The scarcity myth The scarcity myth - Radical Anthropology Group

which allowed doubled
reverse viewing of certain
stars or the sun and the
moon; the construction of
artificial and level horizons
for establishing alignments
accurate to one-third of
one degree; and many
more. Once he had
demonstrated how these
principles operated
elsewhere, he could then
test them out at
Stonehenge. He therefore
showed us the method we
can use to decode
monuments. Nothing in
the archaeoastronomy or archaeology
of NW European monuments can
move forward until North’s work is
critically acknowledged.
RA: OK, and what about your
contribution Above you said that
your theory explains 28 features of the
architecture of Stonehenge and that no
other theory comes close. Perhaps that
would be the best way to approach
your work. What architectural features
are you talking about
LS: They are not just mine, many are
from North. I just put them together in
a new way to show that the combined
result was to build a monument that
could predictably stage rituals when
winter solstice sunset coincided with
dark moon – therefore at the start of
the longest, darkest night. Nobody had
come up with this before. Some of the
properties which all go together and are
explained by this single motivation are:
● Approaching Stonehenge from the
North East along the Avenue,
Stonehenge paradoxically appears as a
solid wall of stone except in two
places, even though it is full of gaps
when viewed, as archaeologist do on
their site plans, from above.
● The two nearest trilithons point to a
convergence on the Heel Stone.
● The lower gap is exactly aligned on
winter solstice sunset; the upper gap on
the southern minor standstill moonsets.
● Stonehenge is built on the side
of a hill. As you walk to the centre
of the monument from the Heel
Stone at winter solstice sunset, the
upward movement of the eye counterbalances
the sinking of the sun,
creating the illusion of suspending its
sinking movement.
Stonehenge traps the southern standstill moon
● Stone 11 is half the height, half the
width and half the breadth of the other
29 stones in the outer sarsen circle.
There are therefore 29.5 stones in the
outer circle. This is the average length
of the (synodic) month.
● There are 19 bluestones in the inner
arc. This is the length of the standstill
cycle of the moon.
● The bluestones, which come from
the Preselli Hills in Pembrokeshire, are
dark blue with mica flecks. If the
monument is designed for a ritual of
the longest darkest night, then this
selection of stone is a good rendition of
the night sky in the middle of winter.
● The monument is binary – two
circles (one of sarsen, one of bluestone)
and two horseshoe arcs (one of sarsen,
one of bluestone). This is consistent
with the main double alignment on the
sun and the moon.
I could go on. All of these points
and others outlined in my article
in the Cambridge Archaeological
Journal are consistent with my
argument, and no other theory can
integrate them in this way.
RA: You mentioned above that a study
of Indo-European myths confirms your
findings. Could you tell us a little bit
about this with reference to the
features you have just described
LS: It is a remarkable achievement of
scholarship that not only has some of
the proto-Indo-European language
been reconstructed, but also some of
their origin myths. This is the root
language and origin myths of all the
peoples from Iceland to Sri-Lanka.
From both Indo-European study, and
from the archaeology, a strong case can
now be made that Indo-Europeans
were patrilineal cattle
herders of the late
Neolithic and early
Bronze Age. Some
components of their
origin myths have been
reconstructed by, in
particular, Wendy
Doniger, Bruce Lincoln
and Calvert Watkins.
These myths are obsessed
with heroes killing the
cattle-stealing dragon,
repairing the cosmos and
forestalling its imminent
collapse, and the original
patriarchal twins instituting human
sacrifice as the pre-eminent means of
keeping the cosmos stable and selfreplenishing.
If you start your
understanding of human origins with
sex-strike theory, of culture led by
matrilineal/matrilocal coalitions of
hunters which then started to break
down when big game hunting
collapsed, then these myths are exactly
what you would predict as one of the
outcomes of that collapse. In terms of
monuments, double alignments of the
sun and the moon, in which monthly
lunar phases are being transplanted
onto annual solar cycles, and in which
dark moon rituals are now being
ritually celebrated twice a year rather
than 13 times a year, are also what you
would predict. None of this is explicable
or explainable by the standard
model of culture-creating farmers out
of hunter-gatherer savagery.
RA: Finally, can we return to your first
answer, and consider why it was that
the people you were debating on the
British left were hostile to these ideas.
Why were they And what can our
activist readers take from your work
LS: In the winter of 1989/90, the views
of the section of the British left I was
debating with were no different to
those common among the liberal left
and ‘intelligentsia’. There was a very
ambiguous and weak endorsement of
the claims of Engels (and Marx) that
our species was born in a revolutionary
break with primate ‘politics’.
A number of reasons lay behind this.
First and most important was an
inability to critically use the methods
of the new Darwinism – selfish-gene
theory. All the left and liberal
intellectuals were (and still are)
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