1. Hi. If you have come through from Stonehengeology.com and read it through, you will know that the number three is the most important Stone Age number. And since triangles have three sides...
Welcome to Avebury Decoded: A 2021 survey, starting with Avebury’s Cove.
A picture of the Cove is shown above with a couple of stones that remain of Avebury’s Northern Circle, one at extreme left and the other at extreme right.
The Cove once consisted of three large stones, or megaliths, arranged in a ‘U’ shape, like an open-sided box. The slim Stone 1 with an angular top is, as we shall see, male and phallic.
The massive Stone 2, in the middle of the picture, is often referred to as the 'Back-stone,' but whether the Back-stone was regarded as female by Avebury’s designers is doubtful. Either way, this stone is thought by archaeologists to have been planted upright around five thousand years ago and is the earliest and largest stone to arrive on the site.
Stone 3 had fallen or was pulled down in 1713, smashed into pieces, and whisked away for other purposes by Avebury’s villagers in 1720. So said Doctor William Stukeley, who described Stone 3 as similar in size and appearance to Stone 1. Therefore, Stone 3 was male and phallic too.
Opinions have varied on the Cove’s astronomical alignment. Some have claimed that it opens out towards the summer solstice of the sun. Others have said that it aims at the Standstill of the Moon. Such confusing opinions prompted several visits to the Cove to make sense of it.
2. My first survey of the Cove, published in “Stonehenge Secrets 2007," was to show that its two remaining stones are set precisely 90 degrees apart. The above photograph shows my 90-degree triangle of string, which I placed against the inner faces of Stones 1 and 2 to prove it.
Unfortunately, I could not get an early morning photograph of the summer solstice to clarify the Cove's alignment because of atrocious weather.
3. Having shown the cove’s stones to be set precisely 90 degrees apart, white tapes were placed against the sides of Stone 1 that could only be parallel to the Cove’s axis. I also put a couple of menus from the Red Lion pub in-line with this stone, not that they turned out to be much help!
But with tapes and menus placed and a camera at the ready, me and the Druid waited patiently for the sun to rise.
I got the photograph I wanted and placed it on the front cover of a leaflet I produced and presented to the top libraries in 2010. “The Real Avebury” ISBN 978-0-95533012-6-1. This photograph proves that the Cove aims about five degrees further north than the solstice. And, since the Major Standstill of the Moon is about nine degrees further north than the sun --the Cove is aimed midway between the two.
The Druid conveniently marks the Major Standstill to show where the moon will appear in late 2024 if given clear skies. Let us hope someone captures a valuable picture of it!
4. This Photo was taken a few seconds after the actual solstice. This and the following picture prove that Avebury folk were not so much interested in the exact point of the solstice as to what happens a little while later.
This has profound implications for other monuments, especially Stonehenge with its 50-degree axis, which is 1.5-degrees clockwise from the Neolithic and Bronze Age solstice.
5. The inner face of Stone 2 -- 'The Backstone' as seen shortly after sunrise.
I had my solstice photograph and was about to leave when the druid called me over. “You are missing the best bit,” he cried. “Come over here and look at this.”
“What am I looking for?” I inquired.
“Never mind that -- you just keep clicking away at that camera.
And so, I did.
Early folks had not altered this stone by flattening and polishing it, but it hardly matters because five minutes after sunrise, when the sun escapes the earth's atmosphere, this stone gives off a beautiful rosy-red glow that no one should miss. Imagine what it would look like if cleaned free of lichen to expose the myriad of quartz crystals in its structure!
Without being prompted, the druid pointed towards a burnt stone that lays several meters away that he believed once served as an altar. However, whether the Cove had an altar or not, it did not prevent the Back-stone from acting as a mirror that joined the sun and moon in Astronomical Intercourse.
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Several excavations around the bases of the Cove’s two remaining sarsens have been performed over the years. But the most critical excavation was made in 2003, when, in a rescue attempt to prevent the stones from collapsing, archaeologists dug deeper than ever before and found ripe-husk-free barley seed against the base of the Back-stone's outer face.
