Stonehenge Decoded Author:Gerald S. Hawkins, John B. White On Salisbury Plain in southern England stands an awesome arrangement of stones that has been the subject of countless studies, poems, and legends dating back beyond the days of King Arthur and his court. What did this somber group of stones signify to its architects? Was it a city of the dead? A Druid alter of sacrifice? A temple to the sun? It ... more »took the 20th Century, an astronomer, and computer techniques to unravel the ancient mystery.
The dramatic decoding of the mystery began when astonomer Hawkins decided to investigate the reason for that particular, peculiar arrangement of stones and holes at Stonehenge. He stood at each position and measured its various alighments. He got up in the middle of the night to photograph the dramatic midsummer sunrise of the giant heel stone. Back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he fed the measurements he had taken and certain astronomical data into a huge computer and his original theories were confirmed. The dramatic facts were:
--The archways and stones point to the exreme standstills of the sun and moon on the horizon.
--The mysterious Aubrey holes were probably used to predict the movement of the sun and moon, and eclipses. Stonehenge was a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived astronomical observatory, used by three different groups of people over a 400 year period beginning around 2000 B.C.
As Dr. Hawkins recreates his dramatic discovery he tells of the mythology that has grown up around Stonehenge and of the remarkable techniques that were emplyed to bring the stones across 100 miles of sea and land to their site of construction. Anyone who has seen a picture of the fabulous structure will be enthralled by this captivating account of one of the most significant archeological and astronomical discoveries of our time.« less