‘Early man used crude version of sat-nav system’

[Creeping Death]

‘Early man used crude version of sat-nav system’ (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Early-man-used-crude-version-of-sat-nav-system/articleshow/5016042.cms)
LONDON: In a new research, a scientist has found that prehistoric man navigated his way across England using a crude version of a satellite navigation system, which was based on stone circle markers. According to a report in the Telegraph, the research, by historian and writer Tom Brooks, shows that Britain’s Stone Age ancestors were “sophisticated engineers” and far from a barbaric race. Brooks studied all known prehistoric sites as part of his research.
The only problem was that prehistoric man had a tough getting the "GPS log" to stay in orbit...

http://www.standrewssociety.mb.ca/photos/home/selkirk-2008-caber.jpg

Talk about linking two things that can’t be linked. What a joke of a headline.
So, they built a beautiful and elaborate system of navigation, and did pretty much nothing else? To get from one clutch of stone and stick huts to the next? Thank God for the Roman and Viking invasions!

Centuries later the stones were replaced with metallic plates that further increased the precision of navigation...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2238/2326911947_e146ba2848.jpg

[Beorn]

Here's the full article in an English newspaper. The Indian one of Brian's didn't do the article justice.



http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01481/satnav_1481439c.jpg


They were able to travel between settlements with pinpoint accuracy thanks to a complex network of hilltop monuments.
These covered much of southern England and Wales and included now famous landmarks such as Stonehenge and The Mount.

New research suggests that they were built on a connecting grid of isosceles triangles that 'point' to the next site.
Many are 100 miles or more away, but GPS co-ordinates show all are accurate to within 100 metres.
This provided a simple way for ancient Britons to navigate successfully from A to B without the need for maps.

According to historian and writer Tom Brooks, the findings show that Britain's Stone Age ancestors were ''sophisticated engineers'' and far from a barbaric race.
Mr Brooks, from Honiton, Devon, studied all known prehistoric sites as part of his research.
He said: ''To create these triangles with such accuracy would have required a complex understanding of geometry.
''The sides of some of the triangles are over 100 miles across on each side and yet the distances are accurate to within 100 metres. You cannot do that by chance.
''So advanced, sophisticated and accurate is the geometrical surveying now discovered, that we must review fundamentally the perception of our Stone Age forebears as primitive, or conclude that they received some form of external guidance.
''Is sat-nav as recent as we believe; did they discover it first?''
Mr Brooks analysed 1,500 sites stretching from Norfolk to north Wales. These included standing stones, hilltop forts, stone circles and hill camps.
Each was built within eyeshot of the next.

Using GPS co-ordinates, he plotted a course between the monuments and noted their positions to each other.
He found that they all lie on a vast geometric grid made up of isosceles 'triangles'. Each triangle has two sides of the same length and 'point' to the next settlement.
Thus, anyone standing on the site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire could have navigated their way to Lanyon Quoit in Cornwall without a map.
Mr Brooks believes many of the Stone Age sites were created 5,000 years ago by an expanding population recovering from the trauma of the Ice Age.
Lower ground and valleys would have been reduced to bog and marshes, and people would have naturally sought higher ground to settle.

He said: ''After the Ice Age, the territory would have been pretty daunting for everyone. There was an expanding population and people were beginning to explore.
''They would have sought sanctuary on high ground and these positions would also have given clear vantage points across the land with clear visibility untarnished by pollution.
''The triangle navigation system may have been used for trading routes among the expanding population and also been used by workers to create social paths back to their families while they were working on these new sites.''
Mr Brooks now hopes his findings will inspire further research into the navigation methods of ancient Britons.

He said: ''Created more than 2,000 years before the Greeks were supposed to have discovered such geometry, it remains one of the world's biggest civil engineering projects.
''It was a breathtaking and complex undertaking by a people of profound industry and vision. We must revise our thinking of what's gone before.''


Source (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6189320/Prehistoric-man-used-crude-sat-nav.html)
I think this is just amazing. You really get a sense of a civilisation lost to us when you walk through all the apparently random and enigmatic sites dotted around England and the rest of the British Isles. Clearly these people were sophisticated enough to compete with what was going on in Egypt for scale of structures and mathematically sound engineering.

http://www.megalith.ukf.net/bigmap.htm

[Beorn]

(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ancient-britons-left-trail-of-secret-picassos-of-stone-age-left-1077673.html)Ancient Britons left trail of secret Picassos of Stone Age left (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ancient-britons-left-trail-of-secret-picassos-of-stone-age-left-1077673.html)

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Correspondent

Monday, 1 March 1999

IT IS a visual language lost to us. Are they boundary signs? Are they religious warnings? Are they maps?

The intriguing abstract shapes of Britain's prehistoric rock art - rings and hollows, zigzags and arcs - are indecipherable now, and largely unknown to the public.
The Stone Age people who carved the designs on sandstone slabs and granite boulders left a large number of them across the country, with about 2,500 sites currently known.
And now a major effort is under way to catalogue the drawings, find more of them and learn how to conserve them. It is hoped also to bring them to the public's attention.
Britain cannot boast the wonderful prehistoric cavepaintings of wild animals found at Lascaux and other sites in southern France and Spain. We have but a few representations of animals, such as the goats or deer carved on the face of what was an ancient rock shelter at Goat's Crag in north Northumberland.

But we do have an extraordinary amount of mysterious, carved and scratched abstract shapes that would not look out of place in a late-period Picasso, and which clearly once held an important meaning.
"This stuff was created between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago by the first farming communities in Britain, and as far as we can see we've got something quite remarkable," said Professor Tim Darvill, head of archaeology at Bournemouth University.
"These are the people who built Stonehenge and Avebury - they also signposted their landscape in subtle ways by engraving symbols and images on to rocks."
With his colleague Professor Peter Ucko from London University's Institute of Archaeology, Professor Darvill is leading a research project funded by English Heritage, which will eventually produce a catalogue raisonne of all Britain's rock art.

It will take a long time, perhaps five years, and be expensive - even the six-month pilot study, now under way, to explore what techniques to use will cost pounds 80,000.
But the eventual objective is to create a gazetteer of every design, which will be put on CD-rom and made available to universities, schools, and the public. It is also hoped that computer analysis will allow the meaning of the designs to be understood.
There are about 30 abstract motifs commonly used, the most widely seen being the "cupmark", a teacup-shaped hollow between two and three inches across that is "pecked" - chipped with another stone - into the rock.

Cupmarks may have been used to trap water, and could have represented the sun, moon or stars. The next most common design is the "ring-mark", a spiral set of lines. Between them, these two motifs appear in 70 per cent of designs.
The rest are zigzags and chevron patterns, which some archaeologists think may be representations of a human trance.
"They come in different combinations and there seems to be a `grammar' in the way they've been used," Professor Darvill said. "We will analyse them on computer like you would an early script. My guess is that we will find a patterning, and I hope we get close to an understanding."

His own view is that the motifs are saying something about the landscapes in which they occur. "They seem to be about marking the landscape, perhaps marking ownership, perhaps to mark what kind of things you're coming to.
"Perhaps they tell you what's going on in a valley - if it was a secret valley, a burial area. Maybe you're going into a grazing area, as if they were signposts to what's going on, `Camp here!' That sort of thing."


Or perhaps they are telling you where you are in relation to the next settlement and how far you have to go?