Leonard Saunders
Delivered at the SIS Silver Jubilee Conference, Friday 17th – Sunday 19th September 1999
June 1999
Summary
Four features of the moon, the carvings at the Newgrange passage grave, cup and ring marks elsewhere, and the Station Stones at Stonehenge have defied detailed explanation. Prompted by the Newgrange carvings a model is presented which accounts for all these conundrums:
in historic times the Plane of the moon’s orbit slowly turned 180-deg about the earth. The sequence of events is identified.
Introduction
The extended work of Prof George Eogan, University of Dublin, in the passage grave at Knowth in the Boyne Valley, Ireland, is approaching its culmination. This has been marked by Dr Philip Stooke, University of Western Ontario, discovering that an outline pattern of the main features of the full moon is carved on the rock there; at certain times this is illuminated by moonlight shining down the eastern passage Martin Bryne reports alignments related to the moon in tombs at Carrowkeel in the Bricklieve Mountains, County Sligo.
These associations with the moon prompt further consideration of its role in prehistoric times. This paper seeks to bring together possible answers to three hitherto unconnected puzzles: characteristics of the moon which are contrary to expectations; neolithic glyphs or carvings on stones, including so-called ‘cup and ring’ marks; and the functions of stone circles and henges.
A model is proposed based on evidence adduced from astronomical and archaeological sources and this invites further and more detailed exploratory work by specialists in these fields.
In the full paper:
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See also: “Stonehenge Solved Its Three Observatories, Who built them, How and Why” (@ archive.org)