19. My model of Stonehenge shows what Stonehenge was meant to look like when and if it was ever finished. However, Stonehenge proved too complex to complete, with twin axes only 18 megalithic inches apart and stones already assembled getting in the way of those awaiting assembly.
21. Archaeologists have proved themselves beyond trust since at least 1965. So, nothing they have produced since then can be believed. Nothing!
This same year, the UK abandoned its imperial measurements of yards, feet, and inches in favor of the continental meter. The lesson, then, is that any plan of Stonehenge, scaled in meters, should be regarded as suspect compared to older plans, which were scaled in feet, like that seen above.
Adopting Arminghall's 10-degree rule, Stonehenge's primary axis was set at 50 degrees. So too, were a pair of timber posts standing in Aubrey Holes 56 and 28. Perhaps as long ago as 3,100 BC.
Most importantly, the 50-degree axis does not pass through the gap of the great trilithon - and never did. That was the job of the secondary axis.
One of the reasons why Stonehenge is where it is...
If carried far enough, Stonehenge's axis passes over the southern slope of Sidbury Hill. The solstice, pointing 1.5 degrees further north, rises from out of Sidbury Hill, a hill that early folk had paved with pebbles collected from the river Avon - as if wishing to turn the world upside down!
Unfortunately, the above image is also found to be wanting in accuracy. The following should help address this problem.
22. John Wood's 1740 survey of Stonehenge is shown placed on top of a 1964 aerial photograph.
Professor John North stated that the 56 Aubrey holes were placed on a 104-megalithic-yard-diameter circle. Hawkins claimed it was 105. So, who is right?
Only 32 of the Aubrey holes have been excavated; the remaining 24 were found by thumping the ground with a mallet and listening for the hollow sound made by excavated soil.
Furthermore, to my knowledge, accurate cartesian coordinates of the 32 excavated Aubrey holes have never been made.
However, a vertical photograph of Stonehenge was taken from 1000 feet up in 1963, which shows the painted-white concrete caps that cover the holes. Hawkins presents these photos in both of his books. Presumably, that is how he arrived at his figure of 105 for the circle's diameter. Otherwise, scales were not necessary or given.
The architect John Wood produced the most accurate survey of the stone building, which included the Heel stone and the two remaining Station stones, 1 and 3.
I have layered Wood's survey on top of the 1963 aerial photograph to scale it. According to Wood, the distance from Cypher A - (a small yellow circle) to Cypher R (a small yellow circle) is 78.62 MY. (Cypher: Old English)
Interestingly, we can now see that the Slaughter Stone has been moved slightly inward since 1740, when John surveyed it.
More importantly, if not oval, Hawkins was right to claim the Aubrey circle to measure 105 megalithic yards.
From the above, we can see that the Aubrey circle exceeds Station Stone 3, showing that bosing the ground by thumping it with a mallet is pretty much useless.
I show seven 50-degree lines that are described by the Aubrey holes. There would be many more if all 56 holes were known. The position of the posts that mark the cardinals would be known too!
Did the station stones define the position of Stonehenge's secondary axis?
It seems more than likely that the four stations were placed on the corners of a rectangle measuring 96 by 40 megalithic yards to give a pair of back-to-back triangles having hypotenuses equal to the diameter of the Aubrey circle. I.e., 105.
The center point of this rectangle sits above the center of what today is known as the Bluestone horseshoe. This center is on the secondary axis.
23. The Stonehenge Avenue.
This avenue connects Stonehenge to the river Avon. It starts, not ends, from the West Amesbury henge and, by its geometry, carried a wish that Stonehenge would grow into something much bigger.
It starts at twenty degrees and becomes twice sized at 40 when it approaches Stonehenge.
Also, the radius of the massive bend starts at 375 Megalithic Yards and grows to 750 before continuing to Stonehenge. Both arcs are straight lifts from Avebury's geometry.
What was the good of the Stonehenge Riverside Project?
The West Amesbury Henge was partially investigated in 2008 when nine of a possible 24 post holes forming a circle were excavated. The circular form of these nine holes, similar to Stonehenge's Aubrey Holes, is hard to ignore and must have held timber posts, not bluestones.
