For far away from the mind boggling complexity of the pyramids of Giza, yet equally compelling, sit seven sites of mythic antiquity whose geomantic design creates a beautiful and vast symbol (heptagon) in the landscape. It is vital to appreciate that the dimensions of the symbol I later discovered had been faithfully duplicated at other locations in Southern Britain, consciously created and designed to personify a harmonious fusion between temple proportion, the Earth’s circumference and ancient units of measure. Very suprisingly as well, I later discovered that this design had also been employed by our forefathers before whilst plotting their temples and markers in the landscape of Southern Britain (Behrend, 1975).
As long ago as the sixteenth century there have been alternative ways of both viewing and understanding the sites and structures left behind by our ancestors. William Lambarde published a map in 1596 where he focused mainly on the beacons in Kent. Lambarde believed them to be part of an advanced system of travel ways and communications network. Formed in straight lines so as to aid speed they were also indicative he felt of some sort of secret knowledge embodied within the landscape by our ancestors (Pennick eds. 1976). William Henry Black in the 1870's (Behrend, Pennick & Jones, 1976) enhanced these ideas and though he attributed much of these 'grand intersecting geometrical lines' (radial and polygonal covering the whole of Europe) to the Romans he provided the foundation in thinking which allowed the possibility of later works. In ‘The Old Straight Track’ (1925) Watkin’s proposed these straight trackways were a ‘ley’ system of at least 4,000 years old connecting prehistoric aligned sites which radiated out across the countryside, connecting ancient sites of sanctity and of local significance. Watkin’s discovered that these sites were also aligned both mathematically and astronomically through incredibly precise ancient surveying techniques. So is it really that ludicrous to propose that our ancestors between 5,000 - 10,000 years ago here in Suffolk intentionally sited markers on their landscape, the canvas of their gods and goddesses, some many miles apart from each other whilst still managing to retain a symbolic proportion and relationship with one another? No it is not. And what is more the evidence is there, and it is quite overwhelming.
We now appreciate and understand that individual ancient sites and collective structures held profound psychological meaning for our prehistoric ancestors. Round barrows served to symbolically ‘represent the wider landscape in architectural form’ (Watson, 2001) and were believed to represent the centre of the world, or even cosmos (Richards, 1996). These great monuments were built to influence the way people experienced the landscape and how they were configured served to structure the ways that people understood both space and time (Watson, 2001). Intuition was this cultures guiding principle leading man, and woman to find shelter and food based on a symbiotic relationship with the environment which for them was still very much intact, miles away from our own linear, mechanistic thought processes. This open consciousness was in full appreciation of and in communion with the natural environmental cycles and workings of the cosmos. Consciously planned artefacts amongst the landscape, inspired largely from the geometry of natural forms, frequently became imbued with magical powers - the reconciliation between the human spirit and the earth. There is evidence that this reconciliation often took on a vast reciprocal and intimate scale. With land and architecture working together as one these monuments were often designed to emphasise natural forms and could be vast, as in the composite topographical ‘Goddess’ image in the Vale of Pewsey some 33 miles across (Dames, 1996). Even ‘mainstream’ archaeology embraces ideas now which a decade ago would have seemed ‘ new-age’, such as the three henges at Thornborough in Yorkshire for instance which appeared recently in the journal British Archaeology (March, 2004). There it is acknowledged that the plan of the three henges, overlooking the river Ure was designed to be an exact mirror of the three main setting stars in the belt of the constellation of Orion between 3,300 - 3,000 B.C. while the eastern end of the main cursus aligned to the midsummer sunrise, creating an awesome spectacle which embodied the symbiotic relationship which was considered to be so important at the time. These ancient monuments on the surface of the earth were not only erected to discover the patterns of behaviour of our celestial neighbours (the major planets and stars) but were also designed in such a way as to embody those patterns, already known in what has been described as a ‘religious architecture’ (North, 1996). Mother earth had brought man into being and continued to sustain him, every facet of her spirit was suffused with reverence and was known to be present in the rocks, trees, hills and rivers which lay all around.
