{14}
Most of the prehistoric sciences were chiefly founded on the notion that the celestial bodies were carried round on the surfaces of invisible glassy spheres circuiting equably and uniformly. Many of the spheres were thought to rotate in groups with a common centre. {15}
The ancients thus sought to explain the celestial happenings and the regular intervals in the movements of Sun, Moon, Planets and Stars. A picture of the heavens was sketched by means of earthworks over large areas suitably situated like the area whereon Glasgow is now placed.*
* Photostat copies of the Garth surrounding Glasgow Cathedral, on a large scale, have recently been published to demonstrate the astronomical lay-out of the kernel of the area of Glasgow.
The spheres were, of course, shown in ground plan as circles.
“Culture” and “civilisation” are words often vaguely applied to the state of mankind at various stages of his advancement, particularly with regard to degrees of skill in making such things as pottery and implements of flint and bone. The word civilisation is here used in a less material sense. As far back as the Old Stone Age, and in an early section of that Age, it will be shown that man had reached a high standard of mentality—that indeed he had become a student, a scientist, a philosopher, and, above all, a remarkably capable astronomer and geometer.
Disclosure, in continental caverns, of carvings and pictures dating from the Old Stone Age has gone some way towards correcting the tendency to under-estimate the intelligence of men of that time. The cave carvings and paintings of reindeer, buffalo, mammoth, and other animals which have departed long ago from middle and southern Europe, or have vanished altogether from the earth, demonstrate that the ancient artist possessed not only a fine sense of proportion and of line and colour, but a wonderful memory for anatomical details, and a marked ability to portray them. Hitherto, however, no one has associated a system of science with the work of the cave artists. Yet every carving so far examined by the writer, either on the spot or from published drawings, contains certain characteristic features of design and measurement found in all known human ages.
The period of the cave pictures was not the first which saw the man of culture at work. Just at what greater depth of antiquity {16} this civilisation will eventually be found to have prevailed is not easy to judge.
There is a tendency to place the horizon of human culture farther and farther back into the past. The discoveries of the workshops of makers of flint tools, quite undisturbed yet overlaid by deep gravel beds, with implements having a distinctive appearance not akin to any Palæolithic or later industry, testify to the existence of man the craftsman at a time earlier than the Chellean, the earliest archeological age hitherto generally accepted by students. These finds present the same special features of measurement traced by the writer in Palæolithic and later ages. Thus the beginnings of mental culture must be looked for at an age many thousands of years before the Chellean and certainly long before the glorious efflorescence of art of Magdalenian times. At the end of this chapter the writer gives in briefest outline his estimates of the chronology of the later human periods, which will be amplified and explained in due course.
The mental capacity of the main types of man in Europe in Palæolithic times, especially that of the Cro-Magnon race, does not seem to have differed greatly from that of modern man.
It is unreasonable to think that even in material things men of that time were unduly backward. The importance of metal as a factor in human advancement has perhaps been exaggerated. Objects of wood, stone, bone, and antler, as well as fabrics and basketry, have almost disappeared, but surviving fragments suggest that human requirements were well met by articles made from non-metallic materials. We do not know fully to what extent craftsmanship may have produced useful and beautiful objects which have succumbed to the ravages of time, or what traces of a very early material civilisation may have been obliterated from the surface of the earth by all-destroying natural forces such as chemical action, frost, intense sunshine, the relentless grinding of glaciers, the on-rushing of floods and dust-storms, and the transgression of seas. {17}
The ancient culture may have originated in Western Europe, in the Sahara, in the Far East, or in America. Certainly, there is no particular reason for assuming that it came from Central Asia or from the Eastern Mediterranean, where modern man has conventionally been accustomed to place the cradle of the human race. Evidence furnished by the vestiges under study certainly indicates that the place of origin is to be laid between 30° to 35° north latitude. This situation could equally well apply to Southern Spain, Northern Africa, Palestine, Babylonia, Persia, Thibet, Southern China, Japan, and the more southerly North American States. Considerable changes of latitude since the beginning of the system may have extended still further the range.
Greek legend tells of a great civilisation—ten thousand years before Plato’s time—situated “beyond” the Straits of Gibraltar. The evidence of the pre-classical traditions which prevailed in the Middle East points to an ancient culture situated in the West.
