‘Early man used crude version of sat-nav system’

LONDON: In a new research, a scientist has found that prehistoric man navigated his way across England using a crude version of a satellite navigation system, which was based on stone circle markers.

According to a report in the Telegraph, the research, by historian and writer Tom Brooks, shows that Britain’s Stone Age ancestors were “sophisticated engineers” and far from a barbaric race. Brooks studied all known prehistoric sites as part of his research.

He found that the prehistoric man was able to travel between settlements in England with pinpoint accuracy, thanks to a complex network of hilltop monuments.

These covered much of southern England and Wales and included now famous landmarks such as Stonehenge and The Mount. New research suggests that they were built on a connecting grid of isosceles triangles that “point” to the next site. Many are 100 miles or more away, but GPS co-ordinates show all are accurate to within 100 metres.

This provided a simple way for ancient Britons to navigate successfully from point A to B without the need for maps. “To create these triangles with such accuracy would have required a complex understanding of geometry,” said Brooks.

Brooks analyzed 1,500 sites stretching from Norfolk to north Wales. These included standing stones, hilltop forts, stone circles and hill camps.

Brooks found that they all lie on a vast geometric grid made up of isosceles triangles. Each triangle has two sides of the same length and point to the next settlement. Thus, anyone standing on the site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire could have navigated their way to Lanyon Quoit in Cornwall without a map.

[The Times of India]