Megalithic Axial Alignments

• Tombs
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• Boulder-Burials
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• Stone Circles
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• Stone Rows
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• Stone Pairs
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• Standing Stones
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• All Types
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• Prehistoric Solar Calendar
• Prehistoric Lunar Calendar

Do megalithic monu­ments have alignments that point in astro­nomically significant direct­ions?

Yes they do. This debate has been going on for a long time and is still not settled because the answer is not simple.

Many studies have been done but different method­ologies have produced different results, allowing the idea to be rejected for lack of consistent evidence. This is largely because, until now, axial alignments have been studied in isolation and assumptions have been made about what they might point at.

Whole Horizon Analysis shows that place came before orientation. Prehistoric ritual sites were sacred places because, in that exact place, the shape of horizon matched and measured cyclical luni-solar patterns. All the way around. Understanding this view of the world gives context, within which axial alignments and other architectural choices become more understandable.

Most megalithic monuments have an axis of approximate bilateral symmetry. Many of them enclose a space that has an entrance at one end of the axis. Others consist of two or more stones that may be taken to indicate a line. Even a single stone may have a long axis. These are axial alignments and rarely accurate to more than a couple of degrees at best. There may be (and often are) other significant alignments hidden within the structures but, generally, we are not considering those here.

• Horizons have been split into zones for classification purposes.
• Extreme is where sun and moon never rise or set but excludes the north-south axis of celestial rotation.
• Lunar is where lunistices Lunistices are the most northerly and southerly moons of the month. The lunar equivalent of solstices. More. occur but sun rises or sets do not.
• Solar is where sun rises or sets occur but lunistices do not.
• Solar / Lunar is where the lunistice zone overlaps with the outer regions of the sun's annual travels. Within this zone, individual sites may sometimes be assessed as either solar or lunar as you will see if you look at the linked pages. Alternatively one direction may be purely solar while the other is somewhere within a lunistice range.

This solution is more immediately useful than attempting to classify specific targeted events because we should not make assumptions about what the builders might have considered significant. The classification is an overall one that considers all axes to be potentially bi-directional. The terms used are defined below but may well have other uses elsewhere. Further clarification of terms is given on the linked pages.

• 89% of these monuments have axes that indicate directions of obvious importance to calendrical horizon astronomy.
• 11% have "extreme" axes but 7 of these 16 sites have an axis that bisects the space between a major standstillLunistice positions vary cyclically over an 18.6 year period but are fairly static for more than a year at either end of the range. position and the north-south axis, making another 6% that become astronomically significant once understood.
• Thus, in this study, 94% of axial alignments are astronomically significant and just 6% have no explanation at this time. There is a working theory concerning those few but more research is necessary.
• Of this sample (excluding the sixteen with extreme axes), thirty-seven are uni-directional and ninety-four are bi-directional.

More about the Statistical relationship between prehistoric ritual site location and luni-solar astronomy