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traverse a known gap), you will always end up with the same pendulum length.
    We found that a half Megalithic Yard pendulum was the origin of the whole measurement system rediscovered by Thom.
    By the time we published Civilization One in 2004 we knew that it wasn’t only the megalithic measurements Thom had rediscovered that were unexpected realities from the past. We had also come to realize that the Megalithic Yard, Rod and Inch were merely components of an integrated measuring and geometry system the like of which the world has not seen since – even including measuring systems we use today.
    In particular we came to recognize the existence of a system of time measurement and geometry that had relied on circles of 366°, as opposed to the 360° convention we use today. We showed that the adoption of this system was entirely logical because there actually are 366° in an Earth circle.
The Wisdom of the Ancients
    Let us explain briefly. The Earth goes around the Sun once per year, which is a circle of around 940 million km. Even if prehistoric sky-watchers did not know about the movement of the Earth around the Sun, they would quickly realize that patterns formed by the Sun and stars on the horizon are repeated after two consecutive winter solstices (a year). The same individuals would also note that the stars repeat their performance on a daily basis due to the Earth’s spin on its axis (a sidereal day).
    Incidentally, it is highly likely that they would also realize that sunrises across the year move exactly like a pendulum. At the spring equinox (currently around 21 March) the Sun will rise due east and then rise a little further north each day until the summer solstice (21 June) at which point it stops and reverses its direction back to the autumn equinox and on to the winter solstice, by which time it will rise well into the south. The Sun’s behaviour across a year, as viewed from the Earth, creates exactly the same frequency model as a pendulum. It displays a faster rate of change in the centre and slows gradually to the solstice extremes, where it stops and reverses direction.
    So, Neolithic sky-watchers would clearly have understood that there were two constantly repeating patterns taking place – the day and the year. It is almost impossible that they would have failed to realize that the daily pattern fitted into the yearly pattern 366 times. As far as they were concerned the year was a great circle of 366 days in duration and so the origin of the degree of arc as 1/366th of a circle. By contrast the modern convention of 360° in a circle is as primitive as the ancient Egyptian year of 360 days – it simply isn’t correct. The two errors are entirely historically related, and though we now do at least use a year of 365 days, we never corrected the mistake regarding the number of degrees in a circle.
    The 366-day year differs from the modern year of 365 days in three out of four years, as it represents the ‘true’ state of affairs regarding the Earth’s passage around the Sun, as measured against the background stars. In any case, those who first created the megalithic measuring system dealt exclusively in integers (whole numbers), and for good reason since a circle containing 365.25° would be quite unworkable. The later 360° circle had been adopted by the Sumerians as well as the Egyptians, who both celebrated a ritual year of 360 days, which required significant alterations and compensations in order to constantly bring it back to the true state of affairs regarding the Earth’s passage around the Sun. This system of geometry was eventually adopted by other ancient cultures, not least that of the Greeks, and so became the norm across the world.
    The ancient system of geometry had greatness running right through it. It divided the Earth’s polar circumference into 366° and then subdivided each degree into 60 minutes of arc, with 6 seconds to each minute. And, amazingly, each second of arc is