Who Built the Moon? Read Online Free Page A
Author: Christopher Knight, Alan Butler
ancient celebration of rebirth that long predates its association with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The New Testament states that Jesus Christ was crucified on the eve of Passover before rising again a short time later. In consequence, the ancient Easter festival was reassigned to commemorate this miracle. There was, however, considerable debate over the date on which Easter should fall. The early Christians of Jewish origin celebrated the Resurrection immediately following their Passover festival, which, according to their lunar calendar, fell on the evening of the full Moon. This was the fourteenth day in the month of Nisan (the first month of their year), thereby causing Easter to fall on different days of the week. The new breed of non-Jewish Christians from around the Roman Empire wished to commemorate the Resurrection on a Sunday – their newly defined Sabbath. In 325 AD the Roman emperor Constantine I convened the Council of Nicaea to debate whether or not Jesus Christ was a man or a god. Having officially designated Jesus to be God, by a narrow margin, the council then ruled that the Easter festival should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full Moon following the vernal equinox; and that if the full Moon should occur on a Sunday and thereby coincide with the Passover festival, Easter should be commemorated on the Sunday following.
The origin of the word ‘Easter’ is thought to come from
Eostre
, the Anglo-Saxon name of a Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox which now falls around March 21 st when the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the day has twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. Traditions associated with this pagan festival survive in the idea of the Easter rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in brightly decorated Easter eggs, which were a symbol of rebirth.
Chapter Two
The Science Of The Ancients
‘The important thing is not to stop questioning.Curiosity has its own reason for existing.’
Albert Einstein
In the early 1930s a young Scottish engineer noticed that several of the widely ignored, prehistoric Megalithic sites near his home appeared to have lunar alignments. He decided to study some of the sites and he began a process of careful surveying that was eventually to lead him to make a discovery of staggering importance.
As a young engineer at Glasgow University, Alexander Thom visited a number of prehistoric stone structures near to his home in Scotland during the early 1930s. He marvelled at the grandeur and admired the way so many of the giant stones had survived the weathering of more than 5,000 years, as well as proving resistant to the thieving tendencies of croft and road builders across dozens of centuries. As he contemplated the various sites he mused over their purpose and as he looked to the horizon he could imagine how the stones might have been used as sighting stones for astronomical purposes. When he checked out the rising and setting points of the Sun and the Moon across the year his hunch appeared to be born out.
His first survey was at a site known as Callanish, on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. This complex of standing stones revealed many astronomical alignments and is today often referred to as a ‘Moon temple’. Thom went on to spend nearly half a century carefully surveying the so-called Megalithic (the word means giant stones) structures that lay scattered across the countryside from the islands off northern Scotland down to the French region of Brittany. Along the way he became a highly respected professor of Engineering at Oxford University until his retirement in 1961.
Thom had quickly realized that these prehistoric builders were engineers like himself and that they had a surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of geometry and astronomy. The approach taken by this talented engineer was to assess what he believed
The New Testament states that Jesus Christ was crucified on the eve of Passover before rising again a short time later. In consequence, the ancient Easter festival was reassigned to commemorate this miracle. There was, however, considerable debate over the date on which Easter should fall. The early Christians of Jewish origin celebrated the Resurrection immediately following their Passover festival, which, according to their lunar calendar, fell on the evening of the full Moon. This was the fourteenth day in the month of Nisan (the first month of their year), thereby causing Easter to fall on different days of the week. The new breed of non-Jewish Christians from around the Roman Empire wished to commemorate the Resurrection on a Sunday – their newly defined Sabbath. In 325 AD the Roman emperor Constantine I convened the Council of Nicaea to debate whether or not Jesus Christ was a man or a god. Having officially designated Jesus to be God, by a narrow margin, the council then ruled that the Easter festival should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full Moon following the vernal equinox; and that if the full Moon should occur on a Sunday and thereby coincide with the Passover festival, Easter should be commemorated on the Sunday following.
The origin of the word ‘Easter’ is thought to come from
Eostre
, the Anglo-Saxon name of a Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox which now falls around March 21 st when the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the day has twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. Traditions associated with this pagan festival survive in the idea of the Easter rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in brightly decorated Easter eggs, which were a symbol of rebirth.
Chapter Two
The Science Of The Ancients
‘The important thing is not to stop questioning.Curiosity has its own reason for existing.’
Albert Einstein
In the early 1930s a young Scottish engineer noticed that several of the widely ignored, prehistoric Megalithic sites near his home appeared to have lunar alignments. He decided to study some of the sites and he began a process of careful surveying that was eventually to lead him to make a discovery of staggering importance.
As a young engineer at Glasgow University, Alexander Thom visited a number of prehistoric stone structures near to his home in Scotland during the early 1930s. He marvelled at the grandeur and admired the way so many of the giant stones had survived the weathering of more than 5,000 years, as well as proving resistant to the thieving tendencies of croft and road builders across dozens of centuries. As he contemplated the various sites he mused over their purpose and as he looked to the horizon he could imagine how the stones might have been used as sighting stones for astronomical purposes. When he checked out the rising and setting points of the Sun and the Moon across the year his hunch appeared to be born out.
His first survey was at a site known as Callanish, on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. This complex of standing stones revealed many astronomical alignments and is today often referred to as a ‘Moon temple’. Thom went on to spend nearly half a century carefully surveying the so-called Megalithic (the word means giant stones) structures that lay scattered across the countryside from the islands off northern Scotland down to the French region of Brittany. Along the way he became a highly respected professor of Engineering at Oxford University until his retirement in 1961.
Thom had quickly realized that these prehistoric builders were engineers like himself and that they had a surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of geometry and astronomy. The approach taken by this talented engineer was to assess what he believed
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