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An apparently early mediaeval experiment in
geodesy
suggesting a necessary change in our present
concept of the history of European science.
The
15 mediaeval churches on the Baltic island
of Bornholm have for centuries been and still are
the focus of a fierce archaeological debate. All
15 churches have a distinctly similar
architecture in particular connected to
massive
vaulted
Romanesque towers, and they are all
considered to be part of the same complex. Four
of the churches are round. The dispute concerns
when the churches were built, who
built them and what purpose was being
served by their
particular architecture.
New
evidence suggests that the round
churches were originally intended to function as
astronomical observatories. Further strong
evidence points to a deliberate positioning of the round churches
as well as of at
least four of the towers associated with other mediaeval
churches on the island
This
seems to be a consequence of an applied mediaeval landscape geometry, laid down with an
amazingly accurate orientation towards the four
points of the compass and dictated by the
position of the tiny island of Christiansų, visible
on the horizon some 15 miles northeast of
Bornholm.
The
evidence for astronomical observatories,
combined with the placing of four
observatories and four observation towers within
an applied geometrical pattern in the landscape,
is found to suggest that the churches were part of
an astonishing medieval scientific experiment in
geodesy. By the use of triangulation, this seems
to have been
intended to measure the shape and size of the
curvature
of the earth, achieved by as early as the end of
the 12th century through a comparison of several measures
along a meridian on a selected position 10 degrees
north of the 45-degree latitude.
Amazingly,
the overall accuracy of the triangulation is found to be within 1/100 of
a degree.
©: Copyright New Science Limited 2005 |
