Archaeoastronomy in the British Isles - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 68

out of the normal size range of standing stones, past the largest
stones used in the pyramids, up into the larger sizes of the Easter
Island statues. The pieces lie pointing in different directions, as
if it broken due to whiplash; in Megalithic Remains in Britain
and Brittany Thom states: “We agree with Atkinson that the only
explanation…is that the lower break, or at least the separation,
occurred while the stone was still upright, and that it must have
been produced by an earthquake. Experiments with blocks piled
on a tray show that it quite impossible to produce the arrangement
which we find by any other way than by shaking the tray [ 9 ].”
Nevertheless, Glyn Daniel wrote: “Professor Thom insists
that the Grand Menhir Brisé was originally upright. There is no
proof of this whatever [ 12 ].” If the evidence of the break is not
enough, then it's hard to see what other evidence there could be.
The largest section having uprooted itself as it fell, if it fell, it
is now covering the pit in which it originally stood, if it stood
(Fig. 4.17a ). Even if it never stood, however, that has no bearing
on where it was intended to stand, or why. Euan MacKie's exca-
vations at Cultoon on Islay showed that the ellipse there was
intended to be an extremely accurate midwinter-solstice marker,
but it was abandoned during construction, with stones left lying
by their prepared sockets [ 3 ]. It's even conceivable that Le Grand
Menhir broke during the attempted raising, although that's hard to
tie in with the way in which the pieces are lying today.
The important part of the Thoms' contention is that Le Grand
Menhir was intended to operate as a “universal foresight” for all
eight of the lunar risings and settings at the major and minor
standstills (Fig. 4.17b ) . Finding the site, in their opinion, would
have been a task at least as great and as prolonged as the selection,
preparation and transportation of the stone, which shares with
the great sarsens of Stonehenge the distinction of having been
artificially shaped. Small arrays of stones, in the pattern which the
Thoms call “extrapolation sectors,” survive near two of the appar-
ent “backsights,” and it is hard to believe that the great arrays, up
among the northerly ones, are not part of the grand designing of a
lunar observatory up to 20 miles across.
Glyn Daniel did not share that view. “The stone alignments at
Carnac are not locked forcefully to astronomically important sight-
ings. There is no question that many megalithic monuments are