PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN
GOLDSMITH
During the space age and the Age of Aquarius, an
English astronomer named Gerald Hawkins published Stonehenge
Decoded, in 1966. At a time where most people have never
seen a computer, Hawkins plotted 165 positions on the
Stonehenge site, to work out astronomical alignments. The
results showed that Stonehenge did exhibit alignments with the
sun and moon. The main axis of the monument faces the horizon
where the Sun rises midsummer morning, which is the longest
day of the year. Not only that, but the Aubrey holes (56 pits
there are located in the inner ring), matched up with lunar
eclipses over a 56 year cycle.
In
1906, Sir Norman Lockyer, published Stonehenge and Other British
Stone Monuments Astronomically Considered. He believed that the
stones were aligned on an annual cycle. That led to a heated
debate over the decades. In 1966, C. A. Peter Newham published
an article in Lockyers science magazine called Stonehenge a
Neolithic observatory. He suggested that the holes were
used for observing moonrises over many
18.6-year cycles.
One year later, in 1967 Alexander Thom,
a former professor of Oxford University, published Megalithic
Sites in Britain . He believed that the stones
used units of measurement and particular geometrical
constructions, and carried out detailed observations of the
sun, moon and stars.
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