AVEBURY

18. The setting sun at the equinox, as seen from Avebury’s Cove on the 20th of September 2021. This is what the stone egg that once surrounded Avebury’s Cove pointed at. The "Backstone" can be seen in the picture.

Had I known, when this picture was taken, that this was the evening of the Harvest Moon, I would have stayed a while. The moon rose about three-quarters of an hour after this picture was taken, but I was well on my way back home by then. Furthermore, had I waited until around 11 o’clock, and if the miserable person who wanted me out of the way had not deceived me, I would have been able to photograph the moon as she set in the same place as the setting sun. From Neolithic man's perspective, the moon follows the sun around, but she never quite gets to join him.

21. One more thing before we move out of Avebury to study its Sanctuary, stone avenues, and a second cove at Beckhampton.

Ground penetrating surveys made by P. J. Ucko and others showed that an egg-shaped array of post holes holding sixty-seven upright timbers or stones once existed in the northeast sector of the Avebury Henge.

These posts pinned down the cardinal points north, east, south, and west with great precision and divided the horizon into thirty-six lots of 10 degrees.

We could continue to inundate the Array with even more 10-degree lines to the point where it becomes unintelligible, but there is no need.

Several monuments had to obey the "The Stone Age 10-degree rule" propounded by the 5,200-year-old Arminghall Henge of Norfolk, where the idea probably originated.

With axes pointing precisely 50 degrees from north, Stonehenge obeys the 10-degree rule, too. So does Woodhenge, near Stonehenge. So does Mount Pleasant in Dorset, where the Beaker People, travelling south from Stonehenge post 2,500 BC, took the idea to new heights.

22. The interesting thing about the Array is that the azimuths of the sun and moon make tangents with its rings when seen from the Cove.

So what was the Array for?

We know that Stone Age folk used the 10-degree rule to force some monuments into a semblance of order. However, the altitude of the Marlborough Downs produces azimuths of the sun and moon as 53 and 44 degrees, respectively, which is only nine degrees.

Perhaps the array tried to push the sun and moon further apart by one degree and force them to obey the rule.

23. A scenographic view of the Druid temple of Abvry (Stukeley's spelling of Avebury) in north Wiltshire, as in its original. By William Stukeley.

It is hard to imagine that when Stukeley made this drawing, he had become a druid and believed Avebury to be a serpent. Perhaps he hoped to understand more about the prehistoric mind by getting into the spirit of things.

No matter, I cannot produce anything better to show that Avebury had two avenues of paired stones - - one that entered the henge and another that left it.

The West Kennet Avenue, to the right of the picture, exits the henge and can be seen to end at the Sanctuary. Stukeley believed the Sanctuary to be the head of the serpent.

The Beckhampton Avenue, to the left of the picture, was disputed for many years until archaeologists dug around 'Adam' in 2003. Adam is all that remains of Avebury's second cove.

'Eve,' a short distance from 'Adam', is now known to be the only stone of the Beckhampton Avenue still in place.

24. First, though, the West Kennet Avenue. Or simply - The Kennet Avenue.

This avenue of paired stones once connected the Avebury Henge to the Sanctuary on Overton Hill, one and a half miles away. This section of the avenue is almost all that is left of it, and we wouldn't have this were it not for Alexander Keiller, who spent his vast fortune restoring much of Avebury. The stones you see here were buried out of sight when Keiller arrived, but with the help of his friend Professor Piggott and a team of workers, the stones were excavated and reset upright in concrete.

Interestingly, both Keiller and Piggott believed that Avebury's stones were sexed. Bulbous stones were considered female, and pillar-like stones were male. According to that, the stone on the right of the picture is female, and the stone on the left is male.

So, the Stone Age hypothesis was known pre-World War Two.

Enter now the astronomer, Professor John North.

Professor North visited Avebury looking for star alignments but found precious few of them.

He disregarded those he encountered along West Kennet Avenue in favour of alignments on the moon. Treating the Avenue as a series of rectangular cells of four stones, North noticed that he could find an alignment on the moon no matter which direction he looked - across the cells or diagonally - or even from the opposite direction.

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Male and female stones - astronomical alignments on the moon - Niedermendig Lava from Germany -- boy burials with beaker pottery and other dedications (often wrongly classed by archaeologists as domesticated refuse, which they call Middens.)

The West Kennet Avenue was an umbilical that connected Avebury to its sanctuary, a baby sun. What else are we supposed to think?

25. The accuracy of our West Kennet Avenue survey can be attributed to a combination of Bing Maps, Ordinance Survey, and aerial photography from Google Earth.

The West Kennet Avenue is primarily aligned on where the southernmost rising moon exits Lurkeley Hill every nineteen years at an azimuth of 140 degrees.

The Avenue respects the Stone Age 10-degree rule established by the Arminghall Henge of Norfolk in 3,200 BC. Some pairs also respect the cardinal points of the compass.

Tellingly, the strange twist in the avenue where it exits the henge - a womb - at stone pair six causes it to pass through moist, wet ground.

I realised that if I could prove the Neolithic moon to be female, I would have the hypothesis for our Stone Age monuments, which, in turn, could further confirm the West Kennet Avenue to be an umbilical cord.

