Page Content (OCR)
Some 240 Stonehenge alignments translated into celestial-declinations. For whatever reasons those Stonehenge builders built as they did, their final, completed creation was a marvel. As intricately aEgned as an interlocking series of astronomical observing instruments {which Indeed it was) and yet architecturally perfectly simple, in function subtle and elaborate, in appearance stark, imposing, awesome, Stonehenge was a thing of surpassing Ingenuity of design, variety of usefulness, and grandeur - in concept and construction an eighth wonder of the ancient world. Considering the enormous amount of effort that must have gone into its construction, Stonehenge ranks as the costliest calendar in the world. Earlier investigators tried to explain Stonehenge as the work of the Romans, the Danes (similar constructions stand in Denmark), and the Druids, as esoteric priesthood which entered Britain from France in 500 B.C. Stonehenge had been around for at least one thousand years when the Druids arrived, but nevertheless, Druidism has become closely allied with Stonehenge. Even today, members of the Most Ancient Order of Druids make an annual pilgrimage to the site to perform their rites - rites which they claim date back to the days of Atlantis, incidentally. Hawkins discovered that a significant cycle occurs every 18.6 years at Stonehenge. He cglls it midwinter moonrise, for the moon rises over one particular stone every 18.6 years. Then he points out with some glee a statement by the ancient historian Diodorus (circa 50 B.C): The Moon as viewed from this island appears to be but a little distance from the Earth and to have on it prominences like those of the Earth, which are visible to the eye. The account is also given that the god visits the island every nineteen years, the period in which the return of the stars to the same place in the heavens is accomplished.' What god visited the British Isles every nineteen years? Could Stonehenge have been constructed to predict the appearances of some alien being? This would have given those ancient stonemasons a strong religious motive for constructing it, Whoeverplanned Stonehenge had to have a knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. Did the Stone Age Britons possess such knowledge ? Or was the information passed along to them somehow? Were they following orders, just as Moses followed the specifications given to him by Jehovah for the construction o£ a gold ark (Exodus 25)? The gods and demons of all cultures have always had a penchant for ordering men to build huge; seemingly useless temples, tombs, and artifacts. Soon after Gerald Hawkins published a summary of his findings in Nature, October 26th, 1963, he became the centre of controversy. Mathematicians, astronomers, and archaeologists who had never been near Stonehenge assaulted his thesis and dissected his semantics. He did leave many unaswered questions - largely because they were unanswerable. Twenty miles from Stonehenge there is another ancient wonder ». > the mammoth mound at Silbury. This is a man-made mound of earth 130 feet high, covering over five acres. Scientists estimate that it was constructed around 1800 B.C., which means that while thousands of early Britons were starting work on Stonehenge, other hundreds or thousands were pointlessly hauling