Stonehenge Solved Its Three Observatories, Who built them, How and Why

The true nature of what is envisaged needs to be made abundantly clear. While the Earth's axis of spin moved to a location at, or near St Petersburg, on the line of the Stone henge's line of symmetry, the figure of the Earth, which is to say the pattern of its lands and seas, did not move at all relative to the Sun: it stayed as we know it today, Fig 21. In other words the axis of spin parted company with Earth. It moved from the North Pole to St Petersburg, while the Geographic Pole continued to move how we have always known it to do relative to the Sun, as the Earth moves around it in its yearly orbit.

This is a seeming impossibility but only because we forget examples of the principles involved in our daily lives. Accustomed as we are to bicycle wheels and hundreds of other objects spinning on fixed axles, we overlook things like a child's tippe-top toy, which turns upside down while continuing to spin in the same direction. Another example is the inflatable beach ball which, when spun on smooth water, sees the inflation valve move from the top to the water and back again (i). In both cases the axis of spin has parted company from its body, and the Earth did similarly for a while, before pausing and then moving back again. The consequence for an observer of the sky in the British Isles was that the Sun and Moon moved in different apparent paths from those of today. We shall come to how and why this happened in chapter 21.