The first proof came with the realisation that Woodhenge, near Stonehenge, was a moon-egg. "Stonehenge Secrets 2007," by yours truly (in the major libraries but out of print.)

But the definitive proof came with the 2008 GPS survey of Woodhenge... "The Real Woodhenge, The Key to Stonehenge 2011." ISBN 978-0-9553012-8-5 (also out of print)

26. Just one of the 140-degree alignments of West Kennet Avenue that point where the southernmost moon will rise out of Lurkeley Hill in 2033.

The West Kennet Avenue respects the Stone Age 10-degree rule many times over, with its megaliths producing a plethora of 140-degree azimuths aligned upon the moon over this Hill.

One such alignment is shown above.

The inner face of Stone 33 West, seen in the foreground, to the inner face of Stone 37 East, demonstrates just one example of many similar instances.

Once upon a time, this avenue continued past Stone 37 to end at the Sanctuary, a mile from here.

28. My model of the Sanctuary: Can you see the little man? Note how the internal posts are jockeying for position. Living accommodation? I do not think so.

A skeleton of an adolescent boy of about 14 years of age, with knees drawn up to his chin in the typical foetal position, was found buried on the inside of Stone 12 of the alternating stone and timber circle seen above. I have marked his grave with a red square. At his knees was found a complete but broken Beaker of likely German origin.

The boy’s skull was long-headed - what archaeologists call Dolichocephalic, which proves him to have been a member of the indigenous population. His skull was placed close against Stone 12, and although he would not have been able to see through the stone, he was facing east to the equinoctial rising sun, moon, and the Pleiades.

We have seen how high-intensity sunlight illuminates the Backstone of Avebury's Cove with Barley seeds placed at its base that might activate Avebury's northern ring - an egg.

It is, therefore, not difficult to believe that this boy's spirit, protected by the nearest tree trunk which was placed leaning over him, might also bring the Sanctuary to life as was hoped for, like the barley seeds buried beneath Avebury's Cove.

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The earliest known Beakers came from the Michaelsburg hillfort near Untergrombach, but the Michaelsburgs abandoned their fort and became lost to history when the Rhine changed its course. Nevertheless, Beaker pots are good evidence of the two countries' friendship- though perhaps it was more like an uneasy peace!

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Maud Cunnington and her team stripped the Sanctuary bare in 1930. Her husband, Col. Cunnington, measured the diameters of its six circles. The colonel considered the outermost circle to be 130 feet in diameter and the next one to be half that size at 65 feet.

The 65-foot circle was built from frail wooden posts that led Maud to believe it was used as a wattle fence. She also wrongly thought that the two large pillars, seen to be part of it, once carried a gate. These posts are aligned with the West Kennet Avenue of stones that link the Sanctuary to the Avebury Henge, almost 2.5 km away. But Maud was wrong to call it a Fence because it formed part of the monument’s geometry.

Furthermore, Col. Cunnington should have measured the outer circle internally and not through the centre of its stones. Thanks to William Stukeley, Stonehenge and Avebury were already known to be internal devices. If the Col had measured the outer circle internally, he would have arrived at a figure of forty-seven megalithic yards -- eleven megalithic yards bigger than Stonehenge.

Maud’s team found a total of seven circles at the Sanctuary. However, only the outer two are sufficiently accurate for us to bother with without completely stripping the monument again and surveying it with GPS.

Twenty pieces of Niedermendig lava were found buried five feet deep (1.5 metres) around the base of one of the Sanctuary’s wooden posts, and I have placed a toy man against the post where those fragments were found.

Quote. ‘The use of this rock was known to the Beaker People in the Rhine area, where it was also used by their predecessors - the Neolithic people of the ‘Michelberger’ culture.’ I am indebted to Herr George Kraft of the Museum fur Urgeschichte, Freiburg. Maud Cunnington1929.

Niedermendig lava was found at Stonehenge, too, and at a settlement site alongside Avebury's West Kennet Avenue. This raises the question of whether or not German tribes were the brains behind our monuments.

Nevertheless, finding Niedermendig lava at these critical locations twenty miles apart demands the acceptance of a single, solitary hypothesis for the whole Stone Age period.

29. My surveyed plan of the Sanctuary. This plan view was made with the help of several sources.

1. Maud Cunnington's original 140-foot scale proved so accurate as to put today's archaeologists to shame.

2. On-site measurements

3. Online Bing satellite photography.

The stone and post ring is likely based on a 12:16:24 megalithic-inch Pythagorean triangle - see inset. The reader will also note that this geometry is internal to the timber posts. Generally speaking, working internally is out of character. There is only one other place where I know of this: Woodhenge Ring C, near Stonehenge.

We cannot escape the likelihood that people linked the Sanctuary and Avebury's outer circuit with the function of Pi. For example, Maud's husband measured the Fence Post at 65 feet in diameter. Converting this figure to Megalithic Yards, we get 23.88, which, times Pi, produces a circumference of 75 Megalithic Yards. This figure relates to Avebury and Windmill Hill's largest radius of 750.