In Western Europe—the north of it in mild, and the south of it in cold epochs—the climate was the most suitable in the world for the encouragement of human development. It is so at the present day. Its position on the margin of a great ocean, facing the prevailing mild, south-western winds, has secured for it an equable climate from season to season. Here for tens of thousands of years the tree-growth has been, on the average, not too dense and the pasturage and hunting excellent. Not only the finest land animal food, but fish food, has always been abundant, and the great human necessity, salt (derivable from salt-water), has never failed. The deposits of flint and other useful stones such as quartzite are abundant; and in very late prehistoric ages the presence of gold, copper, and tin encouraged the further advance of civilisation. From the ethnic standpoint it is not difficult to accept the suggestion that the white races predominated in the realm of mental culture in Palæolithic times, as they predominate now. It seems more {18} difficult, indeed, to accept the view that white Europeans took their culture from the black, brown, yellow or red races.
Plato in his “Laws” indicates belief in a form of civilisation already very ancient in his time:—
“Long ago they appeared to recognise that their young citizens must he habituated to forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed, and exhibited patterns of them in their temples, and no painter or artist was allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the traditional forms, or to invent new ones. And you will find that their works of art are painted and moulded in the same forms that they had ten thousand years ago.”
It has become evident in the course of the present investigation that a stern discipline, originating in and perpetuated by an intense religion, was self-imposed by the people who painted the cave pictures, as well as those who erected the groups of standing-stones, and by the sculptors of rocks and of monoliths, the architects of circles, mounds and pyramids. Their leaders and philosophers, venerated alike by peasant and by hunter, must have travelled widely, for not only does their culture appear to have sprung from a common source, but throughout thousands of generations it continued unchanged in essentials, and indeed even in details.
The diffusion of this great astro-religious culture, seems, indeed, as wonderful as the origination of the culture itself. Its vestiges, tangible or intangible, everywhere present extraordinary resemblances.
Intercommunication between races, however, was not difficult, because the root cause of wars, economic pressure, was for many millennia probably almost unknown. Food and clothing were abundant, but if at any time they grew scarce, migration was easy. Boats were, after all, easily made, and long sea voyages must not be ruled out when considering the movements even of Palæolithic man. Seasonal migration, like the present-day wanderings of nomads, and like movements in the animal world, was {19} probably a leading characteristic of the mode of life in early prehistoric times.
From evidence to be submitted it seems certain that our ancestors back to Pre-Palæolithic times possessed more than a rudimentary knowledge of astronomy. In late Palæolithic times the cave artists of France and Spain, having inherited the knowledge, embodied it in their designs and pictures. Azilian Man, and still later, Neolithic Man, took over the torch of learning, and in turn handed it on to their followers of the early metallic ages. Stone and earthen and even a few wooden structures, and an enormous number of relics and rock-markings, testify to the system having flourished in all these ages. It was known to the erectors of the Egyptian pyramids, the temples of Persia and India, the dolmens of Japan, and the mounds and stelae of America.
In classical times came the beginning of the end of the ancient science and religion. With their refinements of knowledge, most of its exponents seem to have passed to extinction before the time of the Eastern philosophers. Zoroaster and Pythagoras, shortly before the Christian era, tried to revive the ancient Magian cult; but it is doubtful whether they understood the system which had prevailed universally for thousands of years before their day.
It is recorded that the mythical Hermes, or Mercury, bringer of celestial news to earth-bound students, had his knowledge engraved upon pillars of stone, so that it could be transmitted to posterity. To these pillars the Greek philosophers were traditionally supposed to have been indebted for much of their science. The inscriptions were afterwards copied into books ascribed to Hermes. The pillars of Hermes were probably none other than the inscribed standing-stones and other monuments still to be seen in most regions of the world. Practically all standing-stones in the British Isles and in Western Europe, the surfaces of which are not too much weathered, show traces of geometrically planned inscriptions—that is, of cup-marks and analogous carvings. {20}
There is clear evidence that in Roman times a coterie of highly-skilled astronomer-priests survived in the unconquered North-East of Scotland, where for subtlety and artistic perfection the symbol-writing of the period was unequalled in Europe. Ireland also nursed much by the ancient wisdom for at least some centuries into the Christian era. Celtic mythology is permeated by its vestiges.
In historic times knowledge of this lost science is traceable in the work of the founders of the early Church, the ritual of which bears the deep impress of a great pagan monotheism.
The early Churchmen, more especially in Ireland and the un-Romanised portions of Scotland, secretly perpetuated the old astrological ideas, which were also the theme of the Welsh bard Taliesin, whose obscure verses now become intelligible. The knowledge was possessed by the scribe of the unique Book of Kells, and by the carvers of the symbol-bearing slabs of North-Eastern Scotland.
In ecclesiastical architecture down to mediæval times, ancient symbolic linear measures survived—possibly only as a tradition—to a date as yet undefined. They survive in many standard measures of to-day, notably in the British inch, foot, and mile.*
* Details are given in my Craftsmen’s Measures in Prehistoric Times, and Measures: Their Prehistoric Origin and Meaning.
