The British Isles and northern France are scattered with some of the most mysterious monuments of antiquity - stone ruins of majestic beauty, whose origin is lost in the darkness of times. Massive stone tombs and huge standing stones set in circles or rows, these wonders of the prehistoric world were created, according to various estimates, between 4500 and 1500 BC. These megaliths (from the Greek "big stones") are rightly famous for their size, proving that the ancient peoples of Western Europe were able to remarkable achievements in the field of engineering and labor organization, however, do they tell us something even more interesting about their prehistoric creators?
Already more than hundred years disputes do not stop on whether they are religious monuments or business of hands of priests-astronomers, the higher caste of an ancient society, building observatories with use of improbably exact mathematical calculations and standard units of measurement.
If the latter hypothesis is confirmed, it will overturn many traditional notions of "primitive" societies and revolutionize our understanding of the prehistoric past.
Megalithic astronomy is associated with many speculations that have not been confirmed since, and such statements need to be carefully evaluated if new, more convincing arguments are to be found.
Sir Norman Lokair, director of the Observatory of Solar Physics in London and founder of the leading scientific journal Time, who worked as its editor-in-chief for half a century, was one of the great figures in the experimental science of the 19th century. From 1890 to 1891, he visited Greece and Egypt and became interested in the geographical orientation of temples in both countries. Knowing that churches in the Christian world were traditionally orientated to the east, in the direction of sunrise, he wondered if there was a similar tradition in the Ancient world. Initial researches have convinced it that in a design of the Egyptian temples the orientation both on the Sun (specifically it is a question of a summer solstice), and on stars was considered. Moreover, because of the visible movement of the sky in relation to the Earth in connection with the precession of the Earth's axis, these landmarks could be used to date the construction of monuments. Results of the Egyptian researches of Lokair published in the book "Dawn of astronomy" in 1894, have met cool reception among Egyptologists.
However, when Lokair drew attention to the prehistoric monuments of Britain, he received even clearer proofs. Over the next few years, he devoted his weekend to the systematic search for possible matches between celestial bodies and rows of standing stones, lines of entrance corridors to megalithic tombs, and centers of stone circles. After a series of high-precision measurements, he came to the conclusion that many of these monuments served not for funeral or ritual purposes, but for calendar observations. According to Lokaire, monuments such as Stonehenge were built to include visual lines (by sunrise, sunset and the rise of some stars on the turning days of the year) in a composite calendar, which was later used by the Celts to divide the year into eight parts.
According to Lokaire, the same calendar was used in all the places where he conducted his research. This led him to conclude that there is a class of astronomical priests who "played a leading role in all areas of prehistoric society - not only in religion, but also in economics, medicine and social order. Lokair found support in the scientific community, but archaeologists in general were hostile to his theory or, at best, indifferent. His ideas were unacceptable to them because they did not fit into the traditional ideas about the "barbaric" period of prehistoric development of society.
Moreover, archaeologists suspected that Lokair had shown a very selective approach to the question of orientation of prehistoric monuments. From the point of view of Douglas Hedge, a mathematician from the University of Edinburgh and the author of a major critical study of megalithic astronomy, the problem of Lokaire was statistical evidence.
"Despite the questions raised by Lokaire ... he did not doubt the general correctness of his astronomical calculations. Unfortunately, he never really tried to prove that the alleged astronomical matches could not be accidental. In the end, prehistoric monuments, except for the most primitive ones, create a lot of potential "lines of sight", and each of these lines can be compared with a number of astronomical phenomena. Thus, it is logical to expect that some of the matches have arisen by chance.