Neolithic Avebury folks had placed these seeds believing that seeds possessed the very essence of life, and depositing them at the base of the Back-stone, displays a wish for something to grow. - Presumably, the Stone!
6. If ever a stone would benefit from a good scrubbing, this one would!
Few things archaeological can be proved beyond doubt. The alignment of Avebury's Cove is one of the exceptions. That is why I made another visit on the 20th of September 2021, with a crude Tee-square and affixed compass, to reaffirm the alignment that I had found in 2009. It did. The compass showed the Backstone to have an azimuth of 48 degrees - midway between the northernmost risings of the sun and moon.
7. The Tee-square proved the inner face of the Backstone to have a slight outwards bow, so this photograph was taken with the Tee-square placed in the middle of the stone to give an average result.
We should expect the moon, in late 2024, to rise out of the notch in the horizon seen between the tallest tree and one of the remaining stones of the Northern Circle. This bulbous stone is female gender, as no doubt was the whole Northern Circle and every stone in it.
Furthermore, while it is convenient to describe stone rings as circles, Avebury’s Northern Circle was not circular but egg-shaped. That egg points west towards the equinox and to where the setting sun and moon slide down the northern end of the beautiful Cherhill Hill.
8. Why do we bother giving credence to archaeologists... ?
Archaeological excavations at the Cove, 2003. This plan of the Cove by today’s archaeologists solves nothing. The stones are drawn too far apart for real life, the five-meter scale is hopelessly inaccurate, and the north arrow is 30 degrees out.
Here we have just one more archaeological Red Herring designed to put researchers like me off, and it doesn't bode well for when we try to resolve Avebury's second cove to be found in Longstone's field near the village of Beckhampton.
The Longstone's Cove, or what is left of it, lies alongside the prehistoric Beckhampton Avenue of stone that once entered - not exited - the Avebury Henge via its western causeway.
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Avebury's Henge has long been known to be an internal device... 'I observed further, that as these stones generally have a rough and a smoother side, they took care to place the most sightly side of the stone inward, towards the included area.' Avebury, a temple to the British Druids. Stukeley W, 1727.
Professor Atkinson said the same thing about Stonehenge...'The main concern of the builders was to produce a presentable finish on those surfaces which would be seen from the interior of the site - the exception being the great trilithon.' Stonehenge, page 121. Atkinson R, 1956.
So, Avebury and Stonehenge were internal devices.
9. I did say that triangles have three sides. And every one of these triangles is proportional to 3:4:5 -- the most basic Pythagorean triangle of all.
Having established that the Cove in the middle of Avebury's Northern Circle - or egg, is rectangular, we next wanted to know the distance between Stone 1 and the extant Stone 3. And that is without resorting to an archaeological excavation to determine the position of the hole in which Stone 3 once stood. Fortunately, we only had to estimate this distance to the nearest megalithic yard. (32.664 imperial inches, 0.83 meters)
The Tee-square was sat on the grass and once more up against the inner face of the Back-stone. And with the help of a friendly day-tripper from Dudley, we positioned the Tee-square, by common consent, to be in the middle of the stone. A measurement was then taken from the inner face of Stone 1 to the Tee-square of sixteen feet six inches. This figure was then doubled to give a distance between Stones 1 and 3 of thirty-three feet, which converts to twelve-megalithic yards.
Next, we estimated the distance from the inner face of the Back-stone to the center of Stone 1. This was four megalithic yards -- which, when doubled, gave eight in all.
These rough measurements show that the Cove is set on an eight by twelve megalithic-yard rectangle.
Avebury's eight by twelve megalithic-yard Cove has...
* Sixty-four half-size Pythagorean triangles, measuring 1.5 by 2.0 by 2.5 Megalithic Yards.
* Sixteen triangles measuring 3, 4, and 5 Megalithic Yards.
