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The world’s oldest stone structure overlooks the Boyne River, thirty miles north of Dublin, Ireland and is one of prehistoric Europe's great archaeoastronomical wonders. In circa 3300 BCE, early Irish builders created the largest and most elaborate Neolithic tomb yet to be discovered. Facing the river, this megalithic masterpiece is a mound 30 feet high and over 260 feet in diameter. Above the entrance to the passageway is an opening between roof slabs that allows the sun at dawn on December 21st to create a subterranean light show.
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This is the day of the winter solstice; a day that the sun stops its retreat from the Northern Hemisphere and winter days begin to lengthen into Spring. It marked the beginning of the end of a long cold winter and the dawning of spring’s resurrection and therefore a promise of the deceased’s own resurrections well. It is a moment in time - once a year that the dead buried within can see and be warmed by the sunlight. In order to dispel any notion that this astronomical connection may have occurred by chance, an astrophysicist at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies investigated this phenomenon. He concluded that the central passage was aligned with the exact moment of the winter solstice sunrise 5,150 years ago. The complexity, workmanship, and precision of Newgrange means that the Neolithic people of Ireland already had a well established understanding of the heavens and the seasons as far back as 10,000 years ago.
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CALLANISH
Scotland - Circa 2000 BCE
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Throughout the British Isles and south across the channel in Brittany, there are hundreds of stone circles that were erected thousands of years ago. Of these, the most remote stands on a ridge above Loch Roag in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. Gigantic columns of rough cut stone still give silent confirmation of mankind's understanding of the skies and its cycles. It was about 2000 BCE that the peoples of the Isle of Lewis erected a series of stone pillars and roughly arranged them in the shape of a cross circled by a ring.
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The design of this site is oriented to the southern skies and centers around a five-ton megalith more than fifteen feet high and ringed by thirteen slightly shorter companion stones. According to Gerald Hawkins, these thirteen stones represent the “fundamental basis of a lunar solar calendar and could have been used for marking off the short years of twelve lunar months and the long years of thirteen lunar months. A similar system is still used in the Jewish calendar today.”
The ancient astronomers who erected Callanish would stand at the end of one of the short arms of the cross and then by sighting along that row, could see where the sun rose at the equinoxes. Callanish also marks the most northern and southern points of the moon's rising and setting in an effort to complement observations of the sun's journey between the solstices. As the moon slowly shifts towards its northern and southern most positions, it reaches a maximum position every 18.61 years.
The short line of north-south standing stones above the horizontal member of the cross aims directly at Polaris, the North Star that is the center of the sky's apparent rotation. This row is laid out with an incredible accuracy of a tenth of one degree.
It is apparent that the builders of this and other astronomical megalithic wonders were more than mere farmers. In order for these ancient peoples to mark the lunar extremes every 18.61 years, they had to have been making systematic observations over many generations.
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STONEHENGE
England - Circa 3000 BCE
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Another world famous archaeoastronomical site is Stonehenge, a circle of giant stone megaliths which sits upon the downland of Salisbury Plain in southern England.
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The question of who constructed this megalithic monument has been one of the great mysteries of prehistoric archaeology, but the reason of how and why has become more apparent in recent years. Though there are many fanciful theories surrounding the creation of Stonehenge, there are some facts that archaeoastronomers believe to be true. About 3000 BCE, Stonehenge began as a circular site defined by a huge bank with an external ditch. Holes in the ground suggest a series of large posts, or a circular timber building inside the ditch that was an earlier wooden version of the present megalithic monument.
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Then, because of fire or centuries of aging, the wood was replaced sometime between 2500 and 2000 BCE by tall rectangular blue stones that were brought over 135 miles from the Preseli Mountains in southwest Wales. The two rings of giant arches were built of sandstone blocks and transported twenty-five miles south from Marlborough Downs. The largest and most massive of these are trilithons and make up the inner circle. They stand at an impressive twenty-two feet tall and weigh a massive forty-five tons each.
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Scholars now believe that the builders of Stonehenge could have completed this massive structure in twenty years. If this were true, then why would a people spend so much time erecting this monument? Most likely, like other megalithic sites, it was an attempt to connect a people to the power of heaven and therefore, their gods. It is unlikely that anyone would build such a monumental structure if they were not driven by a need to make a connection with the nature and workings of the heavens. Our ancient ancestors of the British Isles were not only building something as impressive as the heavens themselves, they were creating a gathering place for members of a tribal community. Here they would seasonally associate themselves with the clockwork of the universe and reinforce the celestial authority of the ruling chieftain.
Presumably, it is not a coincidence that Stonehenge is aligned to the rising of the summer solstice sun. It is probably not by mere chance that when the sun rises above the Heel Stone on the morning of the summer solstice it would cast a shadow touching the Altar Stone. Many believe that as the sun makes its annual passage across the sky, Stonehenge acts as a calendar, charting the passage of the seasons and accurately marking this yearly event. According to astronomers such as Gerald Hawkins and Sir Fred Hoyle, this magnificent accomplishment of Neolithic engineering is a prehistoric observatory of solar and lunar transits. They contend that by drawing two sets of parallel lines to connect the four Station Stone sites, one could define opposing positions of the sun at the summer and winter solstices. It would also define a lunar cycle of 18.5 years. Hawkins and Hoyle conclude that Stonehenge is a Neolithic computer that is also capable of forecasting eclipses of the sun and the moon. These theories are unproven at this time.
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