Geoff Ward

Clock invented in the Stone Age

March 12, 2010 |  6 comments
Image Credit: Geoff Ward Stone Age people invented a form of clock that enabled them to tell the time of day, the seasons and even latitude, an author claims in remarkable new research.

And development of the device led to the mysterious Silbury Hill in Wiltshire becoming the prototype for pyramids in Egypt and around the world and also the basis of the English system of measures, says Peter Watts, a retired electrical engineer from Somerset, England.

After 15 years of study, Peter has concluded that Stone Age people were maths wizards thousands of years before the Ancient Greeks who are thought to have been the pioneers in geometry and trigonometry.

Peter’s theory is that a simple model, developed at Stonehenge and based on a 3:4:5ft right-angled triangle and a vertical pole to cast the sun’s shadow, calibrated at the spring or autumn equinox, enabled latitude to be determined in terms of angle and pole height, as well as the time of day and year, anywhere on Earth.

This was millennia before the Chinese and Egyptians developed the gnomon for the sundial – the upright that casts the shadow.

Peter said that the latitude location and the shape of 5,000-year-old Silbury Hill was a “mathematical statement” of the how the ancient “clock” worked. “Silbury Hill is perhaps the most important archaeological site in Britain,” he said. “There is so much information built into its shape, size, dimensions and location.”

Amazingly, Peter has found that the latitudes of important ancient sites around the world, including the Great Pyramid of Giza and others in the Middle East and Central America, correspond to various exact pole heights in inches, suggesting that the knowledge of the model was exported by its British inventors and experimented with by different cultures.

Peter believes that standard measures were first developed at Stonehenge. By observing the transit of any star round a segment of any circle, such as the 56 Aubrey Holes, and counting on a string and stone pendulum, its length would determine standard measures, including the English foot. The dimensions and locations of the stone circles at Avebury and Stanton Drew, near Bristol, appeared to be statements of what the ancient Brits had found up to then, he said.

The Priddy circles in Somerset appear to be a megalithic signpost pointing to “missing archaeological links” at Brean and Weston-super-Mare, he says, the nearest long level beaches to the major megalithic sites of the West Country. Using a 5ft nominal eye height along these beaches would result in an observed 14,400ft nominal horizon. Inserting these values in a simple derived earth radius formula would result in a calculated 20,736,000ft nominal earth radius. At these beaches, the horizon distances to the island of Steepholm could therefore be determined.

Peter has actually checked that the sun behind Steepholm at midsummer day sunset casts a moving shadow along Brean beach enabling time to be measured easily down to one second, using the standard lengths and pendulum one-second beats initially developed at Stonehenge - in effect, a giant clock.

“The ancient Brits could have moved northwards to Weston-super-Mare beach to repeat the experiments for an extended period around midsummer day sunset,” he said. “ It is surely no coincidence that to sight Steepholm at horizon distance from Weston-super-Mare beach requires a pole equal to one English rod/pole/perch of 16.5ft.”

Silbury Hill, Peter says, was the result of experiments with pendulums and poles on these beaches and at various prehistoric Wessex sites, where other quantities such as the ratio pi and its value were determined. These measures, including the value of simple square roots, were then embedded in the dimensions of Silbury Hill and went on to form the basis of all English measures, including the foot and, significantly, the rod, pole and perch.

Peter’s theories build to an integrated system, involving Stonehenge, Stanton Drew, Avebury, Priddy, Silbury, Woodhenge and Prescelly, Wales, from where, it is claimed, the bluestones of Stonehenge were brought.

“It’s increasingly evident that mathematics evolved far earlier than commonly accepted,” said Peter, who has just completed a book in CD Rom form, Stone Henges, Pyramids and Earth Radius, which explains his theories in detail.

“In times before the invention of writing, the few people who understood, perhaps astronomer-priests, would be forced to lay down their understanding of the principles of mathematics in the form of stone circles, pyramids, myths and legends, primitive calendars and so on, in the hope that they would be decoded by future generations.

“We in the 21st century do the same sort of thing when burying time capsules under buildings or include important coded information about our civilization in spacecraft.”

Here’s how the Stone Age clock works (see diagram). A vertical pole is placed in a corner of a right-angled triangular grid with sides measuring 3ft, 4ft and 5ft (shown in red). In the diagram it is 4pm as one-sixth of a circle around the pole represents four hours – a full circle represents 24 hours. The tip of the shadow of the pole marks one month before the March 21 equinox when the “clock” is calibrated. The pole angle (top left) gives the latitude of the location by means of the pole’s height – 22in at Silbury, for example, 44in at Babylon, and 88in at Palenque, Mexico. [!gad]Stone Age people invented a form of clock that enabled them to tell the time of day, the seasons and even latitude, an author claims in remarkable new research.

