. But not when we consider that Stonehenge’s near neighbour, Woodhenge, was a moon-egg intended to be fertilised by the sun.
STONEHENGEOLOGY....The astronomy, geometry, mensuration, biology, and purpose of Britain’s most famous monument. And who most likely built it!
First: Ninety years of lies and deceit.
It was 1928, and Maud Cunnington was about to finish off her excavation of Woodhenge, near Stonehenge, when flight Lieutenant Insall discovered a second, similar monument of timber, near Norwich in Norfolk. There was no doubt about it, prehistoric folks had divided the horizon into thirty-six lots of 10-degrees. And with some accuracy!
Furthermore, being amongst the first to view Stonehenge's Aubrey holes while left open for viewing by Col. Hawley, this is what Maud Cunnington thought of them....
"The Aubrey holes are fairly circular, whereas many of the bluestones are flat and angular. Is there any other case known where prehistoric builders made round holes for rectangular stones? In the other holes at Stonehenge, as well as Avebury, the holes conform more or less closely to the shape of the upright. Moreover, the cremations were not found at the bottom of the Aubrey Holes but down the sides with silting taking place as the timber posts decayed."
Quoted from "Woodhenge: a description of the site as revealed by excavations carried out by Mr and Ms B. H. Cunnington 1926-7-8.2
Furthermore, on account of the fact that cremating the dead did not become fashionable until the beaker period, Maud believed that the Aubrey Holes were dug much later than is currently supposed.
So, timber posts stood in the Aubrey Holes, not bluestones. And, the first timber pair was placed in holes 28 and 56 to further fix Stonehenge's axis at 50-degrees... some 1.5-degrees away from the Neolithic solstice.
Having shown Woodhenge to be a moon-egg, Maud's researches threatened to expose the whole Stonehenge hypothesis, which the archaeological world wanted kept as a highly profitable mystery. Consequently, Maud's opinion was muted by the powers that be.
So began the most extraordinary cover-up of our times.
But that's not all, the same thing happened when Professor Alexander Thom surveyed Woodhenge in 1967.
A full report on Woodhenge will come later, and you could click through and read it right away. But I hope not. Instead, I hope you stay awhile and read this website right through from the very start, to get a flavour of what Stonehenge was really all about.
******
Sunrise from my east-facing window on Tuesday morning the 7th of September 2021, was a revelation. Forecasters had predicted a heatwave for that day, and they were not wrong. There was not the faintest trace of a cloud in a clear blue sky, and the orb of the newly risen sun was shining bright red through earth's atmosphere with unusual clarity. However, just five-minutes later, and the situation had changed dramatically. The sun blazed brilliant white and was dangerous to look at.
The thing is, whilst our parents warn us from children not to look at the sun, you can tell from the solstice photograph above, that whilst still struggling to break free of a low-altitude horizon, the sun is quite safe to look at. Thousands of visitors to Stonehenge do so every year.
So, Picture 1 proves that Stonehenge is not aimed at the precise solstice -- not at first glint, not at half orb, not even at full orb, but at the far more dangerous and intense sun when it is well clear of the ground.
2. Designing Stonehenge.
In a vane search for the impossible, the design of Stonehenge was changed several times. Here we describe the last version, as we find it today. The final Stonehenge was a glorified cove of upright sarsen stones with lintels, placed inside a circle of thirty sarsens, also lintled, with an oval setting of twenty-four upright Welsh bluestones thrown in for good measure.
The modus operandi of coves was first exploited by the henge builders of Avebury, where they had two of them. Avebury’s coves looked like rectangular boxes with one side of the box left open to admit the sun and moon during solstices and standstills.
Avebury’s coves are five hundred years older than that at Stonehenge -- so you might expect Stonehenge’s version to be more grandiose. And it is. Known as the ‘Trilithon Horseshoe,’ Stonehenge’s Cove is open to the north-east to catch and amplify high-altitude summer solstice sunlight.
*****
The design mandate.
From a central stake, a circle of thirty-six megalithic yards diameter was scribed in the grass for thirty sarsens to be assembled around this circle with their best faces placed inward. Short rows of stakes were then placed to function as kicking-blocks for the accurate positioning of those stones when raised upright.
Thirty pits with stakes were needed to complete the outer circle of sarsen stones. However, the builders postponed the completion of the sarsen circle when less than half built, so that they could get on with building the cove of five trilithons.
