Megalithic civilization hypothesis

The Megalithic civilization hypothesis proposes that megaliths such as the Pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, and other megalithic structures throughout the World, were built by a common group of people, or civilizations during the Neolithic period. (1950) has referred to these builders as Megalithic man. The hypothesis bases itself on the accurate measurements found in megalithic (See megalithic geometry), that are observed for virtually all known megaliths discovered. The hypothesis challenges mainstream theories, thus many scientific communities consider research for a megalithic civilization as pseudoscientific.

Controversy
Research in support of this hypothesis is often considered pseudoscientific by mainstream scientific and archaeological circles, because it challenges the current and accepted human evolutionary paradigm (See also, Timeline). The hypothesis supposes that Megalithic Man was smarter than what modern science gives credit for (due to the complex mathematics proposed in the placement of blocks), as it contradicts mainstream's timeframe of how humans evolved from hunter/gather types to forming civilization. The dating and precision of Göbekli Tepe is an example of how archaeologists and the mainstream scientific community have no other option, but to reconsider how early man really developed. Modern-day branches of the megalithic civilization hypothesis also challenges when and who the builders were for the, proposing that Megalithic Man built them before 3500 BCE, rather than the Egyptians themselves.

Megalithic yard
The (MY) is a unit of measurement of about 2.72 ft,  that some researchers hypothesize was used in the construction of  structures. The proposal was made by as a result of his surveys of 600 megalithic sites in England, Scotland, Wales and Brittany. Thom also proposed the Megalithic Rod of 2.5 MY. As subunits of these, he further proposed the Megalithic Inch of 2.073 cm, one hundred of which are included in a Megalithic Rod, and forty of which composed a Meglithic Yard. But, Thom’s proposals were initially ignored or regarded as unbelievable by mainstream archaeologists. Thom applied the statistical lumped variance test of J.R. Broadbent on this quantum and found the results significant, yet others challenge his statistical analysis and suggest that Thom's evidence for the supposed megalithic yard could be explained as an average length of a pace unit. Douglas Heggie’s analysis of the MY claims "little evidence for a highly accurate unit" and "little justification for the claim that a highly accurate unit was in use". Thus, Thom’s findings were and are continued to today, considered pseudoscientific by major scientific and archaeological circles. However, there is enough evidence to support megalithic standards that the MY has caught the attention of smaller communities of researchers to continue to make comparative studies.

Megalithic standard
Alexander Thom made a comparison of his Megalithic Yard with the Spanish vara, the pre-metric measurement of Iberia, whose length was 2.7425 ft. Thom has suggested that "There must have been a headquarters from which standard rods were sent out but whether this was in these islands or on the Continent (British Isles) the present investigation cannot determine." Many researchers have concluded that there is marginal evidence for a standardized measuring unit, but that it was not as uniform as Thom believed. Yet, many commentators and researchers of the MY unit have found equal, or close to equal measures of units, throughout the World.

compared the Megalithic Rod to being equal in length to the Greek fathom of (2.072 m) from studies by Eric Fernie of the in the, Oxford. Margaret Ponting has suggested that artefacts such as a marked bone found during excavations at near, the  from Lanarkshire and  from  in Scotland have shown some evidence of being s based on the Megalithic Yard in Britain. has noted similarity between the Megalithic Yard and the ancient short yard of 33 in. A hazel measuring rod recovered from a Bronze Age burial mound in Borum Eshøj, East Jutland by P. V. Glob in 1875 measured 30.9 in. Keith Critchlow suggested this may have shrunk 0.63 in from its original length of one Megalithic Yard over a period of 3000 years.

Archaeologist noticed similarities between the Megalithic Yard and a unit of measurement extrapolated from a long, marked shell from  and ancient measuring rods used in mining in the Austrian Tyrol. Mackie suggested similarities with other measurements such as the ancient Indian gaz and the Sumerian šu-du3-a. Concerning an oak rod, recovered from the Iron Age fortified settlement at, measuring 53.15 in and having marks divided into eight parts of 6.64 in; Mackie referred to five eighths of this rod 33.2 in as "very close to a megalithic yard".

Megalithic system
Christopher Knight and Alan Butler further develop the work of Smyth's and Stecchini's "Grand Scheme" in their hypothesis, which describes a megalithic system of units. This system is claimed to be the source of all standard units used by the hypothetical Megalithic civilization, and is so named after the Neolithic builders of. Knight and Butler contend the reconstructed (0.82966m) is a fundamental part of a megalithic system. Although the megalithic yard is the work of, Knight and Butler make a novel contribution by speculating on how the MY may have been created by using a pendulum calibrated by observing the planet Venus. It also explains the uniformity of the MY across large geographical areas. The accuracy claimed for this procedure is disputed by astronomers. Knight and Butler derive measures of volume and mass from the megalithic yard, which is divided into 40 megalithic inches. They claim that a cube with a side of 4 megalithic inches has a volume equal to one imperial pint and weighs one imperial pound when filled with unpolished grain. They also posit ratio relationships with the and square rod. Their book states that "The Sun, the Moon and the Earth all conform to a 'grand design' that is also evident in the Megalithic structures that are scattered across the British Isles and western Europe."

