Your fascinating report states that the Durrington Shafts discovery “offers the first evidence that the early inhabitants of Britain … had developed a way to count” (Vast neolithic circle of deep shafts found near Stonehenge, 22 June).
Evidence of this may well be found and accepted, but as early as the 1950s, Professor Alexander Thom claimed to have evidence that neolithic communities based the measurements of their monuments on a fixed unit of length. He called this the megalithic yard (approximately 2.7ft) and claimed that a multiple of these, the megalithic rod (6.8ft), was also used.
He pursued his research by the unusual method of taking his family on field trips and measuring all the neolithic monuments he could find. He concluded that the same standardised unit of length had been used in the construction of numerous megalith structures in many countries, and that knowledge and use of the megalithic yard had been passed on from country to country. Thom’s views are sometimes discounted today, and sadly he has been forgotten by many.
Rose Harvie
Dumbarton