Folded tracings prove that Stonehenge is an asymmetric monument by having two axes. These axes are separated by the tiniest of tiny triangles. This triangle, at the very heart of Stonehenge, is 3:4:5, the simplest of all Pythagorean triangles, as are the triangles that form the basis of Avebury's geometry. Stonehenge’s triangle measures a mere 24 by 30 by 18 megalithic inches, where 18Mi equals 14.7 imperial inches, 37.34 cm.
Stonehenge’s Cove is asymmetrical. Half its stones are set on the main axis, but the Great Trilithon and Trilithon 4 are based on the secondary. This offset meant that the Great trilithon could prevent sunlight from passing right through and out the back of the building. Trilithon 4 was also moved over but this was to make room for some bluestones in the Oval.
This was an oval of twenty-four bluestones. Only nineteen of those stones remain today, and all of them are in the south-west. This has caused the Oval to be described as a ‘Horseshoe.’
The Oval, like the rest of the building, is an internal device where the inside faces of its stones are placed around geometry consisting of pair of 14.5 megalithic-yard diameter circles whose centres are three-megalithic-yards apart.
The number three was the most important Stone Age number because it represented the family. This can be proven in many ways, but especially at Durrington Walls' Southern Circle, with its timber posts set in rows of three.
This was not the only message that the Oval hoped to pass on. Adding 14.5 to 14.5 we get twenty-nine, and adding this to the number of stones in the sarsen circle we get 59, which is the number of moon cycles in a two-month period. But the real message of conjoined circles is of a ‘coming together’ particularly of the sun and moon.
Then there is "Evidence of sexual dimorphism," Darvill: Stonehenge, The Biography of a Landscape. In plain English....Stone 49 is male and 31 is female.... Just like Avebury's male and female covestones and the dimorphic pair inside the long barrow known as Waylands Smithy. (Take a look at an old photograph of the Smithy, to prove it!)
3. Arminghall Henge 3,150 BC. One of the monuments that set the prehistoric 10-degree standard and caused the Stonehenge axis to point 50-degrees from north.
Less than two miles southeast of Norwich city centre in Norfolk, this henge set prehistoric standards that others had to follow. Its principles were adopted at Avebury, Stonehenge, Woodhenge, and, as we shall see, a whole host of others.
Having discovered Woodhenge, near Stonehenge, while flying over it, Flight lieutenant Insall went looking for similar monuments and found the Arminghall henge in 1928. It was another five years before it was excavated, and then only partially by some G. Clark who, incidentally, found no sign of a burial.
Whilst pretty much flattened these days, the inner ditch of the henge is plain to see by the ring of nettles growing upon it. What a pity, though, a shame in fact, that a garden hedge blocks the view south to where the southernmost sun and moon set behind the spur known as Chapel Hill. I have lost count of the vistas that were available to Stone Age man which have become blocked off. Some of these must be deliberate!
Professor Wainwright made great mention of the Arminghall Henge in his book 'Durrington Walls 1971,' because he could not understand the discovery of Rustication-Ware-type-pottery in such an old monument. This would not matter so much were it not for the fact that Wainwright also found rusticated pottery - some of it Beaker - when excavating the Durrington Walls Henge - a much later monument.
Charcoal found together with Beaker sherds, and tested twice by C14 to make sure, proves that the western bank of the Durrington Walls henge was built by Beaker Folk in 2,650 BC. This date would be pushed back nearer to 3,000 BC if tested today. Clearly then, Stonehenge, Durrington Walls, and the Arminghall Henge, were designed by technologists who were of the same mind.
So, whilst archaeologists today might date a monument by the pottery they dig up - be it Beaker, Peterborough Ware, Grooved Ware, or whatever... what really binds Britain's monuments together are the technologies of mechanics, astronomy, geometry, mathematics, mensuration, and human biology. Reproduction, that is!
4. Professionals have made several attempts to establish an axis of symmetry based on Arminghall's eight timber posts in the shape of a horseshoe, oval, or open-ended egg. Yet even though there is no axis of symmetry to be found, they got together and agreed on an azimuth of 223-degrees. (Azimuth = clockwise from north.)
Here we will propose an alternative solution.
