Possible Use of Stonehenge
HAWKINS1,2 has suggested that the Aubrey holes at Stonehenge were used to count the years of a 56-year cycle, important in the motion of the Moon and the occurrence of eclipses. Hoyle3 and Colton and Martin4 have suggested other ways that Stonehenge could have been used to predict eclipses. Here we suggest a use of Stonehenge that has nothing to do with eclipses. We suggest also that the Aubrey holes, if they were used as counters at all, were used to count intervals of 56 months rather than 56 years.
Eclipse Cycles and Eclipses at Stonehenge
Was Stonehenge used to predict eclipses? Previous claims have assumed a high degree of sophistication on the part of the builders of Stonehenge, and that the number of Aubrey holes (56) is particularly significant. It may be that neither assumption is justified or necessary, and that if the builders of Stonehenge did predict eclipses, they did it in much simpler ways.
Moonshine on Stonehenge
The astronomical significance of Stone- henge has been the subject of intermittent debate and speculation ever since 1740, when Stukeley [I] first observed that the axis of the sarsen structure and of the Avenue pointed at least approximately to the sunrise at the summer solstice. Apart from Sir Norman Lockyer [z], however, few professional astronomers concerned themselves with this question, until the appearance in,Nature of the two articles by Gerald S. Hawkins, Professor of Astronomy at Boston University, in 1963 and 1964 [3]. The first of these claimed the discovery of a number of additional alignments of astronomical significance, marked by pairs of stones and other features of the site; and the second suggested that the Aubrey Holes had been used as a neolithic 'computer' for the prediction of movements of the moon and of eclipses. Subsequently these theories received much wider publicity, in Britain as well as in the United States, through a CBS television programme, The Mystery of Stonehenge, which provided a superb example of partiality and tendentiousness in the presentation of an academic controversy. Professor Hawkins has now elaborated his ideas in a book whose title, Stonehenge Decoded, leaves no doubt of his confidence in the rightness of his conclusions-a confidence explicity echoed in his text. 'There can be no doubt that Stonehenge was an observatory; the impartial mathematics of probability and the celestial sphere are on my side' (p. vii). 'I think I have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the monument was deliberately, accurately, skilfully oriented to the sun and the moon' (pp. 146-7). 'I think I have put forward the best theory to account for the otherwise unexplained holes' (p. 147). 'I think there is little else in these areas that can be discovered at Stonehenge'(p. 147).