All down the Atlantic edge of Europe, our forefathers left behind an extraordinary legacy of large stone (megalithic) monuments, whose use has been a matter of much speculation. Some of this speculation has been extremely fanciful. Nonetheless it is clear that many, such as Stonehenge were placed with remarkable and seemingly intentional precision. Many have been shown to have been aligned with important things in their lives (and their death).
It is well understood that many megalithic assemblages indicate key way-markers and pointers for travel over land. 30 years ago, Peter Davidson came to a realisation that marine navigation is a purpose to which the many perceived characteristics of these megalithic arrangements might have been applied, and set about examining how likely this might be.
Surrounded by carefully argued interpretation of observations, he came up with two key propositions.
First proposition
“In the two thousand years or so before 1500 BC the inhabitants of Western Europe developed the techniques of moving, and to some extent working, very heavy monoliths and placing them accurately for a variety of purposes. They also developed the technique of working hard volcanic stones into polished tools of a variety of types and uses.
To facilitate the finding and dissemination of these tools they developed routes for travelling through a lightly populated land; some routes are overland, but many are across substantial stretches of open sea. To do so they needed to identify routes between sandy beaches (for landing open boats) and that avoid areas of tidal turbulence.
Their navigation technique was that of memorising the sequence of stars that set behind a stone alignment. Over a period of many centuries they developed a technique of predicting the tides by observing the moon; and by so doing improved their navigation by sailing at the shortest neap tides.”
Second proposition
“For sea passages: Where we have a Site Catchment Area (SCA) for late Neolithic and early Bronze Age activity (such as an axe factory) which is close to a sandy beach and there are alignments: If we have alignments of any of the categories:—
- the flat face of a slab;
- two or more stones aligned;
- a circle with an outlier or one circle observed from another;
...and we transfer that alignment to the beach, and the alignment (in either direction) is included in the seaward arc of the beach, then:
- a sea passage indicated will be free of nautical hazard (rocks, strong currents and so on)
...and will lead to a sandy beach marked by stones or graves of another SCA or be the natural point of entry to another SCA.”
PBD selected some 30 such sites that fitted this pattern of need and utility in coming to his conclusions. His papers have never been published, and are now made available here for the first time in the hope that others will be able to continue the research where he left off.
The information has been collated by his sons, Iain and David, and is presented substantially as PBD left it.