Chapel Hill is the northern spur of a greater hill that runs south from it. A careful study of this hill and its southerly terrain has shown that three peaks manage to appear above and to the sides of the spur when viewed from the henge. Two of these peaks produce a pair of notches in the horizon through which the southernmost sun and moon come to ground when viewed from the henge. A third notch forms a 40-degree west-of-south alignment (Azimuth 220) with the henge.
This monument raises further the likelihood that a German tribe, possibly the Michaelsburger’s - those inventors of long-necked beakers - entered the country via Yarmouth and the river Yare. The Michaelsburger's went missing when the Rhine changed its course and left their mountain-top retreat exposed and separated from their land. This made it difficult to tend their crops.
I would have to call the Arminghall Henge - the Woodhenge of Norwich - after Woodhenge near Stonehenge. However, one does wonder what the original builders called it, especially since the archaeological term ‘henge’ converts to Womb – believe it!
The Arminghall Henge (we still must call it that) is of course famous for its eight massive posts in the shape of a horseshoe placed at its centre and is somewhat similar in style to Stonehenge's trilithons. Probably standing at least 3 metres high, the near one-megalithic-yard-diameter posts of the Arminghall henge were so heavy that they required long tapering ramps to help in their erection. Once erected, those posts were likely topped with lintels to help stabilise them, again, like Stonehenge.
As previously stated, much work has been done to figure out what this arrangement of posts points at, especially since the setting winter solstice sun could once be seen to slide down the side of Chapel Hill as if to take a drink from the river Yare.
Timber posts apart - the central area was found to be clean of debris with no trace of a grave. Not so the ditch, which contained copious amounts of charcoal, broken pottery, and lots of flint.
5. Arminghall Henge post positions shown together with a pair of upright’s (coloured brown) to demonstrate how those alignments were made. And, it's every bit as accurate as the sights of a rifle.
At ground level, alignments between pairs of posts are tangential to their diameters, and that is what mattered. But due to the natural taper of tree trunks, a narrow gap also appears higher up which made sightings that bit easier.
Since Arminghall's posts divide the compass into 10-degree lots, it is logical to assume that the main alignment of the henge follows suite with this order of 10's as well. Furthermore, the terrain proves it does!
So, our early geometers had found that no matter where they lived, from Scotland to Lands end, the angle between north and east could be made to present an angle of 90-degrees, as did the angle between east and south, south and west, west and north. The problem they had was that the sun and moon refused to conform to these precise angles.
There is only one place in England, north to south, that comes anywhere near to giving a 90-degree angle, and that is at the latitude of Stonehenge. This then, is the primary reason for Stonehenge being built where it is, and why those early folk were prepared to drag the massive sarsens 20-miles south to build it.
The choice of longitude was simply to follow suit with the Great cursus half a mile to the north of Stonehenge that was built some 500 years earlier. The Great cursus was built to challenge the six-mile-long Dorset cursus - see report later.
The Great cursus was built to take in far more countryside, east to west, than the limit of its earthworks. The cursus is trained on the massive ridge of hills some three miles to its east, and Stonehenge did likewise by aiming at the north end of the ridge - Sidbury Hill.
6. Chapel Hill Spur. Thanks to the offending garden hedge to the south of the Arminghall henge, this photograph had to be taken further south and is unfortunately off a little way to one side of the monument’s axis. Nevertheless, it does tell us all we need to know.
A railway cutting passes right through the middle of the spur these days, and as this cutting is approached from the west, an embankment matches it in height. The embankment, seen on the right and below a distant roof-top through a gap in the trees, prevents the sun from reaching ground level and the river Yare these days. (Have they no respect?)
Of greater importance is a distant landmass that just manages to appear over the top and to the left of the peak of Chapel hill that the 40-degree alignment of the monument points at. This landmass can be seen beyond the row of telegraph poles and through another gap in the treeline.
It's impossible to make out in this photograph, but the busy A47 passes over the third landmass to the left of the Chapel Hill spur, and this is where the southernmost setting of the moon will come to ground in 2024/5. Get out there, somebody, and photograph it.
Stop press. This is something I wrote and forgot about in my 2007 book 'Stonehenge Secrets'. (Sorry but it is out of print): - Far bigger than Arminghall, a setting of timber posts, 24 in all, and designed on similar principles, was found not far from Norwich at a place called Godmanchester. Presumably discovered because of gravel extraction, Godmanchester and its cursus has been dated to 3,800BC. I would like to do a follow-up on Godmanchester, one day, especially if I can wrest its co-ordinates from the authorities.
