Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was (28 page)

When we looked at the movement of the Moon we found that the Earth experiences 27.3217 days for every one of the Moon’s days (which is the same as one lunar orbit of the Earth). While the number 27.3217 sounds entirely arbitrary a quick calculation showed that the Moon makes 366 orbits in just 10,000 Earth days!

A Megalith Second of arc and a second of time were the same thing, and are equal to 366 Megalithic Yards at the equator. This makes our modern, non-integrated system look pathetically unsophisticated.

¹
Heath, R.:
Sun, Moon and Earth.
Wooden Books Ltd, London, 2001.

²
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html

³
Microsoft
®
Encarta
®
, 2003.

⁴
Gribbin, J. and Plagemann, S.:
The Jupiter Effect.
New English Library, London, 1980.

⁵
Knight, C. and Lomas, R.:
Uriel’s Machine.
Arrow, London, 2000.

We had set out to investigate a tightly defined question: ‘Had Professor Alexander Thom been correct in believing that the Megalithic builders had used a standard unit of 82.96656 centimetres?’ We were able to conclude that he was absolutely right by identifying the reason why the unit was important and by replicating the precise technique used to make it.

Having confirmed that Thom’s brilliant work was indeed valid, a harmless little follow-up experiment into potential Megalithic units of weight and capacity produced such outrageous results that we quickly found ourselves catapulted into a far broader and more complex investigation. This eventually led us on a strange journey that culminated in the rediscovery of an ancient mathematical matrix that echoes some of the deepest patterns of the solar system.

Scientific theories are ways of explaining the world we see around us and the proof of a theory normally comes from making a prediction that is subsequently demonstrated to be correct. Alexander Thom did not make predictions regarding his Megalithic units but, in identifying them so accurately, he laid the ground for them to be subsequently proven. In addition, the fact that even he accepted that there was then no plausible explanation for how such exact units could exist over such a large area also provides a mechanism to demonstrate that he was correct.

If Thom’s Megalithic Yard and the Half Megalithic Yard had been nothing more than phantoms erroneously generated from his huge collection of data, as many archaeologists have suggested, then the lengths concerned should be meaningless. The fact that these precise units define the length of a pendulum that gives 366 beats during Venus’ path across one 366th of a day is unlikely to be a random chance event.

The technique of replicating the Megalithic Yard requires only simple tools and minimal astronomical knowledge – and it provides an elegantly simple explanation of how the unit was so consistently accurate across time and space. Each user merely created their own measuring rod by timing the turning of the Earth.

Our initial suspicion that a system of prehistoric geometry based on 366 degrees had been in use for thousands of years and across a large geographical area was confirmed as we looked more closely at known and accepted ancient measuring systems. For there to be exactly 1,000 Minoan feet to the Megalithic Second of arc is as stunning as Thomas Jefferson’s observation that a precise 1,000 ounces make up a cubic foot of water. From this and other open-minded observations, America’s third president concluded that there must be some ancient intelligence underlying the apparently arbitrary measuring units of his day – and now, so have we.

From the previously available evidence the world had reasonably assumed that humans first invented the crudest form of science and principles of measurement some 5,000 years ago and that we have progressed from rough measures, based on paces or approximate body parts, to our refined modern measures across the intervening millennia. But the evidence put forward in this book turns this worldview on its head.

We have found that the further back in time we go, the greater the interconnection between units – and the deep science behind the very oldest measures makes modern systems seem arbitrary and trivial. It appears that before history was written there was an apparently single approach to measurement units that was based on the physical realities of the Sun, the Moon and the Earth.

Of course, such a description of history is counterintuitive. But it is important to remember that several leading experts studying the development of language have already surprised the academic community by concluding that the thousands of languages across the globe all stemmed from a single proto-language. In effect, the further back in time one looks – the greater the conformity. The intuitive, but incorrect, assumption had always been the reverse – that the spoken word began as thousands of tribal tongues that slowly evolved into regional and then national languages.

If our observations are correct, even in part, then archaeology will have to throw away its old paradigm of the development of civilization and build a new picture that will be very different. Furthermore, modern science will have to accept that there is a great deal to learn about the way our world works by looking closely at this long forgotten Great Underlying Principle.

This will not be easy for the academic community. Archaeology has held out against accepting Alexander Thom’s theories by failing to put sufficient energy into confirming or disproving his data and his conclusions. The discipline’s collective inaction has allowed archaeology to retain its old views intact – but the evidence put forward in this book is infinitely more simple to understand and to check than Thom’s specialist methodology and heavyweight data.

Science is regarded as a process governed by rationality, logic and truth. The scientist is expected to carefully and objectively observe, collect and classify information before formulating a hypothesis in order to explain the data and to predict what might happen under various conditions. All theories are subject to modification or replacement as new knowledge is generated. If it were not so we would all still subscribe to the views of Thales who, in the 6th century
BC
, described the Earth as a flat disc floating on water that he called ‘the universal element’.

