Calendars, Megalithic

Calendrical devices of a megalithic nature are found in many areas where early civilizations took root. These are exemplified by the huge stelae produced by the Mayan people of Mexico and Central America on which were recorded astronomical and mathematical data, such as the Long Count, that covered more than 4,000 years. Indeed, it appears that Mayan buildings even had astronomical orientations directed at celestial risings or settings on the horizon. Others were aligned so that shadows would cast images, such as the serpent on the Castillo at Chichen Itza. This pyramid also has four staircases of 91 steps that, with the top platform, combine to make 365—the number of days in the year. The Egyptian pyramids have remarkably accurate north/south—east/west alignments. Although these may not have been calendrical, they do seem to have been based upon either the rising and setting or vertical alignments of polar stars, and “star clocks” appear to have been painted upon the ceilings of some Egyptian tombs. Star paintings with astronomical alignments also have been found in megalithic tomb mounds in Japan. In China the Imperial Forbidden City is oriented on a north/ south axis with the Temple of Heaven. The Emperor would follow this path on the winter solstice to [Page 138]perform rituals to guarantee the return of longer days. In Kenya a series of stone pillars called Namoratunga and bearing Sudanese Kushite engravings line up with conjunctions of the moon with various stars around 300 BCE. There are many other examples of archeoastronomy to be found, but not all are megalithic in nature. In recent decades, however, research has come to indicate that much more ancient megaliths found in western Europe, long believed by local peasantry to be petrified giants, giants' tables, beds of legendary heroes, or just ancient curiosities of unknown use to others, may have served as solar or lunar calendars to the prehistoric farming peoples of the Late Stone Age and Early Bronze Age.

In the most literal sense, megalith means very large stone (μ∊γα λιθoς) in Ancient Greek. In the archeological sense, megalith refers to massive block-like stones that have been arranged into simple or complex architectural constructions, most often referent to the Neolithic (or “New Stone”) and Bronze Ages of western Europe (although megalithic architecture is known from later periods, also, and is a worldwide phenomenon, as described above). The simplest type of megalith is the upright standing stone, or menhir. The name comes from the Welsh maen, meaning “stone,” and hit, meaning “long,” thus menhir means “long stone,” and it is synonymous with the Breton peulvan (related to pol in Gaeilge, as in Pol na Brone, the Dolman of the Sorrows in the Burren of County Clare, Ireland). Sometimes menhirs are solitary objects; sometimes menhirs are arranged in groupings, or alignments, that range from just a few stones to more than a thousand, set in long rows, as at Carnac in Brittany and Callanish on the island of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides, which are parts of gigantic alignments that may be calen-drical in nature.

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