|
No offence taken :-)
Yes, I believe the evidence is strongly in favour of it being a lunar-solar calendar with eclipse-prediction capabilities.
It's more than just a simple solstice marker - for instance, the long axis of the Station Stone rectangle is oriented on the extreme southern moonrise in an 18.6 year cycle. I've witnessed the effect of this for myself.
Once you've got a culture noticing and marking things like an 18.6 year moon cycle, you're into more than basic 'bung a post in the ground' astrometrics.
One of the earliest reference we've got (Diodorus, 50BC) says:
… Hecateus [~350BC - SGB] and certain others say that in the region beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily. This island… is inhabited by the Hyperboreans… there is also on the island a magnificent sacred precinct of Apollo and a notable temple adorned with many votive offerings and spherical in shape. They also say how the moon viewed from this island appears to be but a little distance from the earth… the god visits the island every 19 years, the period in which the return of the stars to the same place in the heavens is accomplished; and for this reason the 19-year period is called by the Greeks the year of Meton.
... and he's almost certainly talking about Stonehenge ('precinct of Apollo') and Callanish ('god visits the island') and these monuments share many commonalities (not least a common measuring unit in their construction).
We've had the same inquisitive brains for over 50,000 years, that's a lot of time to think about the sky - especially when there's no telly yet.
--
simon
|