The ancient cult was known to and practised by the Maya race of Central America down to the time of the Spanish conquerors. The Maya astronomical system, though identical in essentials, has never until now been proved to be associated with that of Western Europe, and with a similar culture in Palæolithic times. It would seem that much of the substance of modern heraldry and of freemasonry has been carried forward from the body of lore accumulated by the prehistoric school of craftsmen and philosophers. The red rampant cat or lion of Scotland and other {21} countries is but the symbol of the god Mars, the St. George and St. Martin, both of whom killed the dragon which attacked the Sun and Moon at eclipses. Mars, as tadpole or water-serpent, is seen attacking the black dragon at the Druid Temple near Glasgow.†
†My account of this sanctuary fully illustrates this episode.
The folk-lore of every race on the globe is steeped in the long-forgotten tenets and forms of this lost prehistoric civilisation.
Why has this remarkable civilisation never been described in written history?
Everything points to the more subtle knowledge having been an inviolate secret of the initiates and an inscrutable mystery to the common people. Throughout thousands of years it was handed down by means of unchanging geometrical records, embodied in incised and painted work and architecture. It was probably supplemented by oral tradition; but it was not to be written down, even when writing became a common art.
Caesar throws some light on this when (De Bello Gallico, Book VI, xi) he says of the Druids:—
“They are said to learn thoroughly a great number of verses. Therefore some continue their studies at the Institution for twenty years. And they do not think it lawful to commit these things to writing. They appear to have pursued this course for two reasons, because they wish that neither their Institution should have its tenets exposed to the knowledge of all the community, nor that the students, in consequence of trusting to the aid of writing should less sedulously cultivate their powers of memory. … They reason largely regarding the stars and their motion, regarding the magnitude of the universe and of the earth, regarding the nature of things, regarding the power and government of the immortal gods, and this they transmit to their youth.”
From evidence now available it can be established—
1. That a section of mankind had attained to high mental powers {22} in an early section of the Old Stone Age, possibly over 100,000 years ago.
2. That there was then built up a system of philosophy and religion, which ultimately diffused itself over the world.
3. That this system of philosophy and religion was intimately linked with astronomy.
4. That it found expression in, and governed, craftsmanship, art, and architecture.
5. That a universal language of geometry and measurement (lost perhaps two thousand years ago and now recovered) formed an integral part of the prehistoric religious system.
6. That the prehistoric standards of measure are traceable to-day in relics found in every part of the world; that traces of the ancient ritual and beliefs are to be found in most surviving systems of religion, as well as in folk-lore and mythology generally.
The investigation now described began with what are known as the “cup-and-ring” rock markings—long an enigma of archæology. The finest and most elaborate of these sculpturings occur on rocks near Glasgow. They are indeed very numerous in Scotland—some thousands of sets are to be found upon standing-stones and upon the boulders and natural rock-surfaces of hill, moor, and seashore. The markings might be better described as saucer-like depressions, surrounded in some instances by rings or serpentine channels. Many are badly weathered, and can be detected only by touch or when the light strikes them at a favourable angle. Others again, deeper and less weathered, are at once obvious to the novice, who can pronounce them unmistakably the product of man’s industry.*
* Many illustrations of these are given in my Archaic Sculpturings.
Even to enumerate the suggested explanations of cup-markings would occupy considerable space, and would serve no useful purpose; for most of these explanations carry their own condemnation on the surface. {23}
The suggestion that the cups were designed to hold libations to pagan deities, for instance, is negatived at once when it is recalled that cups appear not only on vertical surfaces, but even on the ceilings of ancient stone structures.
At first glance the designs seem chaotic and meaningless enough, as though the markings had been placed at random, but closer scrutiny reveals a purpose in their graduations of size and in their arrangement.
The first salient fact to emerge from the study of the markings was the presence of uniform standards of measure. When the designs were transferred to paper by the process of rubbing, identical measures were found repeated in different sets of markings, and definite multiples of the measures were detected as recurring in the same carving. Again, not only linear but angular values were repeated in what appeared to be a systematic manner.
Finally, groups of cups were seen to portray small sections of the celestial vault, more particularly in that region, the zodiacal belt, within which the sun, moon, and planets make their apparent journeys.
Convinced that the Scottish markings were translatable messages from prehistoric scholars, the writer extended the inquiry to England, Ireland, the Channel Islands, France, and Switzerland. In the rock carvings of all these countries he was astonished to find not merely a similar but an identical metric system.
