Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was (32 page)

Visible light is only one form of radiation that forms a tiny part (about 1,000th) of the electromagnetic spectrum; other creatures can see parts of the visible spectrum that humans cannot. Typically, humans can see light with frequencies between 4 x 10
¹⁴
Hz to 8.1 x 10
¹⁴
Hz. When split by a prism into its component parts, light provides a multitude of colours, varying from red at one end of the spectrum to violet at the other. In common usage these colours are often referred to as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet but in reality there is no line of demarcation between any two colours. The computer on which the typescript of this book was written is capable of producing many millions of different colours.

The reason we see colours is that parts of the visible spectrum are absorbed by things – both animate and inanimate – upon which they fall, while others are reflected. The light that falls into our eyes represents the reflected frequencies. So, for example, since most plants do not absorb green light, it is reflected back into our eyes. The radiation from these reflections falls onto receptors in our eyes, which pass the information to our brains, where it is interpreted as colour.

The only real relationship between sound waves and light waves is that they possess frequency and wavelength, which is why they are measured in the same way. However, as we demonstrated in Chapter 11, the relationship may exist at a physiological level, rather than as a fact of physics. Our suggestion is that any biological entity, for example ourselves, that develops a sense such as hearing, which operates across a given range of frequencies, may develop other senses, such as sight, across frequencies that have a resonant relationship with the sound waves.

Resonance is simply explained by a person walking into a room while carrying a tuning fork, set to vibrate at, say, 440 Hz. If the tuning fork is struck and the room contains a multitude of other silent tuning forks, some of these are likely to begin vibrating, apparently of their own accord. Let us suppose that there were tuning forks in the room set to vibrate as 220 Hz and 880 Hz. Each of these bears a frequency relationship to the 440 Hz fork. Musically speaking, the 440 Hz tuning fork would create the sound we know as the A below middle C on a piano; 220 Hz is also the note A, but an octave lower, and 880 Hz is A again, though this time one octave higher. This doubling or halving of frequency, at least in Western music, is called ‘an octave’. The tuning fork we struck set up a ‘sympathetic resonance’ with other tuning forks in the room, which is why they too began to sing.

There are two significant factors regarding visible light that seem to ally it at some level with sound, and specifically music. First, the part of the electromagnetic spectrum covered by visible light runs from about 4 x 10
¹⁴
Hz to 8.1 x 10
¹⁴
Hz. This represents a doubling of frequency, so in musical terms it can be called an octave. The second association occurs when one considers the difference in frequency between musical notes and the frequency of visible light. The note we have designated as Megalithic C, which is 558 Hz, when doubled 40 times, brings us to a frequency within the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Forty doublings or octaves up in terms of frequency, 558 Hz becomes 6.13527 x 10
¹⁴
Hz, which represents the colour blue and appears right in the middle of the human visual spectrum in terms of frequency.

There may be no tangible connection between the musical note of Megalithic C and the colour blue that can be tied down by physics, but it is possible that within the brain sound and light are dealt with in a similar manner. It may therefore be no coincidence that we have evolved to see in colours that have frequencies that maintain a resonant relationship with the sounds we hear.

In Chapter 2 we explained the method by which we believe our Megalithic ancestors replicated the half Megalithic Yard pendulum, in order to validate the geodetic Megalithic Yard, which they had already established.

All the available evidence points to the fact that rather than using a star and a pendulum, as we had first considered, the astronomer-priests of the Megalithic Period had used a pendulum and the planet Venus. However, such a technique relies on a certain knowledge of which ‘days’ during the complex movements of the planet Venus are appropriate for the procedure.

It might occur to some readers, as it did to us, that the smallest irregularity in the calendar could lead to great mistakes in such a system when establishing the correct days to use in any Venus cycle, because unregistered drift of the cycles of Venus across time could lead to the wrong result. Within the very small tolerances he observes, Alexander Thom showed that the Megalithic Yard remained remarkably consistent, probably across as much as 2,000 years. In our estimation the Megalithic builders had two answers to this problem, the first being the knowledge that the longest half Megalithic Yard pendulum achieved from the Venus observations was the one they were looking for. However, of just as much importance would be a very good understanding of the ‘real’ year, together with some knowledge of the Venus cycles themselves.

The way the Venus cycle meshes with that of the Earth was of great significance to these early calendar creators. They would certainly have noticed that for every five ‘apparent’ full cycles of Venus, eight Earth years pass. However, this could only be fully appreciated if the actual length of the earth year was understood. Even using the modern calendar, this can be somewhat misleading.

We presently use a fairly hotchpotch system of corrections that have gradually evolved since Roman times. Our first course of action is to add an extra day to the civil calendar every four years – which then becomes known as a leap year. However, this procedure is not accurate enough and because it over-compensates, we don’t add a leap year in century years – unless they are millennium years. Although this system is fine for routine purposes and sorts itself out over a long period of time, it is capable of being quite wrong at any given point, certainly by more than a day.

Such a state of affairs could have caused real complications to a culture that simply had to keep a tight rein on the true year and this fact alone tends to suggest that our Megalithic ancestors had built themselves a very accurate calendar. In fact there is evidence that this was the case.

