Geology Reference
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to multiples of the megalithic yard. Perhaps the measurers-out of
circles had all to be of a certain size, like policemen used to be!
That is a joke; but it brings us to the ancient country-wide astro-
nomical society postulated by the Thoms and by MacKie, with-
out which the distribution of measuring rods would be not just
unlikely but inconceivable.
The objection was that there was no archaeological evidence
for a society of this kind. If Euan MacKie's conjectures about the
wooden henges, Grooved Ware, etc., were not acceptable, then rel-
atively minor ideas such as the foregoing paragraph were not going
to turn the tables. But the curious thing was that, in other areas
where there was corresponding evidence, such speculations were
apparently acceptable. The report on the highly restricted origin of
hand-axes and their wide distribution was a case in point. There
was no attack on those researches, although such large-scale reg-
ular pilgrimages seemed at odds with a society where strangers
were killed on sight, or routinely seized for ritual sacrifice. In a
society that was sufficiently organized to permit such journeys, it
is no longer ridiculous to imagine novice priests going to the great
wooden henges to learn, or, if taught locally, “graduating” on a
pilgrimage to make or collect their astronomers' staffs - set to the
length of the midsummer noonday shadow of a particularly ven-
erated stone, for example. If the analysis of the axes was valid, it
seemed strange to continue to insist that Neolithic society could
not have incorporated the megalithic yard.
An early crack in the façade came in 2002 with the discov-
ery of the body nicknamed 'the Amesbury Archer,' or 'the King
of Stonehenge.' The man was judged to be between 35 and 45
years old and was buried around 2300 b.c. in a timber chamber 3
miles from Stonehenge, on a sharp bend of the river Avon, with
two full sets of archer's equipment, including slate wrist-guards
and 15 arrows. He wore gold earrings and was buried with copper
knives, flint tools, bone ornaments, boar tusks and other marks of
high status - shared with his son, who had grown up nearby and
was buried only yards away. He was missing a kneecap, an old
injury possibly incurred before he came to England, and that was
the most important thing about him, that his bones and his teeth
revealed that he had come from central Europe, probably from the
area of modern Switzerland.
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