On Stonehenge
Argues that the purpose of Stonehenge was to predict the occurrence of eclipses, and reviews the resulting cultural implications.
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What Hacker News says
- OA makes no mention of Fred Hoyle's 'three hours with a calculator' to check Hawkins figures (and being generally unimpressed). Also nothing about the Thoms (Alexander and Archie) who surveyed many other stone circles, or perhaps a passing reference to John North's chunky book on Stonehenge itself. Latterly Euan MacKie was working out how exactly you could test an hypothesis about ancient observers marking a celestial alignment of some type anywhere in the latitudes of Britain. A multi-route rabbit hole if you are in need of diversion.
- "One of my old Physics teachers was an expert on Stone Henge. Did a lot of original research in the 1980s."
Did your teacher publish anything? I'm aware of Alexander and Archie Thom [1], John North [2] and Fred Hoyle [3] as well as the pop science books by Gerald Hawkins.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Thom
[2] http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1999JHAS...30...83R...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/On-Stonehenge-Fred-Hoyle/dp/0716703637
PS: remember that climate in Britain was very different from now and changed a lot during the construction of megalithic sites. Inland Britain was as you say covered with dense forest so river valleys and coastal areas were very important then.