* Four triangles that measure 6, 8, and 10 Megalithic Yards.
Numerically, four blue triangles are needed to make one green triangle, and eight green triangles are required to make one red triangle. So, the unequivocal Stone Age aim was for the Cove to grow exponentially -- Just like a child's growth.
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Avebury’s Cove is akin to baking a cake. Apart from Numerics and three-sided triangles, which are known to represent the family, other Ingredients are --- The power of the sun to fertilize, Barley and Wheat seeds which hold one of the secrets of life inside them, semen, infant burials (as found at the Longstone's Cove), and other unknown stuff, amongst which is an unproven wooden wheel or two -- unproven -- having rotted away long ago. But, with cannon bones found in some monuments, they did have small horses!
Geometry with "corners." Let's consider the geometry of Avebury's outer circuit of stones...
10. Avebury's Cove is shown above as correctly placed in the middle of Avebury's Northern Circle. (William Stukeley's "Lunar Temple")
The Northern Circle is shown above as a true circle prescribed by being placed against four known stones and the Southern Circle against its eight. However, we have plenty of information to show that these are not proper circles but ovals -- Specifically, eggs.
Nevertheless, it is better at this stage to leave the problem of these eggs behind for a while so we can concentrate on Avebury’s outer circuit.
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Much of the following is thanks to a survey by Professor Alexander Thom. Thom's survey showed that the outer circuit was based on at least one 3:4:5 triangle. "Megalithic Sites in Britain by A Thom, Oxford University Press 1967."
Further to Thom’s work, excellent aerial photographs of Avebury are to be had these days, courtesy of Google Earth and Bing Maps. These photographs show the actual positions of Avebury’s megaliths and concrete plinths that replace the missing stones. However, Google’s image was slightly out of true in the vertical plane and required a minor correction.
So, the Google image was tweaked to concur with Thom's surveyed measurements between Stone16 and 68 and Stone1 and 50. This had the advantage of scaling Avebury's internal stone settings down, not up. Scaling up is the ridiculously inaccurate method most often used by archaeologists, who are dead against solving anything!
A small red or black circle represents the position of each stone. Black circles show those stones which have never been disturbed and are still in their original places. The center of these circles was not filled in to make visible those stones that needed correcting to suit the now-corrected Google Earth.
CAD (Computer aided design) found nothing seriously wrong with Thom’s survey, but corrections were made by moving some circles by the smallest amount to match actual stone positions. This highlights that a modern GPS survey should be done -- if not already. And since Avebury is an internal device, those measurements should be taken against the inside faces of the stones, not their centers, as Alexander Thom did.
And all this is not to mention that a proper survey, plotted on CAD, should give a more accurate estimate of the value of the Stone Age standard unit of measurement, known as the Megalithic Yard.
11. Getting to grips with Avebury’s geometry.
Professor Thom must be congratulated for resolving the geometry of Avebury’s outer ring of megaliths while dealing with its axis of 42 degrees clockwise from north. This was no easy task.
Thanks to Thom, we can set the geometry to normal, which makes our job straightforward!
Now, you might think that this geometry is solely the work of Professor Thom. It is not. It is essentially the same, but Thom failed to find or omitted the 30:40:50 triangle and the 250 MY radius cast from its corner F.
Thom did believe in a second triangle, though, and had he found it -- or perhaps deliberately omitted it -- he'd have known that it led to lots more, as is demonstrated by the mass of 3:4:5 triangles shown inscribed (for fun) on a gold plate, shown next.
12. Avebury’s early residents probably realized how many triangles, proportional to 3:4:5, could make the rectangle seen above and probably produced it on a sheet of gold that measured seven-and-a-half by ten megalithic inches. Like what the Stonehengers did when they made their nine-megalithic-inch-long lozenge of gold, which they buried across the chest of their Bush Barrow Man.
The above geometry made Avebury the most popular place 5,000 years ago and drew visitors from miles around to help build the outer circuit of some ninety-nine stones. Pro Thom thought ninety-eight. Others say one hundred. But, hey, who is arguing?
