An Astronomical Basis for the Myth of the Solar Hero

Abstract

Our increasing knowledge of the megalithic culture of the British Isles in the 2nd and 3rd millennia BCE tends to confirm the proposition that megalithic astronomers measured celestial positions with considerable accuracy. The evidence indicates that they understood the 18.6 year nodal period and the moon’s nine minute declination wobble. They also had sufficient geometrical ability to re-proportion spacings between lines, divide circles into whole number polygons and divide lines into equal integer spacings. We should therefore ask whether there is evidence of such early astronomy in the numbers which recur in certain myths.