ROUGH STONE MONUMENTS 



1680 B.C. with a possible error of two hundred 

 years each way : this Sir Norman takes to be 

 the date of Stonehenge. 



Sir Norman's reasoning has been severely 

 handled by his fellow-astronomer Mr. Hinks, who 

 points out that the direction chosen for the 

 avenue is purely arbitrary, since Sidbury Hill has 

 no connection with Stonehenge at all. Moreover, 

 Sir Norman determines sunrise for Stonehenge as 

 being the instant when the edge of the sun's disk 

 first appears, while in his attempts to date the 

 Egyptian temple of Karnak he defined it as the 

 moment when the sun's centre reached the horizon. 

 We cannot say which alternative the builders 

 would have chosen, and therefore we cannot 

 determine the date of building. 



Sir Norman Lockyer has since modified his 

 views. He now argues that the trilithons and 

 outer circle are later additions to an earlier 

 temple to which the blue-stones belong. This 

 earlier temple was made to observe " primarily 

 but not exclusively the May year," while the later 

 temple " represented a change of cult, and was 

 dedicated primarily to the solstitial year." This 

 view seems to be disproved by the excavations of 

 1 90 1, which made it clear that the trilithons were 

 erected before and not after the blue-stones. 



Nothing is more likely than that the builders 

 of the megaliths had some knowledge of the 

 movements of the sun in connection with the 



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