Dave Lightbody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> There is no such thing as a megalithic yard.

Well ... in the end, the evidence wasn't really all that convincing, although some archaeologists still talk of the MY as if it were an accepted unit of measure. I suppose that multiples and subdivisions of the human pace or fore-arm or some such might have been used in some of the more sophisticated layouts, such as at Stonehenge, the pace or fore-arm in question being determined at the start of the relevant project, and perhaps transferred to pieces of wood ... who knows ... I suppose that sort of procedure could account both for slight variabilities, and also for certain similarities, between monuments that might be hundreds of miles apart.

> It
> was a figment of Thom's immagination, probably due
> to the fact he had a nationalist's emotional
> reaction to the new metric system being
> introduced.

I beg your pardon? Many people objected to the implementation of the metric system in the UK, and still do; a preference for the historical and traditional system does not mean that they are "emotional nationalists", by any means, and would probably have a further objection to being characterized in this manner.

> This caused him to search for evidence
> that the older foot and yard system in the UK was
> somehow indigenous or ancient, when it isn't.

Possibly imported from Northern Europe and the Classical world.

> The people who built the stone circles were in all
> probability an analogue culture. They didn't need
> to count or measure

Oh, well, hang on a minute there: I think that's going a bit too far. There is evidence that some prehistoric cultures were able to count - and, as I mentioned previously, it doesn't seem at all likely that somewhere like Stonehenge have been surveyed and built without recourse to some form of counting and measure.

> or used calendars, because
> they could see how far through the year they were
> by seeing where the sun rose on the horizon.

Um ... yes, I'm no fan of the Stone-Monuments-as-Calendars school of thought, but the method that you're suggesting would take quite a bit of sophisticated observation and recording, surely?

> The Egyptian Cubit on the other hand was real and
> widely used, and was the world's first linear
> measurement standard. That is why square fields
> developed in Egypt - because they could be set out
> and measured with ease.

Yup! Absolutely ...

> There were no square fields in the Neolithic or
> Bronze Age UK.

What?? What about square Celtic fields, for example? Or the coaxial landscapes of the Dartmoor reaves ... ??

Hermione
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