Civilization One
You know when you see one of those books in the airport bookshop that looks like it might be a good read but you don’t imagine you will ever take it seriously? Well, when Civilization One arrived in the post, my first reaction was similar. However, after just a few pages I realised that this book definitely had a point, an intriguing point at that.
Could there be a rational connection between the disparate ‘first’ civilizations use of mathematics that can be traced back to a ‘grand unification theory’ of mathematical units? Alexander Thom, who died in 1985, first proposed the concept of the ‘megalithic yard’ - a unit of measurement upon which he suggested the building of the many stone structures in the British Isles and western Europe are based. Thom, however, never apparently satisifed his critics as to where this megalithic yard sprang from - a megalithic yard is 0.8296656 metres by the way.
Knight and Butler start there investigation thus: “There were two possibilities: either Professor Thom’s Megalithic Yard was a genuine unit once used by neolithic builders or it was an accidental consequence of statistical manipulation without any historicla validity.”
Knight and Butler have a tendency, in their writing, to make pessimistic statements prior to reporting a revelationary development in their discoveries, and I found myself on the second reading of this book checking with myself as to whether I was being manipulated. But, I think not.
They begin by deriving the fact that a 366 megalithic yards is precisely equivalent to one second of arc of the earth’s circumference. The number 366 is equivalent to exactly 1 000 Minoan feet. I have summarised very briefly the beginnings of the authors' thinking but it is this that set them off on the train of investigation which reveals itself so dramatically and, I have to say, convincingly as this easily read book progresses.
The long and the short of the theory is that there was some means by which civilizations throughout the world were able to maintain a universal standard of measurement which they used either directly or upon which they based their own specific measuring systems.
There is a very well argued description of the process by which the passage of Venus across the sky, passing between two markers at easily standardised distance apart sets a unit of time during which a pendulum is regulated until it swings 366 times. The length of the pendulum string at that point is exactly one half of a megalithic yard. It is indisputable, I think, that Venus was a very important sky object to all early civilizations and its use in this way is certainly plausible.
I cannot do justice to the whole train of discoveries and serendipitous moments that Knight and Butler recount in their investigation but suffice it to say that they have presented a good case for their having been a ‘Civilization One’ upon which many if not all, the later (and what we call) first civilizations have based their mathematical systems. They touch on, but fortunately draw back from, suggesting that this Civilization One had some extra-terrestrial connection; rather they suggest that this root civilization is lost in the mists of time.
Basically, this book sets out a plausible case for the remarkable connections between systems of measurement - linear, volume and mass - from the dawn of time through to the imperial pint, the avoirdupois and troy systems, the metric system and even the esoteric measurements used to day in the United States. There is even a CD of music composed around the mathematical nuances outlined in this book. I have a copy and it is very listenable (I do have an eclectic taste in music) - new age meets I don’t know what, but equally as intriguing as the book. My two five-year olds love it and were instantly moving and dancing to it - which itself testifies to the theory that the rhythms are based on a primeval metre. Definitely more food for thought.
Having read this book twice, I am convinced there is something about it - there is definitely a case to answer, so to speak.
What could be wrong with the reasoning in this book? Perhaps there is an accumulation of very tiny roundings (although there do not seem to be that many)? Perhaps there is selective use of evidence?
Marten Gallagher, ATM Web Editor
Civilization One by Christopher Knight and Alan Butler
Watkins Publishing, 2004
ISBN 1842930958
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