Abandoning the search for "the key"

Recent reading includes Solving Stonehenge, by Anthony Johnson.

Near as I can understand it, Mr. Johnson's point is that there is no single Stonehedge riddle or enigma to solve - no key that would make all the archeologists and anthropologists smack their foreheads and say, "Ah! So THAT's it."

The subtitle refers to "the key," and what he has in mind there is simply the development of early geometry. But that "key" isn't very key-like, mostly its a research program.

In particular, Johnson thinks the astronomical connection is oversold. Yes, the axis of Stonehenge is aligned with the solstices, but this shouldn't lead us to talk as if "prehistoric spirituality focused entirely on the theatre of the celestial dome."

Rather, prehistoric spirituality as Johnson understands it turns out to have had a lot to do with the geometry of circles and squares.

"Establishing right angles, squares, and triangles, striking perpendicular lines from a baseline, fixing regular points on the circumference of a circle and subdividing angles are all practical procedures which readily translate into cord-and-peg survey methods. Certain formulae would have been committed to memory as part of the skill set of the prehistoric surveyor, and it is not difficult to imagine that this esoteric knowledge would have been handed down from generation to generation."

Unfortunately, some of the pieces of the puzzle are lost forever, due to centuries of opportunistic looting. The architect Inigo Jones wrote in the 17th century about how stones had disappeared in the intervals between his visits at various times in his lifetime.

As late as 1871, The Times of London ran a letter from a fellow calling himself "Vacation Rambler" who said that when he was there "a constant chipping of stone broke the solitude of the place."

The greater the miracle, then, that so much of it still stands.

Some anniversaries

Today, is, of course, the winter solstice, that moment when the sun gets as low to the horizon as it's going to get and begins its long rise.

The solstice doesn't always fall on the 21st -- that moment can come on the 20th or the 22d. But it does come today this year (at 7:04 EST),to be precise.

The 21st is also remarkable for the following anniversaries.

This day in 1898, Pierre and Marie Currie discovered radium;
in 1913 the first modern crossword puzzle as published in a New York newspaper, the creation of a Liverpool-born journalist, Arthur Wynne;
in 1958 Charles DeGaulle was elected the first president of Frane's fifth republic; and in 1968 Apollo 8, which would successfully orbit the moon and return to earth with its three-astronaut crew, launched itself majestically from its Florida pad.

Just because the sun often stands still on this date, it doesn't follow that human history must.