7. STONEHENGE'S HEEL STONE. 3rd JULY 2016.
Note how low altitude sunlight illuminates the stones, and compare this with Avebury's Cove, where the idea came from!
A brass plaque, fitted by English Heritage, and embedded in the grass, marks Stonehenge's primary axis. The aqua line marks the secondary. These axes are 18 megalithic inches apart (14.7 imperial inches).
Standing like an antenna or satellite dish, facing the moon, the main face of the Heel Stone points some 11-degrees more northerly than Stonehenge's axes, and it therefore aims at where the northernmost moon rises out of the Larkhill Causewayed Enclosure. The proof of the Heel Stone's alignment is to be gleaned from John Wood's highly accurate 1740 survey of Stonehenge. No wonder the Heel Stone stands in the middle of a circular ditch rich in bluestone fragments.
The last time the moon visited her northernmost position - named 'The Major Standstill' by Alexander Thom, was way back in 2005/2006, and was an opportunity missed. The next Major Standstill will therefore take place in late 2024/5. The good news is that, when the time comes, the moon will stick around for a year or more and, weather permitting, should put in a showing or two.
Hopefully, photographers will be allowed to enter Stonehenge during the many unsociable hours needed to get those pictures of the northernmost moon. But I doubt it. If not, you photographers get yourselves off to some other monument instead - there are plenty more good targets in these pages.
In our search for further proofs for the hypothesis of Stonehenge, we will be looking for more ways of bringing the sun, the moon, and a star or stars, together in one place.
8. Stonehenge’s Heel Stone.
Note how the Heel Stone's axis - the axis normal to its front face - crosses Stonehenge's primary axis and the 49-degree solstice of the Neolithic. What better way could there be for bringing the sun and moon together? We find the same principle in operation at Durrington Walls where the incoming solstice crosses the axes of several timber-built eggs that the Southern Circle is composed of.
Furthermore, whilst the Heel stone faces the northernmost rising moon, a view across its face, aims at the setting summer solstice in one direction, and the rising winter solstice in the other. That's the beauty of Stonehenge being where it is!
9. Stone Age people did not make Blueprints, but if they had, one of them would have appeared as above..
Generated on CAD from John Woods 1720 survey -- and there is non better -- we can see from the position of Stone 10, the difficulty caused by breaking off to complete the Cove of trilithons. Because Stone 10 is on the wrong axis.
The stones of the sarsen circle fit snuggly around a thirty-six megalithic yard diameter circle. And most modern surveys agree with this measurement, even though they don't say so!
Stones placed on the secondary axis are: Stone 80, the six-megalithic-yard-long Altar Stone that never did stand upright. Furthermore, the Altar stone is twisted round 10-degrees to reflect incoming sunlight onto the male-type Bluestone 49. This pronounces Stonehenge as male gender. (Congrats, it's a boy!)
Also not on the primary axis are... The fourth Trilithon, the Oval of twenty-four bluestones (Still called a horseshoe of nineteen stones for convenience) and a VIP inhumation.
No-one in their right mind would build something so complex, simply for burying their dead!
10. Lying with impunity.
This plan of the Stonehenge sarsen and bluestone building was published in the "British Archaeology Magazine" at the same time as the British Museum opened its doors for their 2022 Stonehenge exhibition. The plan shown, contradicts everything we, and they, have learnt about Stonehenge.
The solstice line is accurately aligned at 49-degrees clockwise from north. But, look closely, and you will see that it bears no relationship to the monument itself, because Stonehenge's axis is 50-degrees from north.
The authors of this plan have skewed the axis to fit, just as professor Thom skewed his plan of Woodhenge.
The circle seen passing through the middle of the sarsen circle is also deceitful, Stonehenge is an internal device and the circle should be internal to the stones too. It should also be drawn at 36-megalithic yards diameter. That it doesn't, proves another attempt to destroy the megalithic yard, as professor Thom himself destroyed it, when he went over to the "other side" in 1967.
Finally, take a look at the ridiculously small scale. A meaningful scale would need to be many time larger.
