The enigmatic megalithic standing stones and stone circles of Europe have long prompted the question: What prompted our ancestors to enact awesome feats of engineering to erect them?

It was over 100 years ago when eminent astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer discovered astronomical orientations in the ancient temples of Egypt and stone circles of his native Britain. This idea shook the belief foundations of the time, for the megalith builders of several thousand years ago were then considered as savages.

Lockyer’s findings were confirmed in even greater detail by Gerald Hawkins in the 1960s and Alexander Thoms after that.

Megalithic structures, such as Stonehenge, it turned out, were able to be used as sophisticated observatories, with stones aligned to prominent landscape features, marking the movements of the Sun, Moon and other heavenly bodies, and based on Pythagorean geometry (yet created one thousand years before Pythagoras).

They could even predict eclipses and the 18.61 year lunar cycle. The megalithic structures were calendars in stone, plotting the times for agricultural activities and ritual events, etc.

In this book, acclaimed Earth mysteries author John Michell traces the development of the modern science of astro-archaeology, of which Lockyer was the first. At first anathema to academia and ignored, this science is now considered self evident.

Even Alfred Watkin’s discoveries in the 1920s of straight alignment ley lines between ancient sites is nowadays accepted, to some extent, by modern archeologists.

(Anyone with a passing interest in the subject talks about ley lines to this day. Unfortunately the term is greatly abused and means different things to different folks. For dowsers, for instance, energy leys often run parallel, and high above, the physical alignments.)

Watkins earns a chapter in the book, as well as parallel landscape studies in Germany, where the revelations were useful in the cause of German nationalism. Nazi patronage of astro-archeology earned the subject more disrepute. Science and politics still often make unfortunate bed fellows.

South American alignments also get a look in and the book is richly illustrated with black and white graphics.

Intriguing and recommended reading.

– Reviewed by Alanna Moore in New Dawn No. 91