New Views over Megalithia

[Boreades]

What I find difficult to understand is why did they choose points of reference in the mid Atlantic to act as the points from which they drew their lines. How did they choose these points and why? Longitude, we are told was a much later development.

It's a mystery. Maybe our ancestors were just as obsessed as us with joining dots on maps and trying to make a pattern.

[macausland]

A mystery is just something we don't understand.

If I were an ancient mariner I would draw coastal maps from what I see, I wouldn't sail out into the mid Atlantic to pick a point on the ocean which I probably wouldn't find again and use it as a reference point to draw directional lines covering Europe and points west.

[Boreades]

A mystery is just something we don't understand.

If I were an ancient mariner I would draw coastal maps from what I see, I wouldn't sail out into the mid Atlantic to pick a point on the ocean which I probably wouldn't find again and use it as a reference point to draw directional lines covering Europe and points west.

Maybe we are missing the point. They already had the coastal maps. What they were trying to do was make sense of the spaces in between.

[macausland]

Does that mean that they took lines from known points on land and extended them out to the sea?

[macausland]

Speaking of lines the BBC has an interesting article and video on the Napoleonic Telegraph.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22909590

[Boreades]

Does that mean that they took lines from known points on land and extended them out to the sea?

I wish I could say I knew. That's something that still confuses me. Why put a cardinal mark in the middle of nowhere (in mid-ocean, on your map) and draw radial lines all over the place? I've forgotten what the functional purpose of that was supposed to be.

[Boreades]

Have we mentioned the Belinus Line?

Monmouth, that great history-maker, is given the job of carrying the Creation Myth.


Monmouth (c. AD 1100 –1155) writes that Belinus, a descendant of Trojan Brutus the mythical founder of Britain, ruled the kingdom of Cornwall, Kambria (Wales), and Loegria (England), from c. 380-363 BC and that he …"summoned workmen from all over the island and ordered them to construct a road of stones and mortar which would bisect the island longitudinally from the Cornish Sea to the shore of Caithness and should lead in a straight line to each of the cities on route". He decreed that all the temples in the major cities and the roads that led to them were sanctuaries, (where man was safe from attack or arrest) and that everyone should respect a Highway Code of laws laid down by his father Molmutius.

etc

http://www.belinusline.com/index.php
etc

Oh by the way, the Belinus Line just happens to cross the Michael Line at Dragon Hill, next to Uffington and near to Wayland's Smithy.

[macausland]

I mentioned in another post that somebody had a site where they 'corrected' the old Ptolemy map of Britain, bringing Scotland back from the horizontal position on that map to its correct position pointing north.

The site was quite detailed and he explained how he worked it out by using known distances from Roman forts and other landmarks and recalibrating the island.

He took a point somewhere on the south coast of England and a point somewhere near Durness in the north of Scotland, or at least that line appeared as the island was straightened. It appears to follow the Belinus line.

I've noticed on some of the old mediaeval maps and before that the British Isles always seem to be an odd shape and at an odd angle. This seems to be because the central point seems to be based in Egypt and looking north west Britain is seen almost in perspective. It's as if it is following the curvature of the earth. Perhaps there was a problem with reconciling a flat surface with the spherical nature of the landscape?

[macausland]

I've found the site dealing with the 'straightening' of the Ptolemy map.

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata ... 25_440.pdf

I don't know if it adds anything to the discussion here but it's quite interesting.

[hvered]

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_128/128_425_440.pdf

I don't know if it adds anything to the discussion here but it's quite interesting.

It's very interesting! The north-south 'Belinus Line', beginning (or ending) at Plymouth Sound, looks like it crosses Worm's Head, at the Gower Peninsula, and the Menai Strait separating Anglesey from north Wales. But it isn't easy to make out all the details.

I've noticed on some of the old mediaeval maps and before that the British Isles always seem to be an odd shape and at an odd angle. This seems to be because the central point seems to be based in Egypt and looking north west Britain is seen almost in perspective. It's as if it is following the curvature of the earth. Perhaps there was a problem with reconciling a flat surface with the spherical nature of the landscape?

That's plausible, working outwards from the centre.