Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was Read Online Free
Author: Christopher Knight, Alan Butler
Tags: Civilization One
+/– 0.002 feet (82.96656cm +/– 0.061cm). 7
Thom found small variations in the length of his Megalithic Yard but the distribution of error was utterly consistent, centring on a tiny range – not a fuzzy zone as would be expected from an ancient measure. The distribution graph of variations kept powerfully centring on a single point.
The engineer was utterly perplexed, since he could not begin to explain his own findings. He was well aware that even if there had been a priesthood that cut poles to the required length and then passed them on over the tens of thousands of square miles involved and across many generations, such uncanny accuracy could not have been the result. In 1968 he wrote:
‘This unit was in use from one end of Britain to the other. It is not possible to detect by statistical examination any differences between the values determined in the English and Scottish circles. There must have been a headquarters from which standard rods [a rod could be of two types, but in this context they are pieces of wood cut to represent the Megalithic Yard] were sent out… The length of rods in Scotland cannot have differed from that in England by more than 0.03 inch [0.762 mm] or the difference would have shown up. If each small community had obtained the length by copying the rod from its neighbour to the south the accumulated error would have been much greater than this.’ 8
At that time Thom’s data could not be explained by any mechanism known to be available to the people of the late Stone Age other than to assume that all rods were made at the same place and delivered by hand to each and every community across Scotland and England. Eventually he would find the unit in use from the Hebrides to western France, which makes the central ruler factory theory look most unlikely. He also found it impossible to imagine why these early communities wanted to work to an exact standard unit.
Although he could not explain it, Thom stood by his data. While he was puzzled, many people within the archaeological community were not. For most archaeologists it was a simple case of an engineer playing with something he did not understand and getting his facts wrong. This was not an unreasonable response because the culture that produced the Megalithic structures had left no other signs of such sophistication. Thom’s data was accepted but its interpretation was almost universally rejected. However, when the Royal Society under the auspices of Professor Kendal was asked to check his work in order to find the error, it responded by stating that there was one chance in a hundred that Thom’s Megalithic Yard had not been employed on the sites surveyed.
Despite the fact that a number of leading archaeologists has subsequently identified accumulations close to whole number (integer) multiples of a unit of approximately 0.83 metres. 9 Thom’s work is still largely ignored on the basis that it is wholly inconsistent with scholarly opinion of the abilities of Neolithic Man. A failure to explain how this culture could have achieved such an accurate system of measurement has caused the archaeological community to disbelieve Thom’s findings and put them down as some kind of statistical blunder. A suggestion was put forward that Thom’s extensive data might reveal nothing more than the average pace or footstep of all the people involved in the building of these structures. After all, if enough data is collected and examined it is bound to produce an average, assuming that people paced out large distances and used their palm-widths for smaller ones. At first this explanation sounds very reasonable, even probable. But Professor Thom was not a fool – and he would have been a very poor mathematician to make such a basic mistake. The reality is that the ‘human pace’ theory is not a possible solution to the finding of a standard unit for two reasons. First, because the human stride varies far more than the small deviations found and
Thom found small variations in the length of his Megalithic Yard but the distribution of error was utterly consistent, centring on a tiny range – not a fuzzy zone as would be expected from an ancient measure. The distribution graph of variations kept powerfully centring on a single point.
The engineer was utterly perplexed, since he could not begin to explain his own findings. He was well aware that even if there had been a priesthood that cut poles to the required length and then passed them on over the tens of thousands of square miles involved and across many generations, such uncanny accuracy could not have been the result. In 1968 he wrote:
‘This unit was in use from one end of Britain to the other. It is not possible to detect by statistical examination any differences between the values determined in the English and Scottish circles. There must have been a headquarters from which standard rods [a rod could be of two types, but in this context they are pieces of wood cut to represent the Megalithic Yard] were sent out… The length of rods in Scotland cannot have differed from that in England by more than 0.03 inch [0.762 mm] or the difference would have shown up. If each small community had obtained the length by copying the rod from its neighbour to the south the accumulated error would have been much greater than this.’ 8
At that time Thom’s data could not be explained by any mechanism known to be available to the people of the late Stone Age other than to assume that all rods were made at the same place and delivered by hand to each and every community across Scotland and England. Eventually he would find the unit in use from the Hebrides to western France, which makes the central ruler factory theory look most unlikely. He also found it impossible to imagine why these early communities wanted to work to an exact standard unit.
Although he could not explain it, Thom stood by his data. While he was puzzled, many people within the archaeological community were not. For most archaeologists it was a simple case of an engineer playing with something he did not understand and getting his facts wrong. This was not an unreasonable response because the culture that produced the Megalithic structures had left no other signs of such sophistication. Thom’s data was accepted but its interpretation was almost universally rejected. However, when the Royal Society under the auspices of Professor Kendal was asked to check his work in order to find the error, it responded by stating that there was one chance in a hundred that Thom’s Megalithic Yard had not been employed on the sites surveyed.
Despite the fact that a number of leading archaeologists has subsequently identified accumulations close to whole number (integer) multiples of a unit of approximately 0.83 metres. 9 Thom’s work is still largely ignored on the basis that it is wholly inconsistent with scholarly opinion of the abilities of Neolithic Man. A failure to explain how this culture could have achieved such an accurate system of measurement has caused the archaeological community to disbelieve Thom’s findings and put them down as some kind of statistical blunder. A suggestion was put forward that Thom’s extensive data might reveal nothing more than the average pace or footstep of all the people involved in the building of these structures. After all, if enough data is collected and examined it is bound to produce an average, assuming that people paced out large distances and used their palm-widths for smaller ones. At first this explanation sounds very reasonable, even probable. But Professor Thom was not a fool – and he would have been a very poor mathematician to make such a basic mistake. The reality is that the ‘human pace’ theory is not a possible solution to the finding of a standard unit for two reasons. First, because the human stride varies far more than the small deviations found and
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