Megalithic Measures and Rhythms: Sacred Knowledge of the Ancient Britons

Among civilization’s strangest monuments are the huge stone circles built in the British Isles and northwest France between 6,500 and 3,500 years ago. Ignored or plundered for centuries, it is only in recent times that they have begun to reveal their remarkable complexity.

It is now widely acknowledged that those ancient sites were aligned precisely according to major celestial events and most likely linked to the agricultural calendar of early farming settlements. But a mystery remains: How did those megalithic builders achieve such extraordinary accuracy in their measurements?

Inspired by the surveying work of Alexander Thom, Anne Macaulay devoted her life to investigating stone circle sites, seeking out their hidden geometry and deeper cultural significance. She drew on ideas from geometry and metrology, archaeology and anthropology, history and mythology, as well as astronomy and music.

Macaulay concludes that the extraordinary mathematical skills of the British megalithic builders was original and self-contained—and eventually, the elite of that society became the "proto-Greeks" as their knowledge flowed toward the Eastern Mediterranean.

This well-researched study shines a light into the hidden secrets of a distant past.

Anne Macaulay (1921–1998) lived in Scotland where, for many years, she studied the origins of the alphabet, the history of the guitar, the figure of Apollo, and other mysteries surrounding Pythagoreanism. She settled in Balerno near Edinburgh and traveled widely, surveying megalithic sites around the world. In 1994, she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the University of Edinburgh. Mrs. Macaulay lectured at RILKO (Research into Lost Knowledge Orga­nization) and was a trustee of the Salisbury Center in Edinburgh.

Richard A. Batchelor, M.Sc., F.G.S. is a Research Fellow in Geology at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of Origin of St Andrews, which explores the sacred geometry of Fife.

Vivian Linacre is a surveyor based in Perth and the president of the British Weights and Measures Association.