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Science or symbolism: problems of archaeo-astronomy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Aubrey Burl
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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
Antiquity , Volume 54 , Issue 212 , November 1980 , pp. 191 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1980

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