11. The real axes of Stonehenge. There are two of them. And both aim 50-degrees clockwise from north. The Heel Stone is just visible behind Stone 1. This image, or something similar, was first used on the front cover of my 2013 book "Stonehenge 1740 AD. At the time of writing that book, I believed that the axes were separated by half-a-megalithic-yard (20 megalithic inches). I have changed my mind since then, and for good reason. The book was reviewed by only one person, and he criticised it for being too accurate! Nonetheless, my book must have helped English Heritage to decide where to place their brass plaque accurately on the solstice axis.
Five-thousand short years from the Stone Age to global warming.
It was a bright sunny morning when Brennos was to be seen busily ploughing the land in preparation for the harvest he desperately hoped to get. It was hard but pleasant work controlling the plough being drawn along by a pair of powerful oxen, when the leather twine binding the contrivance together, suddenly broke, and the whole thing fell apart. Brennos had repaired the device many times before, so he patiently bound its components together again, and continued with his work. This is good soil Brennos thought, as he recalled the bumper crop he had grown the year before; it was worth the effort of reclaiming the land from the trees that once grew there. Following along behind him were his wife and children, who were busily engaged with the task of sowing barley seeds for the harvest everyone hoped to get. This was the year 3,500 BC: The place? - The Kennet valley, in what would later be known as the Kingdom of Wessex. Brennos's friends preferred the more traditional methods of hunting and trapping of prey to feed their families, and this was no bad thing; for combined with Brennos's ability to grow wheat and barley, as well as beans and peas, the group always managed to maintain a well-balanced diet. Even so, they still marvelled over the efforts Brennos and his family went to, to grow them. Brennos understood only too well what they meant. Some years, if the weather was cold, his crops would hardly grow at all. And if it was unseasonably wet at harvest time, his produce would rot in the ground. Nor was Brennos saved from the constant worry of having to keep seed in good condition for the next year's crop. Were it not for the sun that went away every year, he would not have had this problem; ripe seed would be ready and available for immediate sowing. Of the 4,000 people who lived in the immediate area, half were employed on food production, either by farming cereals or by looking after livestock, whilst others would hunt game or catch fish. Many were engaged in manufacturing items such as clothes, pottery, and ropes, and some were knapping great blocks of Norfolk flint into tools and weapons. Bent almost double, Brennos appreciated being able to feel the sun upon his back, and he let its heat penetrate through to his very bones. Many of Brennos's friends suffered badly from swollen painful joints before reaching thirty years of age, and that is if they reached that age at all. Many did not. He too was beginning to feel such debilitating effects, especially during the winter. But on this day, the sun was high in the sky as he tended to his land, and the summertime was good. Brennos looked back at the work they had done that day. The oxen had helped plough the field into regimented lines of shallow furrows, his wife had placed seeds upon the bottom, and his children had finished off by covering them over with fine soil. Together they had covered about half an acre during the day. Not a bad day's work, Brennos thought, and he hoped the sun would be kind to him and his family by bringing them a rich and bountiful harvest. Brennos unhitched the plough and returned the oxen to their respective pens. The light was fading now, and he took a moment to give each beast a grateful pat upon their heads. How, he wondered, could the simple act of castration make such large and powerful animals become so placid and helpful? The light had all but faded by the time the group had set off to make their way back to Windmill Hill and finding their way in the dark was fraught with difficulties. At times like this, his family kept together in a tightly knit group, and his boy, who took up the rear, carried fiery torches in case a wild animal should mount an attack upon them. Sometimes the light of the moon would help a little, but on this cloud-filled night, there was no moon to be seen. Thankfully, a colleague had built a fire and kept it burning brightly to help guide them into the enclosure that surrounds the hilltop. When settled, they sat with friends who offered them bread and cheese which they washed down with warm goats’ milk. As Brennos sat looking into the flames of the fire, he became more than a little sad when he recalled so many of his friends who had passed away the previous winter. That winter had been no worse than any other, but it showed no-one any sympathy, and when a dreadful illness swept up through the whole country, many of his weaker friends had succumbed to it. On nights like these, people would tell a story or two, sometimes cheer themselves with a joke, and sometimes recall stories of their folklore. Later that night, the clouds which had blanketed the sky, began to clear, and this allowed the group to see for miles around from the considerable amount of light that the moon now provided. As usual, Brennos's friends tried to explain what the moon was. There she sat, high in the sky, looking down on the group huddled around the fire below her. Because the moon suffered similar monthly cycles to his wife, Brennos felt sure that the moon was female: he had observed both moon and wife as they passed through their cycles, month after month, year after year. The whole group too, were aware of how the moon waxed and waned and changed her shape, night after night, from a ‘C’ to a ‘D’ to an ‘O’ and back again. To Brennos, the moon was a real live person; she clearly had