And development of the device led to the mysterious Silbury Hill in Wiltshire becoming the prototype for pyramids in Egypt and around the world and also the basis of the English system of measures, says Peter Watts, a retired electrical engineer from Somerset, England.

After 15 years of study, Peter has concluded that Stone Age people were maths wizards thousands of years before the Ancient Greeks who are thought to have been the pioneers in geometry and trigonometry.

Peter’s theory is that a simple model, developed at Stonehenge and based on a 3:4:5ft right-angled triangle and a vertical pole to cast the sun’s shadow, calibrated at the spring or autumn equinox, enabled latitude to be determined in terms of angle and pole height, as well as the time of day and year, anywhere on Earth.

This was millennia before the Chinese and Egyptians developed the gnomon for the sundial – the upright that casts the shadow.

Peter said that the latitude location and the shape of 5,000-year-old Silbury Hill was a “mathematical statement” of the how the ancient “clock” worked. “Silbury Hill is perhaps the most important archaeological site in Britain,” he said. “There is so much information built into its shape, size, dimensions and location.”

Amazingly, Peter has found that the latitudes of important ancient sites around the world, including the Great Pyramid of Giza and others in the Middle East and Central America, correspond to various exact pole heights in inches, suggesting that the knowledge of the model was exported by its British inventors and experimented with by different cultures.

Peter believes that standard measures were first developed at Stonehenge. By observing the transit of any star round a segment of any circle, such as the 56 Aubrey Holes, and counting on a string and stone pendulum, its length would determine standard measures, including the English foot. The dimensions and locations of the stone circles at Avebury and Stanton Drew, near Bristol, appeared to be statements of what the ancient Brits had found up to then, he said.

The Priddy circles in Somerset appear to be a megalithic signpost pointing to “missing archaeological links” at Brean and Weston-super-Mare, he says, the nearest long level beaches to the major megalithic sites of the West Country. Using a 5ft nominal eye height along these beaches would result in an observed 14,400ft nominal horizon. Inserting these values in a simple derived earth radius formula would result in a calculated 20,736,000ft nominal earth radius. At these beaches, the horizon distances to the island of Steepholm could therefore be determined.

Peter has actually checked that the sun behind Steepholm at midsummer day sunset casts a moving shadow along Brean beach enabling time to be measured easily down to one second, using the standard lengths and pendulum one-second beats initially developed at Stonehenge - in effect, a giant clock.

“The ancient Brits could have moved northwards to Weston-super-Mare beach to repeat the experiments for an extended period around midsummer day sunset,” he said. “ It is surely no coincidence that to sight Steepholm at horizon distance from Weston-super-Mare beach requires a pole equal to one English rod/pole/perch of 16.5ft.”

Silbury Hill, Peter says, was the result of experiments with pendulums and poles on these beaches and at various prehistoric Wessex sites, where other quantities such as the ratio pi and its value were determined. These measures, including the value of simple square roots, were then embedded in the dimensions of Silbury Hill and went on to form the basis of all English measures, including the foot and, significantly, the rod, pole and perch.

Peter’s theories build to an integrated system, involving Stonehenge, Stanton Drew, Avebury, Priddy, Silbury, Woodhenge and Prescelly, Wales, from where, it is claimed, the bluestones of Stonehenge were brought.

“It’s increasingly evident that mathematics evolved far earlier than commonly accepted,” said Peter, who has just completed a book in CD Rom form, Stone Henges, Pyramids and Earth Radius, which explains his theories in detail.

“In times before the invention of writing, the few people who understood, perhaps astronomer-priests, would be forced to lay down their understanding of the principles of mathematics in the form of stone circles, pyramids, myths and legends, primitive calendars and so on, in the hope that they would be decoded by future generations.

“We in the 21st century do the same sort of thing when burying time capsules under buildings or include important coded information about our civilization in spacecraft.”

Here’s how the Stone Age clock works (see diagram). A vertical pole is placed in a corner of a right-angled triangular grid with sides measuring 3ft, 4ft and 5ft (shown in red). In the diagram it is 4pm as one-sixth of a circle around the pole represents four hours – a full circle represents 24 hours. The tip of the shadow of the pole marks one month before the March 21 equinox when the “clock” is calibrated. The pole angle (top left) gives the latitude of the location by means of the pole’s height – 22in at Silbury, for example, 44in at Babylon, and 88in at Palenque, Mexico. Comments (6)

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