Stones out of another age

Press, 21 October 1978, Page 10

Stones out of another age

Sun, Moon and Standing Stones. By John Edwin Wood. Oxford University Press. 217 pp. $18.25. Earth Magic. By Francis Hitching. Cassell. 196 pp. $13.75. (Reviewed by Graham Billing) Now that it seems clearly established that European Stone Age man had a profound and accurate knowledge of the astronomy of earth, sun and moon those who prefer a supernatural reason for the existence of Megalithic monuments ought to be silenced. The reverse seems to be the case. The elusive “other reason” for the existence of structures such as Stonehenge long sought by orthodox archaeologists is now the concern of parapsychologists. The British Isles and Brittany are strewn with stone remnants, from the solar observatory at Skara Brae in the Orkneys to the stone rows at Carnac. Barrows, or communal graves, flattened hill tops, stone rings built by Neolithic and Early Bronze Age peoples between 3500 and 1500 B.C. are memorably recorded with names

like Long Meg and Her Daughters, the Hurlers, or the Merry Maidens. The largest single stone, 330 tons and now in fragments, is Le Grand Menhir Brise in Brittany, the most intricate barrow is at New Grange in Ireland. Here the mid-winter sunrise shines for a few minutes through a special sight on to the rear wall of the tomb.

Ir “Sun, Moon and Standing stones” John Wood, a Naval ballistics expert and esteemed amateur archaeoastronomer, examines in detail the evidence accumulated in the last 15 years which shows that Megalithic man was at least as intelligent as the early Egyptians. With ropes and levers, antler picks and flint axes, he built observatories using Pythagorean geometry and a standard unit of length, the Megalithic Yard of .83 metres. Thus he could predict the annual stations of sun and moor; and, in a final refinement, eclipses of the moon. Because population was so sparse his feats of engineering could not have been performed by slave labour. They must have taken the concerted will of whole communities. This suggests a much deeper purpose than the

provision of a calendar for planting crops. It becomes obvious that the spiritual life of Stone Age man, and his religious convictions, were highly sophisticated. Philosophers of comparative religion must find whole new fields opening for debate. For a reader whom, when learning navigation, could never quite grasp the concepts of three-dimensional geometry basic to the mathematics of both finding one’s way in the world and of predicting eclipses, Wood makes the astronomical models startlingly clear. Though he does not offer bis own judgment on the veracity of the latest astronomical conclusions he clearly takes them for granted. Francis Hitching, however, is not prepared to leave it at that. A journalist and television film maker, he devotes half his book to a popular survey of the centuries of thought and research on stone monuments, then suggests supernatural explanations for monuments being built as they are, where they are.

The only scientifically verifiable fact he has to offer is that a certain standing stone in South Wales shows recordable difference in its electric potential from top to bottom. Archaeologists dismiss as coincidence however the existence of “ley” lines said to run through monuments and other sacred sites in a grid network covering England. Interstices are said to be “centres of power.” People get gooseflesh feelings when near them.

Dowsers, too, are said to be able to discover sites where “earth magic” is concentrated by spiral “lines of force.” Anyone interested in fringe parapsychology will be encouraged by the discussion of dowsing. Methods for “do it yourself” dowsing are offered. It may be entirely irrelevant that the “earth magic” hypothesis is simply redundant in the light of the scientific research, but Hitching offers no inducement for its acceptance as another line of inquiry.