Early realising that it is useless to found upon such records as drawings or photographs, the writer proceeded to collect rubbings of early carvings. In addition to personal researches, chiefly in America, Britain, and Western Europe generally, he received reliable rubbings from Norway, North and Central America, the West Indies, Nigeria, South Africa, and other parts of the world. In all, many hundreds of sets of markings were accumulated. Each set has the same story to tell. Those carved upon the granite boulders of the Ruidoso River, in New Mexico, are identical in {24} system with designs upon stone outcrops on the moors close to Glasgow.
Moreover, the peculiar system of measures was found reiterated, but on a larger scale, in monuments, circles and groups of stones, pyramids, grave structures, and earthworks of all kinds. Still further, the topographical relationship of such monuments to each other was found to be planned, so that a group of monuments spread over a range of territory can tell the same story as a cup-marking.
Comparative study of the standards of measure recurring in ancient carvings and works yielded at length a remarkable result, which set the writer on the direct road to a solution of the entire problem. It was proved that the measures represented periods of time—that, indeed, the prehistoric architect had made a calendar out of his foot-rule. When a small unit of measure representing one day had been detected, all other measures naturally flowed from it. When, for instance, a tape marked off with day-units was applied to the famous rock-carved Swastika of Ilkley, Yorkshire, it was found that the circuit of the serpentine band of that design measured 365 units, thus representing the passage of one year.
The Swastika, therefore, was proved to be a kind of astronomical clock: the cup-and-ring markings were time records. Periods of time were registered by units of space.
Not only were there observed measures representing simple periods like the month and the year, but measures exactly proportionate to the periods of the five anciently-known planets, prove that the carvers of these records were aware of the exact number of days (and fine fractions of a day) in which the heavenly bodies perform their apparent rounds of the heavens as seen from the earth.
After examining, analysing, and comparing some thousands of examples of ancient craftsmanship, art, and architecture, it has been possible to reconstruct the greater part of the symbolism, {25} and to outline the principles upon which the early student recorded his findings.
It is easy to imagine how time and space became thus intimately associated in the mind of the early thinker. To make, with the aid of a sharp stone, a tally-stick upon which days, months, and years could be recorded was a natural proceeding. Using reasonably small notches, the tally-stick for one year would be about a foot long. Hence the twelve months of our year are intimately connected with the twelve inches of our foot.
An understanding of his system of time-cycles, for instance, led to the discovery that cup-and-ring markings were simply the “hands” of invisible clock-dials, upon reconstructing which the records of the rock-markings and corresponding large-scale designs can be read to the year, the day, the hour, and almost the minute. The cup-markings were thus forerunners of such things as the Maya wheel-calendars; and it is interesting to note that some three or four thousand years before the Maya civilisation reached its greatest height cup-markings were being used in North America for the purpose of recording eclipses.
The principal events recorded in cup-markings are events such as eclipses of the sun and moon; the endings and the re-beginnings of time-cycles; the appearance on the meridian at midnight of one or other of the planets or brighter stars.
Definite landmarks of the investigation were reached when eclipses recorded by cup-markings were identified, by computation, with astronomical happenings. These sculpturings can now be read as easily as an open book.
Next, perhaps, to the persistent recurrence of the ancient symbolic measures in the dimensions of prehistoric, humanly-worked objects, the evidence of visible total solar eclipses recorded in ancient times within the belt of totality, and verified by my modern computation, proves most positively the truth of the present thesis. The late Herr Schoch computed many prehistoric eclipses specially for this investigation. {26}
A further step was taken when it was discovered that the movements of the heavenly orbs had been marked out by the ancient astronomer in a fixed calendar of sacred days and seasons—this on an extremely simple and ingenious system. The prehistoric calendar-maker conceived the idea of a sacred year in which all the orbs came into perfect harmony upon a certain day of the year. Thereafter he followed the movements of each orb, and when a crucial point in its career was reached, the day was marked out for appropriate ceremonies. These prehistoric sacred days became the sacred days of later religious cults. Most of them are still represented by saints’ days in the Roman Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, and other Churches. Even in spite of difficulties due to the principle of reckoning by the moon, it has been possible to bring into the religious calendars of the world, and by reference to the original prehistoric sources, to account for many obvious points of resemblance amongst the various calendars.
To the student of Celtic, Old European, Oriental and classical literature the correlation of calendars should be of interest, showing as it does how different peoples, in their religion and derived mythology, followed in a common trackway beaten out by their Stone Age ancestors.
Many obscure points in the sacred writings of Britain, Ireland, Egypt, Babylonia, and other ancient civilisations likewise become elucidated when submitted to the test of principles derived from the rock-cut records and the lay-out of adjoining monuments.
