Megalithic yard

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The megalithic yard is a hypothetical unit of measure for length . The length of around 83 centimeters was reconstructed on the basis of measurements of megalithic structures and stone setting in 1955 by the Scottish engineer Alexander Thom and, according to his assumption, has been used in western South Asia, North Africa and Europe since the Neolithic .

value

description

The Megalithic Yard (MY) was discovered by Alexander Thom in 1955 when he surveyed English and Scottish stone settings (e.g. the Ring of Brodgar ). Based on the original 46 Neolithic stone circles , he later included around 300 stone settings in his investigations. As he compiled the measurements, he found that the diameters could be classified into groups that were close to 22 British feet (6.7056 m) and 44 feet (13.4112 m), while some reached 55 feet (16.764 m) . Thom's mathematical study (using SR Broadbent's 1955 methods) found the best of the clusters at 5.43 feet (1.655064 m). There was a remarkably low standard deviation of 1.10 per thousand. Thom halved this value to get from diameter to radius, getting 827.532 mm. Because this value corresponds to 90.5% of the British yard (914.4 mm), he called it "Megalithic yard". At the same time, however, he emphasized that he had never come across a third of the MY in his measurements, but had indications of a quarter. In contrast to the yard, which is a three-foot measure, the quarter seems to be the actual basic unit for the MY.

At first, at Thom's suggestion, the data obtained were processed by the British biometrician and statistician SR Broadbent, who found Thom's numerical results confirmed. Finally, one of the most famous English statisticians of the day, David George Kendall , was won over to examine these research results on a statistical basis. In a highly acclaimed lecture to the Royal Society in London, he found the megalithic fathom (" thread ") of 5.43 feet (1.655064 m, or 2 MY) confirmed at a significance level of 1%.

In the following years, the MY is said to have also been proven on various archaeological sites in continental Europe, including by Thom himself in Brittany and by Rolf Müller on megalithic stone setting near Odry (Czersk) in Poland. Measurements by the couple Vera and Georg Leisner on megalithic graves in Spain are also said to have resulted in the MY.

Thom brought the MY into connection with the Castilian Vara, which has been attested since the Middle Ages , the “Spanish ell”, which was still used in Spain and Latin America in the 19th century and in some cases to this day. Like the yard, this is a three-foot measure, but was also divided into "quarters" ( Cuartos or Palmos ). The short Castilian cubit ( Vara de Burgos ) defined in the metric system in 1801 at 835.905 millimeters differs from the ideal MY by around 7.89 per thousand. Other historical Vara dimensions are, however, sometimes much shorter or much longer and range from 75 to 91 centimeters.

Importance and evaluation

The “megalithic” dimension extracted by Thom could be connected with the ancient oriental cubit of 51.80 cm, since 2.5 MY correspond to four such cubits. This would indicate very old contacts between the ancient Orient and a Western European megalithic culture. In Scotland the measure seems to be documented well into the Iron Age , if one considers the measure of 83.7 meters, derived from circular Iron Age stone buildings, as presumably derived from the MY. The conclusions based on Thom's hypotheses, including the existence and representativeness of a “megalithic yard”, were, however, strongly doubted and relativized by other researchers in the 1980s. A measuring standard of the MY was never found. In British megalithic research, Thom's theories are no longer discussed or perceived and are considered discredited; but there are also beginnings for a renaissance of his ideas, especially in the USA.

literature

  • Rolf Müller: The sky above man from the Stone Age. Astronomy and mathematics in the structures of the megalithic cultures. Springer, Berlin a. Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-540-05032-2 (reprint of the first edition from 1970).
  • Edmund Sixsmith: The megalithic story of Professor Alexander Thom . (PDF; 2.6 MB). In: Significance. June 2009, pp. 94-96.
  • Alexander Thom: The megalithic unit of length. In: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, Volume 125 (1962), pp. 243-251.
  • Alexander Thom: Megalithic Sites in Britain. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1967, ISBN 978-0-19-813148-9 (last reprinted in 1979).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David George Kendall, FR Hodson: The Place of astronomy in the ancient world: a joint symposium of the Royal Society and the British Academy . Oxford 1974.
  2. ↑ a b Rolf CA Rottländer: Ancient measures of length. Investigations into their connections. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig a. Wiesbaden 1979, ISBN 978-3-528-06851-6 , pp. 19-21.
  3. ↑ Rolf Müller: The sky above man in the Stone Age. 1970, pp. 36-40.
  4. ↑ Rolf Müller: The sky above man in the Stone Age. 1970, p. 34f.
  5. ↑ a b Martín Almagro Gorbea: Conjunto de varas castellanas. In: Jorge Maier (Ed.): Antigüedades siglos XVI – XX. Catálogo del Gabinete de Antigüedades. Exhibition catalog. Real Academia de la Historia , Madrid 2005, ISBN 84-95983-64-8 , pp. 49-55 (here: p. 51).
  6. ↑ Martín Almagro Gorbea: Conjunto de varas castellanas. In: Jorge Maier (Ed.): Antigüedades siglos XVI – XX. Madrid 2005, p. 51. Referring to: Alan Davis: The Metrology of Stone Rows: A Reassessment (PDF; 1.0 MB). In: Glasgow Archaeological Journal. 13: 44-53 (1986); John Barnett, Gordon Moir: Stone Circles and Megalithic Mathematics. In: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. 50: 197-216 (1984); Clive Ruggles: Recent developments in megalithic astronomy. In: Anthony F. Aveni (Ed.): World Archaeoastronomy. Cambridge 1989, pp. 13-26.
  7. ^ Edmund Sixsmith: The megalithic story of Professor Alexander Thom. P. 96.