Archaeologists Versus Astronomers - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 11

not to the more speculative and controversial final chapter of The
Megalith Builders , in which MacKie suggested that the idea of a
professional priesthood may have spread along the Mediterranean
from a very early origin in Mesopotamia, and come to Britain,
with the art of building chambered tombs in stone, from Portugal.
Mackie bases the suggestion on an apparently common unit of
length measurement used in the appropriate areas, and it is only a
suggestion.
Simultaneously caricaturing the argument and engaging in
an astonishing piece of “lumping together,” Prof. Glyn Daniel,
the editor of Antiquity , wrote in the July 1980 issue of Scientific
American : “The number of topics on Stonehenge and on other
megalithic monuments…is also, alas, an all too clear demonstra-
tion of the imagination, wishful thinking and credulousness of
many authors, and the abysmal ignorance of many alleged archae-
ologists who can only be styled, if uncharitably, as fantasy buffs….
As recently as 1977 MacKie in The Megalith Builders declared
that they were the work of wise men from predynastic Egypt and
Sumeria. There are others, among them Erich von Däniken, who
see the megalith builders as voyagers from space. Now there is
also a widespread belief that these monuments were built with an
astronomical purpose, and such words as 'astroarchaeology' and
'archaeoastronomy' are freely bandied about… [ 16 ].”
Who could guess from that paragraph that what MacKie actually
suggested is that the idea of a professional priesthood might have
originated in Mesopotamia, and that the suggestion comes very
tentatively at the end of two entire topics on the British megalith
builders? There is no discussion here or later in Daniel's article
of any of the points in MacKie's argument for the existence of
an astronomer-priest caste in Neolithic times; MacKie's name is
mentioned only to provide a guilt-by-association link between the
astroarchaeologists (“the Hawkins-Thom bandwagon,” as Daniel
classifies them below) and the von Däniken topics, whose inac-
curacy and sensationalism have been rightly attacked elsewhere.
The Thoms' brief reply concluded with the words, “Finally, sir, in
publishing this ad hominem attack, you have shown the spirit of
your publication to be neither scientific nor American.”
That letter was not selected for publication, but in reply to
another protest, the editors allowed Glyn Daniel to add, “the