a face, although she never seemed to smile. Strange, Brennos thought, how she was forever trying to avoid the sun. When the sun went down, so she would rise, only to disappear again before he could rise the following day. Sometimes she too would appear during the day, but not until she had made herself invisible to him, for she was so utterly shy. She seemed to want to keep herself as far away from him as she could. If only I could bring the sun and moon together, Brennos thought. They might get to like one another. If only he could find a way of bringing them together, they might conceive a child. Brennos was brought back to reality by one of his friends who noticed him looking up at the sky, as he often did. This friend suggested that they might build a massive mound with an open-ended chamber at one end with which to catch equinoctial sunlight and moonlight, and as somewhere to inter their deceased colleagues. Who knows what might happen? They knew of a pleasant place with a commanding view on the other side of the Kennet Valley, and everyone agreed to build the mound there. They also agreed that it would be better to build the chamber using the very largest of the stones, if only they could find some way of moving them. Brennos doubted if the stones could be moved at all, they were all so big, but everyone decided to try. First, they gained experience by moving the medium-sized ones around by turning them into rollers clad in wood. This effectively turned them into giant wheels. Others made their way to the strangely named hilltops of Overton and Fyfield Downs where the choicest stones could be found. Milling around the largest, they looked under them and around them. These stones exceeded twenty tonnes in weight, and the transportation of just one; first crossing a river, and then climbing a hill, presented them with the most enormous of tasks. Some members of Brennos’s group began by chopping down the trees, and by stripping them of their branches and bark, turned them into long wooden posts. Then, using these posts as levers, with small stones for fulcrums, released the stones from their beds and managed to drag them to the site. First, they built the walls to make five small rooms, each room leading off from a central entrance passageway. Next, they excavated the chalk soil from a pair of ditches straddling the sides of the mound and used the soil to bank the mound still higher. Then they laid massive capping stones across the top to form the roof. Further soil was taken from the ditches until the whole structure was completely covered in white and appeared from above like a 330-foot-long trapezium set against a pea-green landscape. Brennos held a lighted brand against one of its walls to demonstrate to his friends how sarsen stones reflect the light. "Imagine, he said, what the sun and moon might do. Brennos and his friends were justifiably proud of the Long Barrow they had built and oversaw the building of several more. Many years later, the portal of this long barrow was deliberately blocked after receiving a murdered beaker man, together with his fashionable lozenge-decorated Beaker. This accurately dates the event to around 2500 BC. Monuments such as this mound, or tumulus, known as ‘The West Kennet Long Barrow,’ were decommissioned by command. Perhaps the murdered beaker man, found with an arrow in his back, disagreed! Meanwhile, Brennos and his family continued to plough and sow the land to ensure the success of their crops. How well everything grows, Brennos thought, when the sun is shining, life is so much better in summertime. How he wished he could have two harvests a year, instead of just the one, and then he could provide for his family the whole year-round and not have to worry about storing seeds and taking the risk of them rotting away every winter. He so wished the sun could be with him all year round. Brennos held a few seeds of barley in the palm of his hand. Within these seeds, Brennos knew, was the very essence of life itself, and he realised why he had chosen to be a farmer. He also knew that he only had to bury these seeds a little below the surface of the soil, where they were kept warm and sheltered for a while, and the spark of life would begin. Brennos wondered where the sun came from. It obviously came from out of the ground in various places, stony ground too, but no-one had ever discovered any holes from where it could have emerged. Obviously, the sun didn't need a hole to emerge from; he was, without doubt, capable of passing through anything. Equally clear too, was that the sun travelled underground during the night, and probably stayed beneath the knolls of Britain, of which Brennos knew several. The rain also puzzled Brennos because it fell from the sky in a comparable way to sunlight. This made him wonder if rain too emerged from the ground in the same way. He knew of some folks who had dug deep pits in the ground, hoping to find the sun, but had discovered a source of water instead. Others had found choice-flint and were in the process of mining it. Brennos reflected upon their folklore that told of the time when his ancestors had tried to build their own sun. It was said that they had cut down every large tree in the area and turned them into upright posts to describe a succession of ever-increasing circles. This giant structure, consisting of around four hundred timber posts, was said to be more than three hundred feet in diameter by six men high. According to this legend, they had infilled the gaps between the posts with as much combustible material as they could find and then set the whole thing alight. This legend is based on fact. About 6,000 years ago, a large assembly of over four-hundred tree trunks that radiated outwards in ever-increasing circles, was built at Stanton Drew. - See report, later. Magnetrometry readings taken a few years ago proved that this circle of tree trunks was subsequently burnt to the ground. Sometime later, this massive fire was superseded by a henge and Britain's second largest stone circle.