Similarly, while the outer circle was placed on a 47 Megalithic Yard circle, a measurement taken through stone centres, say 47.75, would give a circumference of 150 MY.

Perhaps that is why some of the stones of the outer ring, i.e., stones 21 to 26, are placed slightly inward, and some are skewed sideways as if the builders could not make up their minds.

30. Longstone’s Cove and the double-stone row of the Beckhampton Avenue that led to Avebury. A drawing by William Stukeley 21 May 1724.

Stukeley's text interpretation.

Longstone's Cove aspect as lately.

A. The stone still standing. (Covestone Adam)

B. Fallen. (Backstone)

C & D. Stones destroyed by Richard Fowler among others.

E. The only stone of the whole avenue standing. (Eve)

F F F F. Several left lone but thrown down & half buried.

A pair of stones marked F, F, seen on the far left of Stukeley's drawing, suggests that Beckhampton Avenue went further, as shown in Stukeley's previous drawing, Picture 21.

32. Set on the same acute angle as a 3:4:5 Pythagorean triangle, Longstone's Cove spoke of singularity!

Three plans of Longstone’s field excavations are available in the public domain, and these were compared one against the other by layer superimposition in CAD. One reasonably good image is on page 105 of Andrew Lawson’s book "Chalkland - An Archaeology of Stonehenge and its Region." Another is based on preliminary results by Pollard and Gilling. Their plan was most helpful in placing Eve’s opposite number, which we shall call Eve B.

An excellent plan by P. J. Ucko was discovered in one of my scanned files, but I do not know where I got it.

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Longstone’s field, near Beckhampton, with its Neolithic ditched-enclosure and stone cove, was excavated by Pollard et al. in 2003. So it follows that Ucko produced his plan the following year before succumbing to diabetes. Ucko’s is the most accurate, even without a scale. Not that that is a great loss, because Pollard’s and Lawson's scales do not match, anyway, Pollard's being the least accurate. Fortunately, there is some helpful text in Lawson's book.

“The Longstone’s Enclosure measures some 140 by 110 metres.”

Well, 140 by 110 metres converts to 168.67 by 132.53 Megalithic Yards, so an oval of this size has been superimposed on Ucko's plan to scale it.

Further: “The length of a line transverse to the Avenue - made between three stones, is equal to the diameter of the Sanctuary at the end of the West Kennet Avenue.”

And, since we know that the diameter of the Sanctuary's outer circle of stones -- measured internally, is forty-seven Megalithic Yards, this can, and is, produced above.

Lawson's text does not mention the distance between Stones C and G at 23.5 MY, which matches the Sanctuary's Fence Ring.

We also find the internal measurement between Backstone B and Stone C to be 16 Megalithic Yards.

HEY SANCTUARY: YOU GOT MALE!

34. Unlike the regular cove in the middle of the Avebury Henge, the Longstone's Cove is splayed 37 degrees, like a 3:4:5 triangle.

The inner face of Adam is placed on the hypotenuse of this triangle, and the Cove was aligned to this not-so-distant rise. It is rare for a monument to be placed close to the horizon. But there is a reason for it.

A tale of two horizons, one high and close, with a second somewhat lower and at some distance, to form a notch for the moon.

If both sun and moon had been presented with a flat horizon, the difference between them -- in terms of azimuth -- would be about nine degrees.

But, the two-degree altitude of the near rise delays the appearance of the sun and reduces the difference between their azimuths by about one degree.

This brought the sun and moon closer together for the apparent purpose of copulation.

36. This image, found in Andrew Lawson's book, Chalkland, seems superior because it shows Beckhampton Avenue obeying the 10-degree rule more accurately. But the scale would be better if made three times larger and produced in proven megalithic yards. The north arrow seems accurate.

So, what was it that was meant to be fertilised in Longstone's field before being transmitted via the moon-aligned fallopian known as the Beckhampton Avenue to the mother henge at Avebury and then via the umbilical known as the Kennet Avenue to the Sanctuary? Why, an egg, of course!

Modes of transport...

The egg, fertilised by the Cove, that people hoped would grow inside the Ovary, obviously did not roll to the Avebury Henge by following Beckhampton Avenue. So, what was going on?

Avebury folks were in the habit of dismembering their dead and taking parts of their bodies, particularly their lower mandibles (jawbones), while leaving their skulls behind.

The Sanctuary is an excellent example because the lower mandible found buried beneath Stone 16 of the Stone and Post ring might well have been taken from the beaker corpse, actually, a male child, found by Cunnington to be buried beneath Adam at the start of a route that one day might reunite skull and jawbone together.

Pottery sherds were likely treated in the same way, sherds of the same pot being separated long distant and just as remote.

Cremation released the spirits of the dead. This was practised for a while at Durrington Walls, near Stonehenge. The bones of their cremated elite were separated and taken to Stonehenge.

At the same time, the ashes, to which many sherds of Beaker pottery were added, were stacked twenty inches deep in a teardrop-shaped Midden alongside the timber egg known as the Southern Circle, just inside the Durrington Walls Henge.

What further proof is needed that the River Avon was used as an Umbilical Cord?