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tiompan wrote: tiompan wrote: Annexus Quam wrote: They've been toying with this idea that the early monument was built around the Heel Stone for a couple of years, suggesting that it was there from some time after the mesolithic posts. It certainly is an attractive idea as more and more menhirs (e.g.the ones in the Algarve) are giving very ancient dates and as more and more new research outside the UK is revealing equinox/solstice allignments with a low probability of it all being pure coincidence. Hasn't the Heel Stone's pit been dug for organic material (with modern methods, not 100 years ago)? The problem is that apart from the extreme conjecture about processions at the speed of sarsen movers their alignments are inaccurate i.e. the pit does not align with the solstice sun set being about five weeks out . Even if it was spot on , (which it clearly isn't ) it is simply a pit that we know nothing about , it could be from any date and certainly wouldn't indicate any intention on behalf of the builders . Looks like the Cursus pits and putative alignments and procession have quietly been forgotten about . Not a mention in this more recent survey also involving the Gaffneys . https://www.academia.edu/75937[...]nge_through_multi-receiver_EMI Not mentioned in the recent paper but they are still being mooted here in the pop press [www.smithsonianmag.com] .http://preview.tinyurl.com/ksxxv8j Fwiw there is a bit of rough data in a diagram that again shows the problems . When we look at the diagram from the Smithsonian article the distance from the Heel Stone Stone to the pit at the northern extreme of the cursus is given as 0.68 miles .The azimuth of a line 0.68 miles from the Heel stone to the northern extreme of the cursus is 316.2 degrees . The azimuth for the solstice sunset from the Heel stone is 310 degrees a difference of 6 degrees or a difference of 168 metres . The distance from the heel stone to the eastern pit on the northern extremity of the cursus is given as 0.92 miles this is certainly close enough to be on much the same azimuth of the solstice sunrise as seen from the Heel Stone .The diagram shows a distance of 1.5 miles from point to point when it is closer to 1.18 miles to the putative solstice sunset point and 1.3 to the real one . In effect one of the pits ,the eastern one is close to the azimuth of the solstice sunrise as seen from the Heel Stone but the other pit which is unsighted from the Heel Stone is a long way off making the triangulation idea and basis for the procession a data free fantasy . The article from November 2011 suggested that a (very slow ) procession would have taken place which eventually proceeded at noon directly towards the monument on a bearing due south and midway between the two pits , this is also hopelessly off by at least 180 metres . “The perceived wisdom was driven by the monuments we knew about,” says Gaffney. “We’ve put in the data between the monuments.” Sadly the data was misinterpreted and the procession idea was totally data free as well as being demonstrably wrong . Reply | with quote |  22nd August 2014ce 11:02 In reply to: Re: More evidence on Stonehenge/Solar connections (tiompan) |
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