In the Hebrew sacred writings this holds good in an accentuated degree. The Creation and Deluge parables take on a fresh and rational form, being no longer liable to be dismissed as childish and meaningless tales. The almost universal deluge myths of the world have their rise not in local inundations, but in a simple astrological allegory bound up with equally simple conceptions of life, death, and the after life. This allegory seems to have come down to us from Palæolithic times. {27}
The records left by the prehistoric student must be regarded mainly as expressions of his ideas about religion. For countless generations these ideas were without doubt a prime factor in the uplifting of humanity; though it is difficult to realise that what to our minds is a matter of arithmetic and fairly simple geometry was to the prehistoric mind intensely mystical and allied to the Divine. There are, of course, gaps in the record. We are presented with remnants of the symbolism and forms of the old religion, but we are left to imagine its ethics. It is as though the student were asked to formulate his conception of Christianity from the ritual of the Eucharist, without an inkling of the Sermon on the Mount. There is no reason to think that the ethics of the prehistoric monotheistic religion disclosed by the stone carvings and monuments were inferior, or that the priesthood were less sincere or less enlightened than the priesthood of to-day. There is no reason to think that the shadow was mistaken for the substance. Every feature in the work of the early scientist and craftsman proclaims his good sense, his ability, and his earnestness. His religion, accordingly, must not be regarded as springing from ignorance and superstition.
| Period. | Approximate Middle Point in Years b.c. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Plateau Man; Eolithic; Sub-Crag; Stansteadian | before | 100,000 | b.c. |
| Early Chellean | 56,000 | ||
| Late Chellean | 47,000 | ||
| Acheulean | 43,000 | ||
| Mousterian | 38,000 | ||
| Aurignacian | 32,000 | ||
| Solutrean | 28,000 | ||
| Magdalenian | 21,000 | ||
| Azilian | 13,000 | ||
| Neolithic | 7,000 | ||
| Bronze Age | 1,500 | ||
| Early Iron Age, began | about | 700 | |
{28}
The creation of a time-machine, with all its arbitrary and peculiarly ingenious features, and the purity of the logic used in its formulation, with its accessories of cunningly derived measures, of surprisingly exact geometry and of calendric niceties, could not have taken place independently and in separate locations.
It must have been the product of the brain of one individual. The germs of the idea must, however, have been accumulating previously. The marshalling of closely observed celestial events and cosmic data had doubtless been proceeding for generations, as if getting into readiness, for their co-ordination by some commanding and sovereign intellect.
This great master-mind arose, with the accumulated lore of countless generations behind him, and shaped the compact, logical body of learning which is now found to be enshrined in rock and monument records, as well as in the beliefs and customs of practically the whole world. Whoever he was, to whatever country he belonged, he was undoubtedly a supreme genius—a prehistoric Copernicus, Kepler, or Newton—who accomplished a work which must rank as one most triumphant in the annals of human progress.
The presence of its vestiges, such as precisely similar measures, all over the world testifies to a diffusion; and, as we have seen, from a common centre. This fact tends to weaken the theory held generally for more than a century that there is an aptitude in the minds of men to work on identical lines; and that in consequence some well-known likenesses in old inventions and practices noticeable in widely different regions have arisen independently and can thus be accounted for.
The diffusion must have occupied many thousands of years. It was a gradual permeation, and time being almost limitless it eventually succeeded in covering the whole habitable regions of the Earth. Indeed, it covered areas which are now barred, or have been so throughout recurrent epochs, by desiccation and other climatic fluctuations or by land-submergences. {29}
While the backward lethargic peoples were inclined to stagnate, there were men, probably of the white race, who carried widespread the old philosophy of which the outstanding features involved a finely constructed calendar and an elaborate set of measures.
It was this race who responded more readily to suggestions of improved conditions. Hither and thither they went under the slow pressure of gradual mutations of climate. The love of adventure and enthusiasm for the inculcation of their doctrines may have also impelled them to undertake excursions. The secular oscillations of the terrestrial crust played also their part in directing the slow wanderings of these men over the kaleidoscopic surface of the planet.
Migration tended towards the places where the most genial and seductive conditions prevailed for the time being; towards the best temperate zones with moderate rainfall and moderate plant growth; and towards the most productive food territories.
Indeed, the same phenomena may be seen in miniature in the seasonal migration of birds and in the pastoral nomads in their semi-annual journeyings up and down valleys.
The presence of ore (even in late times) and of pearl-secreting molluscs could scarcely have been other than relatively insignificant factors.