The centre of the Ellipse is a marvellous place for whatever once slept away the centuries below the Temple Mound in Jerusalem, and then in the more northerly climes of Scotland. It is part of the Presidential Park and will never be given over to development. If we are right, thousands of people walk over it every year and it is the scene of pageantry and enjoyment as the main outdoor meeting place in Washington DC.
Washington DC is the latest legatee of a continuing and constantly re-emerging way not only of viewing the world but also systematically measuring it that self-evidently began long before the pyramids.
We have traced ancient knowledge back over the last 6,000 years – back deep into the Stone Age. But if Thomas Brophy turns out to be correct about his dating of astronomic observatories in the Sahara, and they are 18,000 years old, the account retold in Freemasonic ritual – of great knowledge carried forward from before Noah’s Flood – is true. It seems very possible that Washington DC is a continuation of knowledge held by an advanced culture from the extreme past. And there is still an elite group of people who fully understand this.
Let us hope they are using our heritage well.
A Time for Reappraisal
This has been the most incredible passage for us. It has taken us on a whole series of journeys and has introduced us to some amazing people, all of whom are dedicated to uncovering the truth of our common past.
It would have been impossible to imagine on that sunny day – which now seems so long ago – when we stood at the centre of the largest and most impressive structure from Britain’s prehistory, how far our research would bring us. Our introduction to the giant henges brought us to an almost immediate realization that everything we had suggested about the incredible megalithic measuring system was not only real, but unequivocally demonstrated to be real by the very dimensions of these massive structures so carefully placed on the landscape. Even more important was the fact that specific comments we had previously made about what we might ‘expect’ our ancient ancestors to have done with the megalithic system were also born out at both Thornborough and at Dorchester-on-Thames.
These quite remarkable people knew the size and shape of the Earth. They carried out detailed experiments to qualify and to prove what they knew, and they managed to create a system of measurements based entirely on an intimate knowledge of the Earth, its dimensions and its orbit around the Sun. And Jim Russell has made a great contribution to our understanding of just how this could have been achieved.
And this was no cul-de-sac of history, as archaeology currently believes. We now know that a full 1,000 years after the great henges of Britain were constructed, the culture that planned and built them was being prevailed upon to take its knowledge far from the shores of the British Isles. The knowledge that designed and built the astronomical observatories of Britain would be used to lay down the footprint of the Great Pyramid and its companions. The same ideas and protocols were present. But the fact that the plan for the pyramids was almost certainly laid down at Thornborough bears testimony to the fact that the henge array was known, respected and perhaps even revered across a great area of our planet.
Our journeys during our research for this book, together with some of the experts we met on the way, had led us to realize that even the amazing achievements of the henge builders was not the start of the story. The existence of standing stones in Egypt, together with the evidence regarding the Sphinx and its true age, prove beyond doubt that the emergence of civilizations and almost certainly super-civilizations, took place long, long before orthodox history has ever considered. What happened to these lost people, with their amazing knowledge of the Earth and even the universe, remains a puzzle, though the vulnerability of the Earth to comet and meteorite strikes probably offers the best clue we have.
We had been led to our recognition of the importance of the British henges by the most incredible coincidence – the discovery of an 18th century building with megalithic proportions in a pretty English city. Our research into the King’s Circus in Bath, though we had never sought it, brought us face to face once again with Freemasonry, a subject we have dealt with in the past. And when it became obvious that there were other megalithic connections in Bath apart from the King’s Circus, we felt duty-bound to see if these ancient measurements had been used in other 18th-century structures. It was at this point that things began to become truly incredible.
The custom-built city of Washington DC, far to the west of Britain across the Atlantic Ocean, turned out to be a veritable repository of megalithic knowledge. Not merely specific buildings but the entire plan of the city had been based upon the Megalithic Yard and megalithic geometry. Once again we came head to head with Freemasonry, and with an ancient story that began in prehistoric Jerusalem.
Nor was Washington DC’s reliance on megalithic measurement and geometry restricted to the city’s foundation. It was self-evidently understood and used as recently as our own century. But the most intriguing spot in Washington DC lay at the very centre of the District of Columbia, in the middle of an elliptical park with megalithic proportions. This obviously sacred spot had been planned well over 200 years ago because its creators had left a huge and unmistakable arrow on the landscape, specifically pointing to this very place.
Washington DC is an ‘astronomically planned’ city. It is an intended repository for ‘something’ that almost certainly slept for centuries beneath the equally astronomically planned chapel of Rosslyn in Scotland. Whatever this treasure may be it originally came from the Temple of Jerusalem, yet another structure that was planned according to the stars. Are we looking at something so old it was once held by the patriarch Enoch? This possibility seems unlikely but it may well have originated in the early centuries BC – or even to the time of King Solomon.
