Megalithic Egg on Lundy Triangle

Robin went to Lundy Island for the second time - this time by boat from Cardigan, near the origin of the Stonehenge bluestones that were sent to Stonehenge similarly up the Bristol channel (see previous), bad weather forced the boat to wait for two days lee side of the cliffs whilst the weather broke.

Having got to the island,  by ferry in the end, the "tump" in the centre of the island which forms the metrological right angle of the Stonehenge-Lundy-Bluestone site 12:5:13 triangle had been cleared of scrub, and someone discovered what looked like a large stone ring, somewhat degraded by time and a wall build. Megalithic monuments are not seen since stone has been scavenged heavily since the upland was isolated from the mainland.

Having a theodolite on board, Robin set too defining lengths from an arbitrary centre. Then the results could be drawn on a radial graph to reveal a Type 1 egg based upon a 3:4:5 triangle, the favourite for this type of egg in which the core triangles have an arc drawn from their common, 4:5 sharpest corner, with arcs from the opposed 3:5 points, joining this to a semicircle centred on the common 3:4 points.

These geometries were discovered by Alexander Thom, the first and still only person to widely survey Britain's and Brittany's megalithic structures. Co-incidentally, Robin has just completed the first general book Alexander Thom, Cracking the Stone Age Code (details on this book to follow soon).

 

 

Read Robin's Report 

Interested in Learning about Megaliths? 

Some molecules of meaning:

1. It is unusual to find a new type 1 egg, or any megalithic egg, in the British Isles.
2. Stones 1-5 and 14-18 are on the geometry.
3. The inner triangles are 3:4:5 in units of megalithic rods.
   
4. The stones from north to south via west are perfectly aligned.
   
5. It is oriented towards the tump that marks the right angle of the Stonehenge-Bluestone triangle
6. The orientation also aligns with an extreme Moonrise event, a third factor.
   
7. Robin did not put it there, to make his 12:13:5 triangle hypothesis stronger.
   
8. This ought to become a scheduled monument as soon as possible.
9. This is the first confirmation that the tump is part of a megalithic site of some significance.

Update on Saturday, May 12, 2007 at 04:22PM by Richard Heath

Alexander Thom found a Type 1 and a Type 2 egg either end of the Le Ménec alignments near Carnac in the 1970s. In Megalithic Remains in Britain and Brittany, Oxford University Press, 1978, he wrote,

About a mile northward from Carnac lies the hamlet of Le Ménec, part of which is built inside the west cromlech (Fig. 6.1). It will be seen that this cromlech consists of an egg-shaped ring of upright stones. The egg shape is based on a 3, 4, 5 triangle, the sides being 15, 20, and 25 MR. The fact that some of the stones do not lie on the geometrical construction is easily explained because all but five or six of the stones carry the re-erection mark (§l.2), and those which do not have the mark lie in the outline. This cromlech is important in that it shows unequivocally that the type I egg shape which we found in Britain was also used in France, and that the same unit of measurement was used. The perimeter of the ring is 304.4 MY. Figure 6.1 shows also that by dropping a perpendicular from the centre on to the hypotenuse we obtain another 3, 4, 5 triangle, the sides being 12, 16, and 20 MR. An examination of Fig. 6.2 shows that this triangle was applied at the east end of the Le Ménec alignments to form the type II egg which was used there. Note that the perimeter of this egg is 370.0 MY so that both eggs conform to the usual practice of having the perimeter close to an integral number of rods. One of the stones on the north-east side of the ring was difficult to find and difficult to survey as it was in the middle of deep whins, but the existence of these stones seems to prove our suggested construction. It may also be remarked that the straight distance from the centre, e, of the east cromlech to the centre, w, of the west cromlech (Figs. 6.3(a) and 6.3(b)) is 495.0 MR and row IX, produced as necessary, cuts the axis of each cromlech 1 MR from its main centre.

 

 Figure 6.1 Le Ménec, west end and cromlech

This demonstrates the fact that the builders of monuments in Britain and Brittany were part of the same building scheme. Alignments can be found in Britain at sites such a Mid-clyth in Caithness, far NE Scotland where the same meridian breaks land travelling north to Orkney.

Thom expained in part a use for such alignments, which can also be fan-shaped or simply parallel tracks as at Merrivale, Dartmoor; it is impossible to view a moon rise or moonset exactly at the point of lunar maximum or minimum, which only happens once (in a blue moon?) every 18.618 years - a phenomena associated with the Moon's orbital node and therefore eclipses of the sun and moon.

However a series of sightlines marked by, say, posts can be extrapolated to obtain the missing maximum or minimum post location. In an alignment the stones represent all the possible post positions and hence it can function as a calculator for the extrapolation of many different sets of observations, as perhaps would have been gathered from different neighbouring observatories; as well has having other to-be-discovered uses such as the calendar functions developed from the ideas of Felix Gaillard, an early researcher.

 

 Photo from the East by Yann  Arthus Bertrand
showing the end of the alignments.

the Egg became a building site as at Avebury.