64. Look at the sun in this picture. It's so small you could catch it!
We have already noted that the Whispering Knights are placed a little below the top of the rise on which they stand. There are only two possible reasons for this. One is to hide a distant peak south that would otherwise appear above the near horizon and spoil it, and the other is to get a clearer picture of a star or two as they rise and set.
Option one can be counted out, since there are not distance peaks south to break up the near horizon.
Option two: The extinction angle of a star or stars. When viewed over a level horizon, i.e. zero altitude, stars become invisible as they approach the ground due to having to pass through several layers of atmosphere. The placing of the Knights a little below the peak, means that these stones - this family of stones in humanoid form - were placed to view everything that rises and sets in the south. And there was and is so much to see.
65. The humanoid family of stones known as the Whispering Knights
66. The Rollright Circle
67. MY SURVEY OF THE CIRCLE
William Stukeley was the first to note that stone circles were internal devices when realising that the best faces of Avebury's stone were placed facing inward. And despite looking worm ridden, most professionals agree that the best faces of the stones in the Rollright circle were likely placed facing inward, just like Stonehenge and Avebury.
So, measuring the circle internally, we find it to be exactly 37-megalithic yards in diameter - one megalithic yard bigger than Stonehenge's 36 My.
68. Thom's Rollright circle survey.
Ever since Stukeley entered Avebury in the year 1720, it's been known that all stone rings, whether they be perfect circles, flatted circles, egg shapes, or odd shapes like Avebury's outer circuit, are internal devices. Yet Professor Thom, who claims to have surveyed over 500 stone rings, including Avebury and Stonehenge in order to determine the length of the megalithic yard, never produced internal measurements. So one has to wonder how he did it.
The above image is of Professor Thom's survey of the Rollright circle. As you can see, he made the circle a little over 38 MY, which is true when taken through the center of its stones.
This image and the three that follow are all taken from the book, "Megalithic Sites in Britain. Oxford University Press 1967 by A Thom."
69. Measured internally, this is the real geometry that the stone circle of Dinnever Hill was likely to be set on.
Draw a 50-megalithic yard diameter circle and four sides of a hexagon from it. Next, draw a half-size circle (25 My) in the middle of the 50 My circle, which will determine the centre-points of a further pair of 25 My circles. Finally, draw a 45.57 arc to close the profile. This 45.57 arc was likely thought by Stone Age folk to be 45.5 My as they would not have known the difference.
70. Rough Tor is similar to Dinnever Hill, except that the centre of a pair of 35.023 circles (considered to be 35 by its designers) are placed on where an axis, 5-megalithic yards away from the centreline of the outer circle, intersects with the line made between the centre of the outer circle and that of the hexagon.
71. It is quite enough to expect of Stone Age folks to have come up with these three designs based on Hexagons, without expecting them to have concerned themselves with perimeter lengths in whole numbers, as A Thom tried to show.
Perhaps of more interest is in knowing that Stonehenge is based on a 36 megalithic yard circle - the Rollright circle to measure 37, Burnmoor (above) to be 38, Avebury's Sanctuary 47, all of which makes it highly likely that the design of Avebury and Stonehenge was influenced by people coming down from Cumberland.
72. And this is where the sun sets in mid-December, but we must pass through the trees to see the horizon.
73. And what an eye-opener it is. Whilst the far horizon might well have been visible to Stone Age people with their excellent eyesight and clearer skies, it takes a setting sun these days to expose the eight-mile distant Icomb Hill.
74. Imagine my surprise while waiting for the sun to set that I should turn round and find that the humanoid Stone 13 was reflecting sunlight like a mirror.
Stone 13 is one of the few stones known to be undisturbed since new. And it is still in its original position. We hardly need further proof that Stone Age folk were into reflecting sunlight off stones.
75. The concave shape of the inner face of Stone 13. This stone, by itself, proves that the whole circle was meant to reflect sunlight into the middle of the ring.
76. The poorest face of Stone 13 faces outward, as do most other stones in the ring providing further proof that the Rollright Circle was an internal device meant to collect light. Stonehenge was similar but was a more sophisticated Hall of Mirrors. Early peoples thought processes clearly followed the same path as scientists of today who wondered what would happen if light was bounced between two mirrors. Consequently, today's scientists went on to invent lasers. Stonehenge operated on laser principles too!
This reminds me of a young lady I was taking to whilst leaning against one of the stones. I mentioned how the stones of the circle were meant to collect light in an equivalent way to a Laser. Her response was to whirl her forefinger upwards towards the sky, as if the circle were about to take off.
Exactly, I said.
77. We now cross the road, called the Jurassic Way, to see the natural mound that Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age visitors must have thought of as a gift from the gods. This natural mound, surely the progenitor of all long mounds known as long barrows, is what drew Mesolithic people to the Rollright ridge in the first place.
78. Early folk built a circular cairn on top of the mound that scales to 20-megalithic yards diameter. Beyond that cairn, and at the other end of the mound, someone was buried along with Mesolithic flint which most likely came from Norfolk.
79. Just one of many alignments on the sun, moon and stars that benevolent nature gave to early man at Rollright more than 9,000 years ago. This is a picture of where the major moon, according to my calculations, should be seen to set in the Foxcote gorge sometime in 2024, through a notch between Nebsworth and Ebrington Hill, some nine-mile distant.
80. Setting summer solstice as seen from on top of the Rollright mound on the evening 20th June 2020. The sun sinks into Nebsworth Hill at one end, as is seen above, and the major moon sets at the other. Just like Woodhenge, near Stonehenge, where the sun and moon scan both ends of Sidbury Hill.
There is an old fable about a witch that turned the king's men to stone because the King couldn't see the village of Long Compton in the valley below. Nor can you see it in this picture because it's too far to the right.
This Fable was written by a certain Evans, who in 1895 failed to realise that Long Compton did not exist when the stones were set up. So, bringing things up to date, I have rewritten Evan's poem to incorporate where the northernmost moon sets, and will set again in 2024, through a couple of notches in the nine- mile-distant Nebsworth and Ebrington Hill seen above.
"Seven long strides shalt thou take, and if Nebsworth Hill and moon thou canst see,
King of England shalt thou be."
The exultant King cried
"Stick, stock, stone
As King of England I shall be known."
But on his seventh stride the ground before him rose up in a long mound obscuring his view, and the witch cackled.
"As long as Nebsworth Hill and moon thou canst not see
King of England thou shalt not be.
Rise up stick, and stand still, stone,
For King of England thou shalt be none:
Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be
And I myself an eldern tree."
Some go looking for the elderberry tree that the witch said she would turn herself into, but there are no elderberry trees to be found at Rollright.
This fable is another Red Herring to direct our minds away from the facts.
81. Returning to Avebury, this is what the Beckhampton Avenue of stone, (where it passes through the ovary), is aligned on. It aligns on the Marlborough Downs in the other direction.