The two oldest stone circles in Britain have been proven to be used for astronomical purposes. For many years, archaeologists have been trying to uncover secrets of the earliest standing stones that scatter the British Isles.
Previously speculated to be used solely for burial purposes, the Standing Stones of Stenness on the Isle of Orkney and the Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland were built around 5 millenia ago. These megalithic sites were constructed deliberately to align with the orbits of the sun and the moon.
According to The Independent, Australian archaeologist Gail Higginbottom and her colleages used the 2D and 3D technology to test and study the patterns of alignment of the standing stones. Running the West of Scotland Megalithic Landscape Project, the Australian team from the University of Adelaide gave evidence that Orcadians (the Scottish people of Orkney) in the ancient times were astronomers that positioned the standing stones to align with the cyclical movements of the sun and the moon.
Higginbottom and her team also claimed that the surrounding landscape and horizon, the way the stones are aligned, and how the sun and moon moved across the landscape had a complex relationship. She added that the chosen surroundings had an influence on the way people see the sun and the moon, "particularly in their rising and setting at special times." For example, the stones are positioned so precisely in order to measure the moon's especially at its most northerly position in the horizon, which happens solely every 18.6 years.
In an article from The National, the Scots were amongst the first, if not the first, who invented practical astronomy probably many millenia before Babylonians and Greeks documented it as a field of science. Additionally, the stones that they raised predate the Stonehenge by around 500 years and around the same time the ancient Egyptians built their royal tombs before the great pyramids.
Dr. Higginbottom also explained that the ancient Orcadians had been practicing this for 2,000 years, connecting "the Earth to the sky with their earliest standing stones." It was their own way of survival, being aware of their environment, but was also in a way quite "magical."