Egyptian metrology
Commentators on Thom's megalithic yard (MY), and Euan Mackie, agree that the MY is the diagonal of a rectangle measuring 2 by 1 Egyptian remens. John Ivimy and Euan Mackie, have also noted how such a measure could relate to geometrical ideas found historically in two of Egypt’s metrological units; the remen of about 1.2 feet and royal cubit of about 1.72 feet. The remen and royal cubit were used to define land areas in Egypt: "On documentary and other evidence Griffith came to the conclusion that the square on the royal cubit was intended to be twice that on the remen; and Petri identified the remen as a length of 20 digits". A square with side length equal to the diagonal of a square with side length equal to one remen has an area of one square royal cubit, ten thousand (a myriad) of which defined an Egyptian land measure, the setat. [cite mackie] John Ivimy noted that "The ratio MY : Rc is SQRT(5) : SQRT(2) to the nearest millimeter, which makes the MY equal to SQRT(5) remens, or the length of a 2 x 1 remen rectangle."

Knowledge of round Earth
claims in his A History of Measures:
 * Earth’s circumference
 * The relation among the units of length can be explained by the ratio 15:16:17:18 among the four fundamental feet and cubits. Before I arrived at this discovery, Decourdemanche and Oxé discovered that the cubes of those units are related according to the conventional specific gravities of oil, water, wheat and barley.

Stecchini implies that the Egyptian measures of length, originating from at least the 3rd millennium BCE, were directly derived from the circumference of the earth with an amazing accuracy. According to "Secrets of the Great Pyramid" (p. 346 ), his claim is that the Egyptian measurement was equal to 40,075,000 meters, which compared to the International Spheroid of 40,076,596 meters gives an error of 0.004%. No consideration seems to be made to the question of, on purely technical and procedural grounds, how the early Egyptians, in defining their cubit, could have achieved a degree of accuracy that to our current knowledge can only be achieved with very sophisticated equipment and techniques.

, in his book Sun, Moon & Stonehenge, proposes that megalithic builders were very aware that the Earth is a globe, or at least round, by the inclusion of and the standards of measurement proposed by the  (MY) for Stonehenge, and the Egyptian Royal Cubit of the Great Pyramid of Giza:
 * Round Earth
 * ...if the lunar year is represented by 12 MY then 1 ft corresponds precisely to the extra 10.875 days to coincide with the end of the solar or seasonal year. Furthermore, the period between the end of the solar year and 13 lunations - 18.656 days - is represented by another unit of length from antiquity, the 'Royal Cubit' of 20.63" or 1.72 ft.
 * Hence the equally astonishing revelation that 1 MY = 1 ft + 1 RC. Assuming that the MY was the primary unit, then the derivative foot and cubit appear to have formed a logical and essential part of the astronomical and calendrical researches of our Neolithic ancestors. If, however, the foot preceded the MY in time - and here we must remember that 1/1,000th of a degree of arc around the equatorial circumference of the Earth is just 365.244 ft in length! - then knowledge of the roundness of the Earth must have predated use of the MY…i.e. well before 3,000BC.

Alan Butler proposed the concept of “megalithic geometry”, where megalithic measurements are based on a 366-degree circumference (as opposed to 360°)—that of the Earth's polar. The Megalithic degree is the 366th part of it, i.e. 40,008 / 366 = 109.31 km; the Megalithic is the 60th part of the Megalithic degree, i.e. 109.31 / 60 = 1.82 km; the Megalithic  is the 6th part of the Megalithic minute, i.e. 1.82 / 6 = 0.3036 km; if this Megalithic arcsecond is in turn divided into 366 equal segments, the length arrived at is 0.8296 m, which is the presumed length of the Megalithic Yard, the supposed ancient standard of measure proposed by professor Alexander Thom in the 1950s. The discovery, of what mainstream researchers call an “apparent coincidence”, is what prompted Butler to propose that Megalith builders could have been cognizant with an Earth-based 366-degree geometry.
 * Earth’s polar circumference

Resources

 * Wikipedia,
 * Wikipedia,
 * Other references in support of early builders
 * Graham Hancock, Ancient Alignment In The Andes Hints At A Lost Global High Culture
 * Books
 * cite book|last=Ruggles|first=Clive|title=Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland|year=1999|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-07814-5|page=83
 * cite book|author1=David George Kendall|author2=F. R. Hodson|author3=Royal Society (Great Britain)|author4=British Academy|title=The Place of astronomy in the ancient world: a joint symposium of the Royal Society and the British Academy, Hunting Quanta, p. 258|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FHLvAAAAMAAJ%7Caccessdate=22 April 2011|year=1974|publisher=Oxford University Press for the British Academy