The information we have uncovered may be ignored by many, but we feel sure that the principles of science will cause it to be carefully examined by experts from different disciplines. We greatly look forward to others taking our findings and developing a bigger and broader picture of the origins of civilization. We also realize that it may take a little time.

Astronomer Professor Archie Roy once told Chris that academia follows a three-point pattern when new information comes from an ‘out-of-discipline’ source:

1. First it will suggest you are mad and try to ignore you.

2. Then, when you don’t go away, it will say, ‘Okay, show me your thesis and I will point out why you are wrong.’

3. Finally it will say, ‘Well, yes – of course, we knew that all along.’

We hope that Professor Roy is right.

We are confident of our facts because all of the original input data we have used comes from entirely respectable sources – people who are expert in their own fields. The vast bulk of the data used, from the length of the Minoan foot to the mass of the Earth, is not debated by everyone. The sums we have done are able to be checked by anyone with a calculator and a basic knowledge of mathematics, so the calculations are either right or they are wrong.

If the facts we quote are correct and our maths is not flawed, any debate about our thesis will centre on interpretation. We have been as careful as we can be to only assume a
potential
connection where a numerical fit has been very defined and we have secondary corroborating factors. For example, we have not as yet felt able to include the Japanese shaku or the Spanish vara in our big picture, despite very close fits.

We have soundly rejected the notion of a gigantic string of coincidences. Consider, for instance, Thomas Jefferson’s brand new units of length that just happened to have precisely 1,000 such units to 360 Megalithic Yards. His use of the Sumerian second of time for a pendulum inadvertently tied him into the ancient underlying pattern.

However confident we feel about our findings we must finally make sure that we are not fooling ourselves by creating patterns that do not really exist. Mathematics is certainly an area where ‘pattern seekers’ can delude themselves.

Indeed, the first reaction of many scientists when they hear of our thesis may well be to assume that we are simply pattern seekers. It is an entirely reasonable assumption before the facts are viewed. So, have we deluded ourselves in this way? Perhaps the best way to judge is to look at a couple of well-known examples of delusional pattern-building.

In 1859 John Taylor wrote a book entitled
The Great Pyramid,
in which he observed that if one divides the height of the pyramid into twice the size of its base, the result is very close to the ratio we call pi. Others later observed that the base of the Great Pyramid divided by the width of a casing stone equals the number of days in the year. And later still, it was discovered that if one multiplies the height of the Great Pyramid to the 109th power, the result is the approximate distance from the Earth to the Sun. Taylor’s original point is mathematically close and may or may not have been a deliberate design feature of this single structure. But in our view the other points are simply poppycock. So, there is no pattern here, just a one-off observation without any connection to anything else, for example, the other two pyramids at Giza. This bears no similarity to the systematic fits we have been finding underpinning ancient weights and measures.

Another much-quoted case involved mathematician Martin Gardner, who thought that all pattern seeking is foolishness. He set out to make his point by analysing the Washington Monument to deliberately produce a spurious pattern. He found that the number 5 could be shown to be inherent in the structure as follows:

The height of the monument is 555 feet and 5 inches while its base is 55 feet square. The windows are set at 500 feet from the base and if the base is multiplied by 60 (5 times the number of months in a year) the result is 3,300, which is the exact weight of the capstone in pounds. In addition, he pointed out that the word ‘Washington’ has exactly 10 letters (2 x 5). Finally, if the weight of the capstone is multiplied by the size of the base, the number 181,500 is produced – which is just under 3 per cent away from being the speed of light in miles per second.

Gardner’s pattern was created to demonstrate the futility of making patterns with otherwise meaningless numbers. But he had no mathematical pattern at all. There was no reason for choosing the number 5 and there is no mathematical relationship at all between the area of the base and the height of the Monument. There is no reason for introducing the number of months in a year and it is meaningless to multiply units of weight by units of area to produce a speed measured in miles per second. This ‘approximation’ to the speed of light is wildly out, even if there were any reason for introducing it in the first place.

We are grateful to Martin Gardner for putting our minds at rest by demonstrating how difficult it is to invent patterns that do not exist.

We started out with a working hypothesis that the Earth was divided into 366 degrees, 60 minutes and 6 seconds to produce a second of arc on the Earth’s circumference that is 366 Megalithic Yards (and 1,000 Minoan feet). This has produced such a range of fruitful results we believe it has to be accepted as real. We were stunned, and very confused, when we found the same geometric divisions are applied to the Moon and the Sun:

A lunar second of arc that is 100 Megalithic Yards long

A solar second of arc that is 40,000 Megalithic Yards long