13. The founding geometry of Avebury's outer ring.
Having marked out stages A and B, Avebury folk next cast a 750-radius arc from a post 550 megalithic yards from D of the small triangle. Well, that’s the theory! But the question is, how did early folk produce such a large arc using only wooden pegs and stretchy ropes?
We can see from Image C2 that a cord 244 megalithic yards long, when stretched across a 750-radius circle, stands off the arc by ten megalithic yards. Scaling down ten times, or one hundred times, is, therefore, not difficult to do.
Few coordinates are needed to produce a good 750 My arc. With very few pegs, the eye can quickly improve these large curves.
This 750 MY radius was first produced on Windmill Hill, Avebury's oldest monument, started in 3,350BC. See report later.
14. Finally, we revolve our plan of Avebury 48 degrees anticlockwise to respect true north and aim its 750-radius antenna at the northernmost rising moon.
As with the other great henge's, Avebury has long been known to be a womb, but producing a convincing argument in the face of archaeological corruption has always been the problem. So, what proves it?
1. A Cove aligned midway between the summer solstice and the Major Standstill designed to bring the sun and moon together in the middle of a geometric, equinoctial aligned stone egg.
2. The exclusive moon-aligned outer circuit of the female gender, pointing too far north to be aligned with the sun.
3. The moon-aligned West Kennet Avenue umbilical connecting the henge to its child -- The Sanctuary.
4. The moon-aligned Beckhampton Avenue -- a fallopian connecting Avebury to a ring-ditch ovary, mathematically expressing growth, and the second cove in Longstone’s field.
5. An extant but suggestive perforated stone near the south exit to the female West Kennet Avenue.
As well as all this, we have Woodhenge, near Stonehenge, as a moon-aligned egg, which proves that early folks believed the moon to be female.
15. Moel ty Ucha: From "Megalithic sites in Britain" by A Thom. Latitude 52.9236 Longitude - 3.5054. Llandrillo, Bala, Wales This is another of Professor Thom's surveys after being corrected. This one is based on a pentagon.
16. Kerry Pole stone circle. From "Megalithic sites in Britain" by A Thom. Latitude 52.4662, Longitude - 3.2413. Near Newton Pow, Wales.
The reason for placing Professor Alexander Thom's corrected survey of Kerry Pole's stone circle, or ring seen above, is simply because the professor produced geometry that passed through the center of its stones when he should have worked to their inside faces. This was commonplace with Thom and means that every one of his 500 stone circle surveys needs correcting.
I have so far corrected eight of the most important of them and will be dropping them into convenient slots as I've done with the one above.
I favor placing Kelly Pole here because it shows certain affinities with Avebury's outer ring. First, it pays respect to Avebury's use of the 3:4:5 smallest of Pythagorean triangles but in linear form, with circle center spacings of 3, 4, and 5. Furthermore, it has what Professor Thom called "corners" when referring to his survey of Avebury's outer ring.
I might even go so far as to say that whoever designed Kerry Pole must have traveled over 200 miles from Newport to Wiltshire to help create much of Avebury.
Hirnant: set on a non-Pythagorean triangle, uses Alexander Thom's Megalithic Inch to solve its geometry.
17. A logic dictate. The Ordinance Survey looked for depressions and fiery pits over which Avebury’s stones were felled in preparation for their destruction. So, their survey did not show where the stones once stood. The OS plot is, therefore, only valuable for suggesting that the north and south circles are anything but circular. And while it might be years before archaeologists get around to proving that the northern and southern circles are eggs, I see no reason for assuming those eggs, and their founding geometry, to have appeared as shown above.
These eggs are variations on a theme. Both are based on the same-size simple three-times-size 3:4:5 triangle but are orientated in diverse ways. The Northern egg, shown pink, with an axis length of 248 MY, is three megalithic yards shorter than the southern egg at 251 MY, as one might expect from a female entity.