Stonehenge Decoded [Paperback]

Stonehenge was constructed from about 1900BC to 1600BC. Appendix B tells how the movement of stones once each year from an initial fixed position will predict accurately every important lunar event for hundreds of years. This computer would need resetting about once every 300 years by advancing the stones by one space. Mankind generally used the cycle of the moon as a unit of timekeeping.

The most significant Stonehenge positions line up to point to some unique sun of moon position (Figure 12). Chapter 7 tell how they used an IBM 704 computer in 1961 to plot the Stonehenge positions (120 pairs of points) and calculated where the lines would hit the sky (p.105). Chapter 9 asks if the Aubrey holes can be proved to have been used as a computer? No, but it is the most reasonable solution proposed so far.

This entertaining and educational book tells about the author's investigations and conclusions. It is a classic science book for the general reader.

I now seek out any book with info on Circle
Stones; some by Gerald Hawkins. History is
TIME travel to its fullest!! Here I go....back
to the future.

The humans who looked and wondered encompassed every phase of human history from the stone/early-bronze age until today. They built legends and myths about the builders based upon themselves, their own abilities as societies and their assumptions about the men who preceded them. Those who couldn't conceive of a technology capable of moving 50 ton boulders from many miles away explained what they saw with Gods and magic. Those who lived in the bloody ages of warfare and vain royalties explained what they saw in those terms. Always they assumed the men of the past were at least as ignorant and savage as themselves.

The men who built Stonehenge during the centuries between 1750 and 1500 BC might have been bloody. But they were not ignorant. The subsequent centuries of men could never conceive of the purpose of Stonehenge until computers were invented. Stonehenge is, itself, a massive computer. Hawkins, an astronomer at the dawn of the recent computer age, applied an IBM computer and finally solved the mystery of purpose in the huge stones in 1963.

The monument required millions of man-hours to build and an understanding of astronomy not repeated for tens of centuries. At least a major part of the Stonehenge purpose involved predicting celestial events on a scale almost as grandiose as Stonehenge itself.

Hawkins wrote this book four decades ago. Until his discoveries and publication hundreds of theories surrounded the monument. Today, because of Hawkins, any conflicting new theory on any aspect of Stonehenge has to be weighed against his findings and proven. This is the Hawkins accomplishment. Men finally have a clearer view, not only of the massive stones, but of the complex intellects and shocking accomplishments of stone age and bronze age man. Stonehenge finally demonstrates the intellect of the creators more than the unbelievable technological project of itself those later men could always see.

This book is a must read.