Ancient Alignment

By chance I met a chap up at the Hanging Stone today, name of Geoff Barnes (if I remember correctly), charts spread out, prismatic compass, rulers and all kinds of stuff, including little wooden balls placed on the cups and intersections of the rings. We had a long chat about the meaning of this neolithic rock art and he's working at looking for astronomical alignments.

I was a little sceptical and was bold enough to suggest that it's easy to see what you want to see when it comes to looking for patterns like this. He agreed, which is why he's been reticent about publishing anything until he has a good wealth of evidence. He's not had the best of luck with the weather when it comes to making observations, and was in the process of packing up when I left him, so when the skies cleared this evening I took the short walk up to the stone after which the road I live on has been named.

I was amazed to witness the most prominent cup marks perfectly aligned with the position of the sun at the almost summer solstice sunset. It was extraordinary to see for myself. Did someone three to five thousand years ago place something in these cup marks to mark this same event that I witnessed tonight. I'd love to think so. I'm beginning to think it's actually quite likely.