Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was (19 page)

In a religious sense, it is clear that the people of Crete had adopted the nature-based beliefs that seem to have been commonplace in Europe and parts of Asia since the Neolithic dawn. The predominant deity appears to have been an ‘Earth goddess’ whose place in religion was paramount, though she had a consort who was first her son and then her husband. The god was born, grew and died in a cyclic way, whereas the goddess was perpetual. Perhaps as a response to this form of religion, Minoan women seemed to have had some power in their society and it has even been suggested that the civil administration was geared in their direction rather than in that of men. It is now recognized that Minoan Crete was the cradle of the religious thinking that would eventually predominate on the Greek mainland, though by that time it had changed its nature to a much more male-dominated belief pattern.

How far Minoan civilization might have come and the part it could have played in building the modern world is somewhat academic, because tragedy struck this culture. About 60 miles to the north of Crete was an important Minoan settlement on the small, volcanic island of Santorini, also known as Thera. In approximately 1450
BC
the island exploded with such ferocity that much of it simply ceased to exist. Undoubtedly the explosion led to catastrophic tidal waves and also to a fall of ash that would have rendered the fields of at least northern Crete barren for as much as a decade.
¹

It was at about this time that Crete fell under the influence and ultimately the rule of a very different culture which had been developing on the Greek mainland. This was a civilization that would come to be called Mycenae. The Mycenaeans were far more warlike than the Minoans and, over a prolonged period, they had captured a number of cities around their own base at Mycenae. Eventually their dominance of Crete changed the gentle and more creative Minoan way of life into something far more aggressive. Influence worked both ways, however. Minoan sensibility is readily obvious in Mycenaean culture, art, building techniques and religion. Since the Mycenaeans offered much to what would become the people we know as the Ancient Greeks, it is now taken for granted that Minoan ideas lasted long after the civilization itself had fallen into decay.

During the 1960s, Canadian archaeologist J. Walter Graham conducted a series of experiments at the ruins of the Minoan palaces of Crete. These were at Knossos, Phaistos and Malia, where Graham was trying to establish whether or not the Minoans had used a basic unit of linear measurement in their buildings. As we have already discussed in Chapter 2, Graham was able to show that the Minoan builders had used a standard unit that was 30.36 centimetres – a unit he dubbed the ‘Minoan foot’.

Alan had become particularly interested in the Minoans due to a small clay disc found in the ruins of one of the Minoan palaces, which was dated as circa 2000
BC
. This artefact, known as the Phaistos Disc, was carefully analysed by Alan and it was the results of this study that had led to his first observation regarding the use of a 366-day year and 366-degree circle. The disc is a rather sophisticated ready-reckoner with a primary function that seems to have been to synchronize the ritual year of 366 days with the true solar year of 365.25 days. There are drawings of the Phaistos Disc and a longer explanation of Alan’s findings in Appendix 5.

Alan had already seen a potential connection between the mathematical principles evident in the Phaistos Disc and those associated with the Megalithic Yard before he came across Graham’s work on the Minoan foot. It was a startling revelation when we realized that 366 Megalithic Yards was the same thing as 1,000 Minoan Feet.

Since 366 Megalithic Yards also represents 1 Megalithic Second of arc of the Earth’s polar circumference, it seemed safe to suggest that the Minoans had used Megalithic geometry when creating this unit. That the culture had contact with their Megalithic contemporaries to the west, is not a contentious point as there are many artefacts that point to a trading relationship between the two lands. A number of artefacts have been found in the south of England, some on Salisbury Plain close to Stonehenge, which include cups, rings and other examples of jewellery which were originally identified as being Mycenaean in origin. Later investigations showed that the Mycenaean culture had not existed in the period to which these artefacts were dated. Since much if not all Mycenaean art is Minoan in origin, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that these artefacts were made in Crete during Minoan times.

The Minoans would have had very good reason to visit the shores of Britain, most particularly the tin mines of Cornwall. It was one of the very few sources of tin available to them, and they needed significant quantities of the metal in order to create bronze. But even without the evidence of contact between Britain and Crete, the fit between 366 Megalithic Yards and 1,000 Minoan feet is highly unlikely to be a coincidence.

The culture we now simply call ‘the Ancient Greeks’ began to form circa 700
BC
, following what is often called ‘the Greek Dark Age’ that had occurred after the destruction of the Mycenaean Empire. Both the Minoan and the Mycenaean civilizations were large components of the foundation blocks for the religious and general cultural heritage of the Ancient Greeks, which in turn has always been seen as perhaps the greatest influence on our own Western culture of today. By the time the Ancient Greek civilization reached maturity its scholars had also been influenced by both Babylonian and Egyptian mathematical thinking. As a result, their experiments into mathematics and geometry were based on the same 360-degree geometrical models favoured by both Babylon and Egypt. It might therefore be expected that all traces of the Megalithic-influenced Minoan system would have vanished from Greece completely. However, a close look at Greek units of weights and measures strongly suggests that this was not the case.