What a story, what an adventure. For the remainder of our lives when we look up at the star-spangled sky and see the three stars of Orion’s Belt pointing relentlessly down to Sirius, we will know that from the lonely uplands of Stone Age Britain to the first steps of a much more recent people desperate for freedom and self-determination, we are in good company. And whoever you are, you people in Washington DC and probably elsewhere on our planet who already know these secrets and hold them sacred to this day, we can only admire a conviction, a resilience and a firm commitment that has endured for such an incredibly long period of time.
But one thought is inescapable. It is now time to fully re-examine the history of mankind and look again at old ideas of the past that are so obviously and lamentably inadequate. Archaeology must find a way to put aside its 19th- and 20th-century assumptions and move forward to a new paradigm of social and scientific evolution that respects the gargantuan achievements of our forebears.
We all have so much to relearn.
Appendix 1
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THE PLANNING OF THE THORNBOROUGH HENGE COMPLEX
In order to establish how, when and where the Thornborough Henge complex had been planned we ran many simulations predominantly using Cyber Sky 4, an astronomical computer programme that, experience had taught us, gave reliable and stable results, even when working back in time several thousand years.
We suspected that there was a common factor involved between the length of a pendulum used to establish the correct footprint for the henge complex and the finished size of the structure as it would appear on the ground. In our estimation, getting a really accurate match between the stars of Orion’s Belt and the henges on the ground would have been impossible using only naked-eye estimation. Meanwhile, we knew that the match was almost absolutely perfect. No magnification or instrumentation was available to these early astronomers and the only weapon at their disposal, in order to get the accuracy they required, was their ability to measure the passage of time by using a pendulum set against rising stars.
We tried to recreate the right circumstances from the area of Thornborough itself. We knew that included in the central henge was a cursus. A cursus is a long oft
en straight track that was originally defined by henges and banks on both sides, that predated the henges. Although we did not have a date for this cursus it was a fair bet that the location was of interest to our ancestors for some time before the henges were completed.
No model we could run would give us the necessary pendulum/footprint relationship we were seeking, though the results were very close. In the end we discovered that the experiments necessary to plan the footprint of the Thornborough complex must have been carried out not at Thornborough itself but at its sister henge further south at Dorchester-on-Thames in Cambridgeshire, England.
This is how we believe it was undertaken:
The height of the bank tops of the Dorchester-on-Thames henge, when seen from the centre of the henge, must have given a minimum view of the sky beyond at a height of around 3° above the natural horizon. Dorchester-on-Thames occupies a latitude of 51° 38' 50" N and a longitude of 001° 09' 21" W. We estimated our experiment to have been carried out on, or close to, the winter solstice in 3500 BC (December 18). In this model the first star of Orion’s Belt would have appeared above the eastern bank top at 18 21 02 hours. This star is Mintaka. The third star to appear, which is Alnitak, appeared at 18 36 56 hours. The elapsed time between the two was 15 minutes and 54 seconds of time (954 seconds).
A Megalithic half-yard pendulum, when used at this latitude, completes one beat in 0.655 seconds. During a period of 954 seconds the pendulum could have completed 1,454 beats. Each pendulum length is ? MY so to make the linear length up to 1 MY the number of beats is halved, giving a total of 727 MY. The position of the centre star, when translated to the ground, had to be calculated in a different way (see Appendix 2), but once this had been ascertained it would have been discovered that the ratio of the gap between the northernmost henge (Mintaka) and the middle henge (Alnilam) to the gap between the middle henge (Alnilam) and the southern henge (Alnitak) would have been 366:360.
366 + 360 = 726, which is stunningly close to the 727 pendulum beats we established for the difference in rising time between Mintaka and Alnilam. Thus we can see that, following the rule of pendulum beats to linear measurements, the full range of henges should have been Mintaka to Alnitak 366 MY and Alnitak to Alnilam 360 MY. To follow this procedure strictly would have meant that smaller henges would have been necessary so, in our opinion, a decision was made to increase each proposed Megalithic Yard to a Megalithic Rod – making the whole structure 2.5 times bigger than it would have been using the Megalithic Yard.
However, the ratios remain exactly the same, which is why the stars in the sky are such a good fit when superimposed onto the Thornborough Henge group.
The true distance between the northernmost henge and the central henge centres is 366 MR, whilst the distance between the central henge and the southernmost henge is 360 MR.
We therefore suggest that what we have described above is by far and away the most likely explanation for the size of the Thornborough Henge array and explains its almost perfect match to the stars of Orion’s Belt.
Appendix 2
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PLACING THE MIDDLE HENGE
In Appendix 1 we showed how the overall footprint of the Thornborough henges was planned using a half Megalithic Yard pendulum at Dorchester-on-Thames henge in around 3500 BC. However, we soon became aware that this experiment would not have worked for accurately placing the middle henge so that the finished configuration accurately matched the stars of Orion’s Belt. This is because of the angle at which the three stars rise. Trying to place the centre henge in this way would have put it too close to the southern henge, and the fit between the henges and the stars would not have been correct.
However, there was an ingenious way in which the position of the middle henge (though not the dogleg in the system) could have been established, this time using the metre pendulum with which we know these ancient astronomers were also familiar.