Brennos looked up at the sun and wondered if the legend was true. Each post must have weighed about the same as thirty-five men and would have stood in a hole deeper than the height of a man. Brennos held up his thumb, with arm outstretched, and tried to gauge the sun for size. His thumbnail completely covered its disc, and it was about six times larger, so he thought that the sun wasn't that big. He realised too, that the sun could not be reached from the top of Waden Hill and so he knew that it had to be larger than this. Brennos could also see that the sun was higher than its smoke that hung around in the sky. After considering the problem at length, Brennos decided that the sun was a disc, or sphere, of about 1500 megalithic yards in diameter (about 4,083 feet) and it had somehow become self-sustaining. To be continued... Elsewhere on this site you will find that contrary to popular opinion, Neolithic folk were a tidy-minded lot, who, being dissatisfied with astronomy as they found it, tidied things up by dividing the horizon into thirty-six lots of ten-degrees. So, Stonehenge, being aligned 50-degrees from north, is not aligned directly on the summer solstice as many people seem to think. The Sarsen Circle is cast around a 50-degree primary axis and the Great Trilithon is built on a completely separate, 50-degree, secondary axis.
*******
Britain’s first farmers, living in the south of England, treated Wiltshire’s extensive Chalk Massive like a vast whiteboard on which to scribe their designs. That is how Stonehenge started, just three circles of pure white chalk appearing through lush green grass. The circles were complete except for two causeways, the largest pointing northeast towards the most northerly risings of the sun and moon. The centre-point of those circles was chosen for one main reason. This reason is well known, and several authors have already written of it. Stonehenge stands on latitude fifty-one, the one place where the sun and moon make an angle of 90-degrees. So Stonehenge started by obeying the Stone Age 10-degree rule. There is only one reason archaeologists have raised the question of why Stonehenge is where it is. It is a red herring to divert us away from WHY.
*****
Set on a 50-degree axis aimed towards a 48.5-degree solstice, causes the sun to come into line with Stonehenge several minutes late, and at a greater altitude. It is also far brighter. And since Stonehenge was built like a ‘Hall of mirrors’ for capturing and amplifying sunlight, that was exactly what the Stonehenger’s wanted. But where does the moon fit in with all this? With a half orb, 40-degree azimuth in Wiltshire, the Major Standstill of the moon already obeys the 10-degree rule. Witness Avebury’s West Kennet and Beckhampton’s avenues, which obey it too. So, a piece of high ground, a mile or so to the northeast of Stonehenge, to what is known today as Larkhill, was recognised as a suitable place for more timber posts with which to track the moon and further establish its northernmost position. This turning point of the moon, not unlike a terminus, occurs every 18.61-years. However, whilst this 18.61-year event is near enough, it is not dead accurate, and the Stonehenger’s knew it. Hence, a further fifty-four posts were added to the Aubrey Circle to represent the 56-year frequency of the moon - the time it takes for the moon to return to the same place from where it started. Even this is not dead accurate, but never mind! Because we now have a fabulous piece of theatre designed to bring the sun, the moon, and the top-most star of the Southern Cross - the red Gamma Crucis - which was still visible from Wiltshire 5,000 years ago - together in one place.
