the compass and had unfolded its lightshow on the rear wall at a distance of 24 meters. Even taking account of the wobble in the earth’s axis, there is little change in the lightshow. The only factor to influence the light beam today is the slightly inclined monolith. Random chance was excluded. The builders of Newgrange had planned the magic lightshow. Now some questions need answering.
The position of a single monolith in the passage would have changed everything. If the artificial slit over the entrance had been a few centimeters smaller, or if its position had been a few millimeters off, the fingers of light could not have reached the back wall through the passage and chamber. Furthermore, had the passage of monoliths been shorter or longer, the sunlight would either not have reached the back wall or not illuminated the cultic symbols. With a shorter passage, the light beam would have fizzled out on the ground due to the slope of the terrain.
There is more: The giant complex of Newgrange is not set on even ground, and the east-west passage does not lie horizontally but slopes upward. The highest point on the floor of the passage is also the location of the last monolith after 24 meters. This angle of ascent was planned. The starting point of the sunbeams on December 21 was not the entrance of the grave, nor did the beams creep from the floor at the entrance to the back, but they entered through a small rectangular opening above the entrance monoliths. This position alone, in combination with the hill lying opposite behind which the sun rose, allowed for a straight beam of light into the center of the vault.
There the light hit the edge of the “basin stone,” a block with an artificially scraped out basin, like a bundled laser beam. What came next was a magic symphony, triggered through the mirror effect of the basin stone. The beams fanned out in various directions, always directed at cultic symbols and, of course, at a right angle straight upward like an arrow through the shaft of the vaulted roof. ( Image 180 )
This vault over the passage grave is a marvel in itself. Specialists call it a
corbel vault
. Heavier monoliths below and lighter monoliths above were placed on top of one another in such a way that the next highest monolith always extended a little over the edge of the one below. This created a six-meter high steadily narrowing hexagonal shaft over the center of the grave. At the top of the chimney, the gap was bridged with a flat stone which could be removed as required. ( Image 181 )
Compelling Conclusions
Slogans have a stronger echo in empty vaults. Why must Newgrange have been a grave? The grave idea haunts the specialist literature as a fact and can probably never be eliminated. What are these facts? Human and animal bones were found in Newgrange,
ergo
the complex has been built for that purpose. It is also a fact that every dugout, every convenient hole, can be used as a grave—even if
originally
it served a completely different purpose. In the same way, the idea for Newgrange might have been a completely different one even if—much later—bones were added. The rest of the dead wasdeemed to be sacred among all peoples, so only the bones in the vault of Newgrange were to be startled and blinded by the sun each year? If Newgrange was conceived as a grave complex from the very beginning, then the deceased person must have had a very special affinity with our central star. If not, the rectangular opening for the shafts of sunlight does not make any sense.
No tribe can manage a cultic structure like Newgrange as a spare-time job. An observation and surveying period of at least one generation was the prerequisite for determining the day, hour, and minute of the winter solstice for the geographical situation of Newgrange. Precise plans or models had to be made, every angle on the
inclined
building site had to be correctly aligned, the position of every individual monolith had to be exactly
The position of a single monolith in the passage would have changed everything. If the artificial slit over the entrance had been a few centimeters smaller, or if its position had been a few millimeters off, the fingers of light could not have reached the back wall through the passage and chamber. Furthermore, had the passage of monoliths been shorter or longer, the sunlight would either not have reached the back wall or not illuminated the cultic symbols. With a shorter passage, the light beam would have fizzled out on the ground due to the slope of the terrain.
There is more: The giant complex of Newgrange is not set on even ground, and the east-west passage does not lie horizontally but slopes upward. The highest point on the floor of the passage is also the location of the last monolith after 24 meters. This angle of ascent was planned. The starting point of the sunbeams on December 21 was not the entrance of the grave, nor did the beams creep from the floor at the entrance to the back, but they entered through a small rectangular opening above the entrance monoliths. This position alone, in combination with the hill lying opposite behind which the sun rose, allowed for a straight beam of light into the center of the vault.
There the light hit the edge of the “basin stone,” a block with an artificially scraped out basin, like a bundled laser beam. What came next was a magic symphony, triggered through the mirror effect of the basin stone. The beams fanned out in various directions, always directed at cultic symbols and, of course, at a right angle straight upward like an arrow through the shaft of the vaulted roof. ( Image 180 )
This vault over the passage grave is a marvel in itself. Specialists call it a
corbel vault
. Heavier monoliths below and lighter monoliths above were placed on top of one another in such a way that the next highest monolith always extended a little over the edge of the one below. This created a six-meter high steadily narrowing hexagonal shaft over the center of the grave. At the top of the chimney, the gap was bridged with a flat stone which could be removed as required. ( Image 181 )
Compelling Conclusions
Slogans have a stronger echo in empty vaults. Why must Newgrange have been a grave? The grave idea haunts the specialist literature as a fact and can probably never be eliminated. What are these facts? Human and animal bones were found in Newgrange,
ergo
the complex has been built for that purpose. It is also a fact that every dugout, every convenient hole, can be used as a grave—even if
originally
it served a completely different purpose. In the same way, the idea for Newgrange might have been a completely different one even if—much later—bones were added. The rest of the dead wasdeemed to be sacred among all peoples, so only the bones in the vault of Newgrange were to be startled and blinded by the sun each year? If Newgrange was conceived as a grave complex from the very beginning, then the deceased person must have had a very special affinity with our central star. If not, the rectangular opening for the shafts of sunlight does not make any sense.
No tribe can manage a cultic structure like Newgrange as a spare-time job. An observation and surveying period of at least one generation was the prerequisite for determining the day, hour, and minute of the winter solstice for the geographical situation of Newgrange. Precise plans or models had to be made, every angle on the
inclined
building site had to be correctly aligned, the position of every individual monolith had to be exactly
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