Our hypothesis suggests that the Megalithic civil year was 366 days in length, which in terms of the real year would appear to be even further adrift than our year of 365 days, but what really matters is the compensation techniques that were made to bring the civil year and the true year together.

Alan’s time spent studying the Phaistos Disc strongly suggested that it had been designed for a year of 366 days. The Phaistos Disc was created by the civilization on Crete that we now know as the Minoan culture, and was manufactured about 2000
BC
. It was found in the ruins of the Minoan palace of Phaistos, in the south of Crete, and it is now kept in the nearby Heraklion Museum.

The Phaistos Disc, side A.

The Disc is made of fired clay. Prior to firing, each its sides was given incised spiral lines, inside of which stand groups of hieroglyphic characters pressed into the clay using stamps or dies. The two sides of the Phaistos Disc are shown above.

The Phaistos Disc, side B.

Linguists and other interested parties have for years tried to translate the message of the Phaistos Disc and despite some valiant efforts, the general opinion is that all of them have failed. The reason is quite simple. We have no knowledge of the language spoken in Minoan Crete and without that, or some sort of Minoan ‘Rosetta Stone’, interpretation of the characters would seem to be impossible.

It was not so much what the characters might say that interested Alan, however, but rather the number of them on each side of the Disc, and how those numbers might relate to each other. The first fact of note is that the characters fall within spirals. Many researchers now think that there are occasions when spirals are meant to indicate the passing of the Sun throughout the year, as is suggested to be the case of the spirals carved at Newgrange in Ireland’s Boyne Valley. This was the first clue that the Phaistos Disc might be some sort of calendar.

It took several years of research and a whole book to explain what Alan discovered, partly because the Phaistos Disc is, in fact, a multi-faceted aid to calculation, though there is one particular job it does quite brilliantly. Side A of the Disc contains 123 hieroglyphs, and side B has 119. If these are viewed as simple markers, irrespective of what they might say, then the Disc can be shown to comprise a ‘second calendar’ specifically manufactured to run alongside the 366-day calendar and to identify the times when compensations need to be made in order to reconcile the 366-day year and the true year.

The procedure for using the Disc as described above is very simple. Every symbol on side A is counted, most likely from the centre out and one for each day, until the end of the spiral is reached. All of these symbols, 123 in total, relate to the centre symbol in side B of the Disc. Now all the symbols on side A are counted again, this time relating to the second symbol on side B. The procedure is repeated time and again until 123 days has elapsed for each of the 119 symbols on side B. The total number of days indicated by the Disc is 14,637. This is extremely close to 40 years of 366 days, which would total 14,640 days. Probably the Disc is perpetual, and so simply continues a new series of cycles, but as if to premeditate this important 40-year period, those creating the Disc added three dots at the end of the spiral to indicate the missing three days necessary to make the full 40-year cycle of 14,640 days. (The dots were present to ‘demonstrate’ the full 40-year cycle but were not used in the calendar round explained below.)

The ingenuity of this system is that it told those using the Disc when it was necessary to compensate for the inaccuracies that were accruing between the ritual year and real year. The vital period is 4 x 123 days (492 days), at which time one day would be literally removed from the ritual 366-day calendar. It would be as if that day never existed. For example, and in our terms, the calendar might jump from 1st March to 3rd March.

We can find no better method of compensating for a 366-day year than to remove 1 day every 492 days. Such a procedure would keep the civil calendar and the real calendar in harmony for well over 3,000 years without any other alteration being necessary. This is a phenomenal feat and any observer would be forced to admit that it is neater and more accurate than the system we use today.

The Phaistos Disc is capable of much more than this little miracle and it almost certainly has additional capabilities that we have not yet recognized. Everything known about it so far is itemized in
The Bronze Age Computer Disc.
However, it was the existence of the 123-day, or more properly in this context, the 492-day alternative calendar that alerted Alan to the presence in Crete of the 366-day year he had already suspected must have once existed.

It is not possible for this method of compensation to ever see the civil year and the true year at odds by more than 0.75 of a day, and even this inaccuracy can only exist for a maximum of 126 days. The larger discrepancies of our own calendar simply do not occur in this system.

Another feature of the Phaistos Disc is that it supplies an extremely accurate calendar for the behaviour and movements of the planets Mercury and Venus. If the hieroglyphics are replaced with modern numerals, what we get is an extremely accurate planetary ready-reckoner. So obvious was this that Alan soon came to appreciate that there was a simple rule of thumb, particularly for the planet Venus, that he had not recognized before. When using 366-day years the rule is this: any phenomena of Venus that takes place today will happen again 40 years less 40 days from now. For those conversant with the procedures itemized by the Disc, it would have been child’s play to catalogue and remember those times when Venus could be used to achieve an accurate Megalithic Yard. Although the procedure is straightforward, the explanation of it is not, and since this book is not directly connected to the Phaistos Disc research, we refer interested readers who wish to know more to
The Bronze Age Computer Disc.