Article contents
Science or symbolism: problems of archaeo-astronomy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
A convincing case has now been made out for linking [the cursus, avenues, alignments, henges and circles] with a remarkable store of engineering, mathematical and astronomical knowledge’ (Burgess, 1974, 195)
… it is fantastic to imagine that the ill-clad inhabitants of these boreal isles should shiver night long in rain and gale, peering through the driving mists to note eclipses and planetary movements in our oft-veiled skies’ (Childe, 1930, 164).
Over the last decade many claims have been made that early prehistoric Britain was the focus of a scientifically learned society whose mathematical, geometrical and astronomical discoveries anticipated those of the Babylonians and Greeks, and some of whose megalithic observatories survive for us to examine.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1980
References
- 12
- Cited by