We discovered that there were several forms of foot and cubit in use during the period of the Ancient Greeks. However, one example stands out above the rest, not least because it was the basic unit used in architectural measurement; even today its true nature cannot be doubted. This unit was known as the ‘Olympian’ or ‘Geographical’ foot. By general consent, the Olympian foot measured what might at first seem like a meaningless 30.861 centimetres. We immediately noticed something special about the relationship between the Minoan foot and the later Greek foot. To an accuracy of an extremely close 99.99 per cent, a distance of 366 Minoan feet is the same as 360 Greek feet! This was incredible, and we felt certain that it was not a coincidence. The two units did not need to have any integer relationship at all – yet they relate to each other in a Megalithic to Sumerian manner:

Over a distance of more than 111 metres the difference between the 366/360 fit is just 18 millimetres. Was this the meeting point of the changeover from the old 366 system to a new 360 approach?

Many other researchers have already put forward the idea that the Greek foot was a geodetic unit, that is, related directly to the size of the Earth. Such suggestions are not usually even discussed in the corridors of academia because the existing convention asserts, quite unreasonably, that absolute knowledge of the Earth’s dimensions did not come about until more recent times. Such is the power of dogma: it blinds the eyes of even those who are supposedly trained to have the clearest vision. Our approach is not to be bound by academic fashion or current convention, and so we looked with an open mind.

It takes only seconds with a calculator to grasp the fact that there are close to 360,000 Greek feet to 1 degree of the polar circumference of the Earth when using the 360-degree circle.

The 360 degrees of the Earth’s circumference give us a figure of 129,600,000 Greek feet. Since we have done nothing to massage either the size of the Olympian foot or the dimensions of the Earth, the suggestion that this could be a coincidence has to be rejected by any objective person.

The pattern can be fully appreciated when it is observed how tightly the Greek foot would fit both Earth geometry and time measurement.

In terms of time, the Greek foot is also more than useful. As the Earth spins on its axis a fixed distance passes at the equator for a known period of time:

Taking these observations in conjunction with the Sumerian and the Megalithic systems, this confirms our previous conclusion that the dimensions of our planet have been known for thousands of years longer than previously thought. The Greek foot divides into the polar circumference of the Earth in a perfectly rational set of integer numbers.

We know from our own extensive research that the geodetic nature of the Greek Olympian foot has been appreciated for a very long time. The fit is so accurate that it cannot be doubted that those designing this unit of linear measurement not only knew what it could do, but had deliberately
manufactured
it to do that job.

Just as surely as 366 Megalithic Yards are the same as 1,000 Minoan feet, so 366 Minoan feet are equal to 360 Greek feet. Now we really could see the transition between the two systems. But another major issue suddenly became obvious:

The Sumerian numerical system tells us that the following is true:

Sumerian script.

Then the following applies to identify the tenth stage of the numerical system:

Sumerian script.

(These symbols were those actually used by Sumerian scribes. We know full well what they were intended to represent in terms of numbers because of the mathematical problems played out on many clay tablets found in the region. Only the last symbol is of our own invention and is a natural consequence of what goes before.)

The result here is the very important tenth place in the Mesopotamian decimal/sexagesimal counting system, with a value of 129,600,000, which confirms that this was an Earth geometry-based approach. This is the case because, as we have seen above, 129,600,000 is exactly the number of Greek feet in the polar circumference of the Earth. It is probably coincidence but the hieroglyph for this huge number even looks like a globe viewed from above with a pole in the centre, the equator at the edge and the 45-degree latitude in the middle. While the symbol may be coincidence, nobody could seriously dismiss this carefully-crafted system as a being a chance occurrence.

Musing over these findings we found the story of the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes particularly interesting as he is supposed to have been the first person to make a reasonable estimate of the Earth’s circumference. Eratosthenes lived in Greek Alexandria about 250
BC
, and the story goes that he learned that the Sun, on the day of the summer solstice, shone absolutely vertically down a well in a town called Syene, south of Alexandria. Eratosthenes knew that the Sun never rose high enough to shine straight down a well in Alexandria on the same day, and he worked out that it failed to do so by an angle of seven degrees. From these facts, Eratosthenes was able to deduce that the Earth must be a sphere and he then calculated the size of the terrestrial globe. Considering the potential problems involved, his estimation was surprisingly accurate because he suggested that the Earth was 130,650,335 Olympian feet.