This is the first book review – Douglas Heggie, ‘Megalithic Science: ancient mathematics and astronomy in NW Europe‘ – Thames and Hudson:1981 … The first half of the book concerns the designs of the stone circles and stone rows etc. It is the second half that deals with a theory of their purpose, what caused the angst of archaeologists who had their own ideas of what kind of society inhabited northern Europe in the Neolithic and Bronze ages. In the second half was the hope he could find a purpose for astronomical alignments – at whatever level. He was basically making an assessment of Alexander Thom’s work over 40 years, surveying stone circles in western Britain. He wades through a controversy that marred the 1960s and 1970s, that all went silent in the end with Thom a forgotten figure of the past. It had resulted in Ruggles coming up with a compromise, the rejection of long alignments to the horizon but an acceptance of solar alignments – and to a lesser extent, lunar alignments. Although the latter are not often taken seriously – at Stonehenge for an example. In fact, the position advocated and controlled by Ruggles in the archaeoastronomical community, eventually led to a big question by another academic, who feigned ignorance = Ronald Hutton, The Strange History of Archaeoastronomy‘ see https://doi.org/10.1558/jsmcr7i4.376 … that revolved around the query that for 40 years [since the 1970s] archaeologists and archaeoastronomers have ignored each other, each one writing articles in their own journals and taking no notice of anything said by the other. Archaeoastronomy has stagnated but archaeology has continued to improve in technique. During that 40 years archaeoastronomy had become embroiled with cultural archaeoastronomy and ethnoarchaeoastronomy, and various other highblown ideas double dutch to most people. Hutton’s query, as far as I can tell, has not really been addressed apart from some platitudes. That is the current state of play – since Heggie wrote his book archaeoastronomy has not come to anything of note. Hence, it is worth looking at what Heggie had to say.
Heggie was a fellow Scot and sympathetic to Thom, yet was not entirely convinced by the latter’s entire package. He claims to look at the ideas of Thom through the lens of science. His thesis is to test the science of Thom, mainly with the use of statistics. However, it seems this book too was largely ignored by the archaeologists of the 1970s. The fight back against Ruggles was mainly led by Euan MacKie – and New Age people with their own agenda. As it was, Heggie points out that Thom was unlucky in that his first book came out not long after that of Gerald Hawkins ‘Stonehenge Decoded‘ which found so many alignments there that he virtually claimed it was the equivalent of a computer [at a time when computers had taken off amongst the general public]. Heggie more or less claims the archaeologists could not stomach two assaults on their discipline and conspired to neuter Thom rather than Hawkins – although both were kicked out of polite conversation in a very short space of time. As always, mainstream expressed their resistance to the new ideas as protecting Joe Public from an obvious false theory. Why on earth such people think ordinary people are unable to sort the wheat from the chaff is only known to them. Although, as Hawkins had been a Jodrell Bank astronomer he did have a certain amount of clout. Thom himself didn’t really fight back, at least in public, and presented himself as a gentleman of the old school. That is why it was so easy to dismiss him as they could say virtually what they wanted knowing he would not retaliate. Instead, he went back to his surveying work, mostly with his son in tow as two people were necessary, and came back a few years later with another book. This time concentrating on lunar alignments and ditching stellar alignments that had aroused a lot of the ire.
Heggie notes that visitors to a megalithic ring perceive them all to be circular – some more round than others. However, on close inspection an accurate plan of the stones reveals they are not always circular in a precise sense. This fact, of itself, may have thrown you average archaeologist, or academic. They assumed they were circular, or intended to be circular. Thom showed otherwise. Some are flattened circles, others seem to be ellipses, or oval, and still others have an egg shape. Some of them have ‘an axis of symmetry’ – that is, half the site on one side of the axis is in some respects a mirror image of the other side. The existence of this axis of symmetry has been demonstrated by an archaeologist, John Barber. In a study of a group of rings in Co Cork and Co Kerry in Ireland. It was in the surveys of these shapes that Thom realised there was a geometry to them – involved in the laying out of the circles. He went on to say that few attempts have since been made by others to apply Thom’s classification to new sites he did not survey. Thom’s geometry, the use of Pythagorean triangles, may not strictly be true as others have come up with different methodology to account for the ellipses and egg shaped circles. Such as IO Angell, a mathematician at the University of London, and TM Cowan, an American professor of psychology. Heggie suggests these alternative ideas were more simple and therefore more likely – or something akin to them.
In chapter 3 Heggie turns to the megalithic yard, and metrology in general. Thom was convinced the builders very often used a common unit of measure. Not always of course as some of them do not display such a trait. However, Stukeley also said the same thing – back in 1743. In 1895, archaeologist AL Lewis did as well [and at a number of sites]. In early 20th century a government surveyor, a P Stephan, found evidence of a unit of measure in Poland. Thom went on to stimulate research into ancient metrology even though his megalithic yard has never been verified by mainstream. Various statistical tests have been done on Thom’s theories and this produced different results by different statisticians. Heggie concludes that evidence of a unit of length in cup and ring marks is poor as many of them do not conform to such a unit – the megalithic inch. Evidence for a universal unit of length is not as compelling as Thom and others maintain. That is largely the view of mainstream down to this day.
Thom initially proposed a few stellar alignments, in particular towards the star Rigel. By the time his first book had been published he he had forsaken them – partly because radiocarbon had rendered them unlikely. Raising the dates of the stone circles had cancelled out his carefully laid stellar alignments as a result of changes in the obliquity of the equinox. Thom appears to have shifted focus on to eclipses, possibly taking his cue from Hawkins. Archaeologists like the idea of eclipses as a means to hoodwink the peasants.
Jaquetta Hawkes was a particular critic of Thom, mostly as her discipline and research was prehistory. The idea there were intelligent people living in the prehistoric period was anathema to a lot of academics. However, her critique, seriously misinterpreted what Thom was saying. Fred Hoyle chipped in, as he was inclined on such things, and muddied the stable further. Heggie goes on to ask, how primitive were the technical skills of the megalith builders. They were on the back of several thousand years of farming activity and displayed carpentry skills as good as those of the modern world. When you consider the size of the stones they were moving around you have to think they were a bit more clever than academics in the 1970s gave them credit for. Archaeologists still don’t know how they were able to cut blocks out of rock formations in order to create menhirs and huge standing stones, and transport them to chosen sites that could be several miles distant – if not longer.
Dating of the megalithic structures has now changed again, as a result of C14 calibration with tree rings, and a conscious decision to use Egyptian chronology as a base point to do that. However, C14 dates over the last couple of thousand years are reliable. It is only when you reach the Hallstatt Plateau that problems begin to occur. A couple of centuries of Iron Age history are missing. Logically, this implies Egyptian chronology is not as robust as mainstream believe. Nowadays, Thom’s stone circles are roughly between 2200 and 1900BC. Now what was happening in the rest of the world at this time?
Basically, Heggie is saying that Thom’s ideas were dismissed instead of being checked out, and statistically, the Rigel alignment, for example, was untenable. Professor John North invoked Rigel too – as I will elaborate on later. An interesting read and one to go back to later, I imagine. Overall, as he did not come out firmly in favour of Thom this book probably added to the sceptical argument, even though he apparently was open to more investigation of the geometry and metrology.