This experiment was most likely carried out at Thornborough and, again, around 3500 BC. Instead of timing the stars as they rise, they are timed when they are at their flattest when seen from the centre of the henge – in other words, when they are parallel to the horizon. So, whilst the first of the three stars, Mintaka, rose above the horizon at Thornborough at 124° (which is 34° south of east), this experiment was not carried out until Mintaka had achieved an azimuth of 204° (which is 114° south of east).
A simple device that could be used for this experiment is shown below.
The stars are tracked as they appear from behind the upright stake. Using a 1-metre-1-second pendulum, the first star, Mintaka, would appear on 18 December 3500 BC at 23 52 51 hours. The second star, Alnilam, would appear at 23 58 57 hours and the third star, Alnitak, would appear at 00 04 57 hours. The gap between Mintaka and Alnilam is therefore 366 seconds and the gap between Alnilam and Alnitak is 360 seconds. This of course would give 366 pendulum beats of a 1-metre-1-second pendulum between the first and second stars, and 360 pendulum beats of a 1-metre-1-second pendulum between the second and third stars.
When stars A and B lie flat on the crossbar the compass bearing will be 204 degrees. The only pendulum that will then give 366 beats whilst stars A and B disappear behind the upright stake will be the second’s pendulum length (1 Metre). This will also give 360 beats between stars B and C.
Figure 24. Wooden stake with crossbar
These measured gaps between the stars of Orion’s Belt (in relation to the perceived naked-eye distances in the sky) are far more accurate than could be obtained using the pendulum method explained in Appendix 1. This is the same method we describe in the book that was used to achieve the same result when the pyramids were planned in 2500 BC. The only difference is that the experiment to place the centre pyramid was not carried out at Thornborough but in Egypt itself.
Appendix 3
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FIXING THE DOGLEG
Anyone with even reasonable eyesight who looks for long enough at Orion’s Belt will be able to see that, although the three stars are more or less in line, there is a perceptible dogleg in the alignment. In other words, if a line is drawn through the centre of Mintaka to connect with the centre of Alnilam, Alnitak will be out of line. Similarly if Mintaka and Alnitak are joined by a common line Alnilam will be out of line.
We have spent countless hours looking at computer projections of the shape and position of the stars both today and back across a vast span of time. Using the knowledge we had already amassed, plus a great deal of experimentation, we have been able to back-engineer the most likely methods used by our ancient ancestors to work out all sorts of astronomical problems. Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 demonstrate how the correct positions for the Thornborough henges were worked out in terms of their distances, one from another. But these explanations do not answer the puzzle of how our ancestors managed to cope with the offset dogleg in the three-star system.
Here we have to put up our hands and admit that we do not have a hard-and-fast answer. There appears to be no way, without recourse to modern accurate measuring equipment, to establish exactly how much out of line the three stars are. We would of course be fascinated to hear anyone else’s opinion on this point and it is entirely possible that some method was employed which has not occurred to us.
When the three stars of Orion’s Belt are parallel to the horizon, as described in Appendix 2, the difference in altitude between Mintaka and Alnitak is inconsequential. Both the stars have an altitude of around 12° 55'. At this time Alnilam, the middle star, has an altitude of 12° 51'. This means that the difference in altitude of the middle star and its two companions is a tiny 4 minutes of arc. Now bear in mind that a whole degree of arc of the sky is equal to the width of a human thumbnail when the hand is held at arm’s length, and we begin to see what these people were up against. And yet when we superimpose the three stars of Orion’s Belt onto the Thornborough henges, the fit is as good as perfect.
Common sense dictates that there was some method for establishing the dogle
g when creating both the henge array and the pyramid footprint on the ground but, very annoyingly, we cannot discover what it was.
There is a possible clue at Thornborough. Across the middle henge and running from roughly northeast to southwest is a cursus. A cursus, as we explained earlier in this book, is a long, often straight line on the landscape marked originally by ditches and banks on both sides of it. There are dozens of cursus monuments across the length and breadth of Britain and there must originally have been many more than the ones recognized today.
What cursus were used for is still not known for certain, though the fact that the one at Thornborough runs at right angles to the alignment of the henge array might offer some sort of clue for this one. It seems to have been aligned to the setting point of Orion’s Belt, and is thought to be earlier than the henges (but how much earlier is not known). This particular cursus may have been used, over a period of time prior to the eventual layout of the Thornborough henges, to assess how much further northeast the central henge needed to be located, relative to its companions, and in order to make the best possible match with Orion’s Belt.
It seems significant in some way that this cursus should be placed across the central henge and that it should also have an alignment that, to the southwest, marks the setting point of Orion’s Belt. For the moment this is the only real clue we have. It remains the case that the positioning of the central henge relative to its companions is so accurate, in terms of the shape of the ‘real’ Orion’s Belt, that placing the central henge using nothing but guesswork seems less than likely. Our ancient ancestors have surprised us on so many occasions with their skill and determination that we would not be even slightly surprised to discover that there was indeed a method for placing the central henge on the landscape accurately.
Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery Page 23