The remaining 15 unexplored post holes are nearer the river, and some will be in wetland conditions. However, like the timber posts in the Aubrey Holes, all posts were eventually plucked out of the ground in prehistoric times. Nevertheless, some of this wood has likely survived in wetter conditions near the river. This warrants further investigation.
23.1 The geometry of Holme II proved impossible to resolve without the Megalithic Inch. Furthermore, without the "Inch," Holme II was impossible to build.
We also find that the timber posts respected the Stone Age 10-degree rule. However, I show only two of these alignments, which aim at the cardinal points.
Geometry is based, as is so often the case, on a pair of near-Pythagorean triangles.
24. The surveyor, John Wood Senior, famous for having designed the Crescent and Circus in the City of Bath, was the first to make a proper survey of Stonehenge in the year 1740.
A CAD version (Computer Aided Design) of Wood’s survey, plotted in Megalithic Yards at the rate of 0.83 meters, is shown above.
John Wood senior used Stonehenge to train his apprentice son, John Wood junior, in surveying. Requiring over 800 measurements, Wood’s 1740 survey has never been bettered.
Wood's survey is especially important for having been produced before Trilithon 4 fell to the ground.
This plan was by somebody (Obviously one of the boys) who reviews books for a magazine about ghosts and has effectively shut my book "Stonehenge 1740 AD" down for working to six decimal places. However, those figures were produced on a calculator, and reducing them to please the awkward while still maintaining accuracy, would require more trouble than it’s worth.
25. The first step in setting out the ground plan of Stonehenge is to draw a 36-megalithic-yard-diameter circle (98 feet, 29.88 meters) with a line through the center at an angle of 50 degrees clockwise from the north. This line represents the Primary Axis. Also, this line very nearly points to the northernmost rising of the sun and is where revelers stand every 21st of June.
The summer solstice occurs every year at this time, and it’s a kind of terminus where the sun stops to rest a while before making its weary way back to its southern terminus, known as the winter solstice.
The Egyptologist Flinders Petrie numbered the stones in 1880, and his numbering system is used today.
Also, we have Anthony Johnson to thank for the geometry on which the trilithons are based. “Solving Stonehenge: The New Key To An Ancient Enigma.” Johnson A. Thames and Hudson, London, 2008.
However, Johnson bases the trilithons around the Primary Axis but we now know that Trilithons 3 and 4 are based on a separate axis.
Furthermore...In "Chalkland, an archaeology of Stonehenge and its region" by Andrew Lawson 2007 "Stonehenge was constructed symmetrically around a principal axial line which passed through the tallest trilithon, the bluestone settings, and the outer sarsen circle. Sorry Andrew, but the primary axis does not pass through the great trilithon or the bluestone oval and never did.
28. We start by proving Stonehenge’s Primary Axis.
We will superimpose one of its many ground plans on top of an idealized CAD version of where the 30 stone pillars of the outer circle ought to be.
Any one of several published ground plans will do - that made in 1989 by I forget who, Wood’s 1740 survey, Professor Gowland's plan of 1901 when he knew that the circle's axis did not pass centrally through the gap of the great trilithon. However, I have chosen Petrie's 1880 version for this task when we can see straight off that Stone 1 is misplaced slightly clockwise - no doubt wishing to capture as much incoming sunlight as possible.
Also... Stonehenge: Plans, Description, and theories. by W. M. Flinders Petrie:
"Taking up now the sarsens and inner bluestones, the inner bluestones are 472.7 inches in diameter."
Well, 472.7 imperial inches equals 14.5 Megalithic Yards. So, Petrie's 14.5 MY circle can now be placed on the plan view seen above. It's equally important to note that Petrie, appreciating that Stonehenge was an internal device, measured the bluestone horseshoe over the inside faces of its stones.
Finally, we trace the ground-plan-view onto tracing paper and fold it double to find and prove the Primary Axis. Before folding, we color code Petrie's stones to the northwest of the axis red and those to the southeast yellow. The following diagram shows the result of the folding.
29.
1. The result of our folding proves the Great trilithon to be offset from the Primary axis by about 0.6 of a Megalithic Yard.
