Thornborough Circles (Henges) Revisited - LexiLine Journal 448

James Q. Jacobs has an image of the Thornborough Circles (Henges) at
http://jqjacobs.net/blog/neolithic.html
which contains an element I had never seen before, the Three Hills Barrows at Thornborough North (I previously only had one basic fairly limited photo of Thornborough for my research work). The Three Hills Barrows absolutely confirm my decipherment of this megalithic website. But before I explain how this is, here is a bit of background information.

Recently, some people have been alleging that the Thornborough Circles represent Orion. They have also been writing as if they were the first to assign an astronomical connection to Thornborough. This is incorrect.

We do appreciate their courage for alleging an astronomical connection, but that identification is wrong, and we assigned an astronomical connection to the Thornborough Circles quite some time ago.

In my 2003 book Stars Stones and Scholars, pages 161 and 162, I write as follows regarding the following two images dealing with the Thornborough Circles (Henges):

"The Thornborough Circles of Yorkshire north of Ripon calculate the position of the South Pole along the celestial meridian of the Equinoxes to the North Pole in ca. 3117 BC, i.e. a line running from the star alpha in Hydrus to the star alpha in the Southern Triangle to Antares or Dschubba in Scorpio and from there to kappa-Serpentis, the head of Serpens Caput and from there to the North Pole Star, dividing the meridian into four equal segments. The Cursus marks the edge of the Milky Way and the Mound Hill marks the Southern Pole Star. Tucana, Octans, Apus and Ara are also marked."

"The Thornborough Circles use a triangulational system of measure similar to Balnuaran of Clava in Scotland, i.e. three circles of triangulation, to determine the Pole Star position. As we also have discovered, this same kind of measurement is also found at Nazca in Peru [http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi246.htm ]. Below is a drawing of the calculation made at Thornborough."



This measurement uses the same astronomical unit of measure that according to my research was used in Scotland at the Clava Cairns, as I write at page 58 of Stars Stones and Scholars:

"The linear planispheric map distance between Polaris (not then the pole star but the brightest star on the path of precession) and Deneb and between the Pole Star and Vega is the same as used by the ancients as one-fourth of the distance from North Pole Star to South Pole Star as measured along the meridian of the Equinoxes (equinox axis) in ca. 3117 BC, i.e. from the South Pole to the star alpha in the Southern Triangle, from there to Antares (or Dschubba) in Scorpio, from there to Serpens Caput and from there to the North Pole Star. The word meridian (Merid-ian) comes from Indo-European, e.g. Latvian Merit "to measure"."

Let us now take a look at the image of the Thornborough Circles (Henges) that Jacobs has on his website at http://jqjacobs.net/blog/neolithic.html:




This image of Thornborough resolves several questions that I had about the Circles in my decipherment, but also raises some new questions.

As is apparent from the quotation above, I was not sure whether the meridian was calculated through Antares in Scorpio or through Dschubba, the major of the three stars in the head of Scorpio. Jacobs' image resolves that issue, showing that the celestial meridian at the Equinoxes was measured through Antares, as the Three Hills Barrows in my view represent the three large stars in the head of Scorpio, including Dschubba and Graffias. As I note at page 170 of Stars Stones and Scholars, this alternative use of Dschubba or Antares (the hieroglyph NTR), as I have discovered, is visible for one particular king named after this star (region)
in the Egyptian list of kings (a list of kings which is stellar, just as the Maya king list).

The Centre Hill Barrow above, which I label "the Mound" in my drawing, was in my opinion the calculated position of the South Celestial Pole ca. 3117 BC. However, it is conceivable that this barrow is the Small Magellanic Cloud and that the position of alpha in Hydrus was taken as the position of the South Celestial Pole by the ancients.

The center Circle or Henge (Thornborough Centre in the image above) represents the Southern Triangle and the barrow to its left can only be the variable Algol-type star R, a type of star to which the ancients paid a great deal of attention, as also to Algol in Perseus. At page 88 I refer to a "Sanskrit legend about Visvamitra of Somadatta" reported in Richard Hinckley Allen's Star Names, p. 436, as follows:

"[A]t one time in the history of the Creation an attempt was made by Visvamitra to form a southern heavenly home for the body of the dead king, the pious Somadatta; and this work was not abandoned till a southern pole and another Bear had been located in positions corresponding to the northern, this pole passing through the island Lunka, or Vadavamukha (Ceylon). The Anglo-Saxon Manual made distinct mention of this duplicate constellation 'which we can never see.' ..."

In the northern stellar hemisphere, the variable star Algol is right next to Triangulum, the (Northern) Triangle. In the southern stellar hemisphere, the variable star R is right next to the Southern Triangle, which must have pleased the ancient southern stargazers and seafarers who were mapping the heavens to correspond as much as possible in the southern skies to what they already knew well in the northern skies (making it much easier to retain in memory).

The Circle (Henge) at Thornborough South represents the star alpha in Hydrus. The barrow to the right below it would conceivably represent the South Ecliptic Pole, or it might also simply mark the Large Magellanic Cloud, which in ca. 3117 BC marked the South Ecliptic Pole. It is also near here at Achernar that Eridanus, the heavenly river of the underworld begins, so that the Large Magellanic Cloud may be connected to legend of Phaeton and Eridanus.