*****
Here are a couple of quotes from the book Stonehenge Decoded... "I set up my eight-millimetre movie camera with telephoto lens trained down the axis line so as to include in its field the sarsen circle archway through which the distant heel stone could be seen. We waited. Suddenly, in the band of brightness to the north-east we saw it - the first red flash of the sun, rising just over the tip of the heel stone!" Gerald S Hawkins, Stonehenge Decoded, P 93. Two points to be made here are... Hawkins mistakenly believed that Stonehenge's primary axis passes centrally through the gap of the Great Trilithon. It does not. Consequently, his camera was not placed on Stonehenge's primary axis. Furthermore, the sun does not rise "just over the tip of the Heel stone" on the morning of the summer solstice. Quote: "We had deliberately planned our visit for June 12, nine days before the solstice, because we feared that on the day itself the crowd would make it impossible to set up a camera on the correct alignment and have an unobstructed view." Stonehenge Decoded, Page 92. The problem of crowds that get in the way and make it impossible to place a camera on Stonehenge's axis, still applies today! The sun does rise 'just over the tip' of the Heel Stone twice in June... but not on solstice morning, but about five days before the solstice and five days after! Well, so much for Hawkins. ***** Here we will hope to convince you that Stonehenge was built by people who believed the sun to be male, the moon to be female, and stars to be potential children. This alone should tell you what Stonehenge was meant to be.
*****
This site deals with everything that our ancestors got up to that made them think they might have a way of guaranteeing them the three essentials of life - Food, water, and heat. Food, in the form of staples they could grow, water was plentiful. All they needed was a second sun to keep them warm in winter and to grow out-of-season crops. It was not that difficult, surely? Or so they thought. As already mentioned, some folks had built a sun-simulator from 450 tree-trucks set in nine ever-increasing circles at Stanton Drew. But having set it alight, it proved nowhere near hot enough. So, they thought the sun must be made of stone. But how to get stone to burn. And how to get it to fly? That was the problem! ***** As mentioned above, Picture 2 was taken while standing in the middle of Stonehenge’s solstice doorway between pillars 1 and 30 - "The Grand Entrance" - as William Stukeley called it. The photo shows how the sun has surpassed Stonehenge's axes by some distance to the north. According to the astronomer, the late Professor John North, first flash of the sun in 2,500 BC was 48.5-degrees clockwise from north - a full 1.5-degrees past Stonehenge's axis. It was further north still in 3,000 BC when Stonehenge was started! I could not understand why the sun in Picture 1 appears so far to the left of the Heel stone, so I wrote to Wessex Archaeology and asked if they could explain why the sun is not where it ought to be. Well, that was at least 10 years ago, and I now know why. Stonehenge is not perfectly aligned on the solstices - not the summer or the winter. As a proven internal device with best faces of stones dressed and pointing inward, the sarsen and bluestone building was designed to arrest and trap sunlight inside it. Its builders hoped to light-up the whole of Stonehenge in the same way as the sun lights up the Backstone, of Avebury's Cove - see photo later. This leaves us wondering - did they know they were adopting modern-day LASER techniques? Picture 1 also shows how the moon travels about 10-degrees further north than the sun. So the sun goes nowhere where the moon hasn't already been. Cremated human bones were fetched from pyres lit alongside the exit of Durrington Walls' timber-built Southern Circle, and placed alongside the fifty-six timber posts, which stood in the Aubrey Holes The Stonehenger's believed that cremation released the spirits of the dead. And, by burying those spirits inside the Southern Circles' 'Midden,' yet taking the bones to Stonehenge - those spirits would have to travel the Avon umbilical to join them! Furthermore, the Stonehenge we know of today was not necessarily the original; Stonehenge Mark 1 was found alongside the River Avon in 2005. We might, however, more accurately call them, Stonehenge A and Stonehenge B. Stonehenge A goes under the name of Bluestonehenge. It marks the start of the avenue that leads from the Avon to Stonehenge B. A recent report in the Guardian, states that the stone circle of bluestonehenge measured ten metres in diameter. Well, ten metres is twelve megalithic yards. So, Stonehenge A was one third the size of Stonehenge B. This, together with the increasing radii of the large curve in the Stonehenge Avenue, is further proof of a wish for Stonehenge to grow! The largest radius in the bend of the Stonehenge Avenue scales to 750 megalithic yards. This radius can be found at Durrington Walls, and Avebury, and on top of Windmill Hill. A wish to give birth to a baby sun is the only hypothesis that fits all the known facts. Those who dispute it should spend a killer winter outside without the benefits of gas fires to keep warm and electric lights with which to read a book. If that's not enough, try growing wheat and barley, and vegetables. or try finding blackberries and hazel nuts, long rotted and fallen off the trees.
Please scroll back and press the "Find out more" button, above.