2. Pillar 57 of Trilithon 4 is offset by 0.9 MY
3. Pillar 58 is offset 0.6 MY,
4. Pillar 60 of Trilithon 5 is not offset here, but a folding of Wood’s ground plan shows an offset of 0.3MY.
5. Bluestone Oval southwest (previously known as the 'Horseshoe') is offset by 0.45 MY (0.9 MY halved),
6. Altar Stone offset is 0.5 MY (1.0 MY halved)
7. It's hard to make out, but this image proves Stone 10, yellow, sitting on top of Stone 21, red, to be misplaced.
30. We now draw the secondary axis on which Trilithons 3, 4, and 5 are placed. And because the geometry of the bluestone oval is also cast from this same axis, we add this too.
First, notice a likely 30-megalithic-inch difference between the center of the outer circle and the center of the southwestern part of the oval, which today forms a horseshoe of 19 stones.
If we assume this 30 MI center distance to be correct, and it very likely is, we can say that the two axes are 18 megalithic inches apart; and that Stonehenge was based on a tiny 18:24:30, six-times-size 3:4:5, Pythagorean triangle.
Note how stones 55 and 56 of the Great Trilithon are separated by three megalithic yards, 1.5 MY on either side of the secondary axis.
We could also say that the Bluestone Oval, made up of a pair of 14.5 MY circles, represents, along with the 30 stones of the outer circle, the 29½ days of the lunar month - the same number the great visionary John Wood had hoped to find.
Also, the two centers of the Oval are spread apart by Stonehenge's most important number. The number three.
31. Again, using Johnson’s method but working to the secondary axis, we mark out the position of the inner faces of stones 57 and 58 of Trilithon 4.
32. Putting it all together and setting it against the modern digital - The cheek of the man!
The result of this work proves several things. Stone 56 of the Great trilithon - which was returned to the vertical and securely set in concrete by Col Gowland in 1901 - is about six imperial inches forward of the ideal position. Not that it's likely to be Gowland's fault!
Stone 16 is placed too close to what would become its neighbor 17 and is on the wrong axis, anyway. However, this could be the builder's way of allowing winter solstice sunlight to fall on the flattened rear face of the Great trilithon. But 16 does upset the geometry!
Those who planned and designed Stonehenge had passed away long before it was finished, and those charged with building it would come to learn the impossibility of the task. The more stones that were put up, the more those stones impeded the placement of others.
Only a modern crane, able to insert stones vertically, would be capable of building Stonehenge. And even then, it would have to be completed before the marks in the grass were washed away.
Sure, the positions for the stones of the sarsen circle were marked out and dug in preparation, but those positions would rapidly disappear. Then there was the technicality of Stonehenge's two axes only 16 imperial inches apart. Stonehenge was too technical to build.
The hypothesis of Stonehenge required a henge to be built alongside the river Avon at the start of Stonehenge Avenue (some wrongly say end).
Archaeologists found this henge in 2008/9 and named it The West Amesbury Henge. They claimed a circle of bluestones once stood in it. Hence the alternative name, Bluestonehenge. However, the excavated post holes are circular, showing that timbers stood in the post holes, not stones. This simple fact puts the hex on Professor Pearson's claim that Stonehenge is situated in an area reserved for the dead!
This is what Stukeley wrote of the trilithons...
"An oval formed as this is, upon two centers coinciding with each others circumference; or, which is the same thing, whose centers are distant from each other the length of their radius, is most natural and most beautiful, being the shape of an egg.!
Stonehenge: A temple restored to the British Druids. William Stukeley 1740.
Stonehenge and its 1,000 associated stone circles were follies built in a search for something never to be found. Dismantled and rebuilt many times over many years, Stonehenge was a product of procrastination by people who could not make up their minds. They were, after all, attempting the impossible.
Why did they want to make the moon pregnant?
Early farmers in Britain wanted a second sun to warm them in wintertime and to produce crops the whole year round. Built to collect, reflect and amplify sunlight, as does a modern-day LASER, Stonehenge was to be that baby sun.
Want more proof? Please press the Woodhenge button.