In this presentation, Howard Crowhurst takes us on a journey through the Neolithic landscape of Southern Brittany, France—specifically the “little sea” of Morbihan. He argues that the thousands of standing stones at Carnac are not merely random religious monuments, but components of a highly sophisticated astronomical and geometrical machine that predates the Pyramids of Egypt by 3,000 years.
Key Themes & Discoveries:
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The Scale of Antiquity: Crowhurst begins by establishing the immense age and scale of the site. We are looking at monuments from 6000 BC to 4500 BC—including the Carnac alignments (over 3,000 stones), the massive Grand Menhir Brisé (a broken monolith once standing over 20 meters tall), and the elaborate chambered cairns like Gavrinis.
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Natural Geometry: A central pillar of the talk is the concept of “Natural Geometry.” Crowhurst demonstrates that at the specific latitude of Carnac, the solstitial rectangles (the angles formed by the sun at solstices) create perfect 3-4-5 Pythagorean triangles. This suggests the site was chosen specifically because the land and sky harmonized geometrically at this location.
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The Dance of Sun and Moon: The presentation reveals a duality in the monuments:
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The Sun: Corridors aligned to the Winter Solstice sunrise (often lighting the left side of chamber stones).
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The Moon: Alignments tracking the complex 18.6-year lunar cycle (often lighting the right side).
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Gavrinis: Crowhurst highlights the incredible engravings at Gavrinis and reveals a hidden engraving on a re-erected stone that depicts a square and a crescent moon—a “Rosetta Stone” for megalithic symbolism.
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The Maeshowe Connection: In a stunning conclusion, the analysis moves north to Maeshowe in Orkney, Scotland. Crowhurst proposes that Maeshowe acts as a “statement” rather than just an observatory. He argues its geometry captures the Earth’s axial tilt (obliquity) over a 41,000-year cycle, marking the extreme limits of the sunrise over millennia using the same 3-4-5 geometry found in Carnac, adapted for the northern latitude.
Why Watch: This lecture challenges the view of Neolithic people as primitive, revealing a civilization with a deep understanding of long-term astronomical cycles and the mathematical language of the cosmos.