Get our latest book recommendations, author news, competitions, offers, and other information right to your inbox.
Sacred Geometry of the Earth
The Ancient Matrix of Monuments and Mountains
By Mark Vidler and Catherine Young
Foreword by Rand Flem-Ath
Published by Inner Traditions
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
Identifies the patterns of our planet’s design within the natural landscape
• Explains the geometry inherent in the mountains and coasts on all continents
• Reveals how ancient monuments were built to reflect and enhance the Earth’s design, often connecting sites around the world
• Includes detailed maps that show the simple geometrical relationships among the world’s mountains, coastlines, islands, and ancient monuments
From continent to continent across the globe, Mark Vidler and Catherine Young reveal that order is everywhere on Earth. On remote islands, soaring summits, and level deltas, they unveil natural topographic patterns related to pi, the golden ratio, and right-triangle geometry. And as the planet’s design emerges, it becomes clear that this hidden order in nature decided the location of ancient monuments the world over.
Through detailed maps, Vidler and Young show how the locations of megalithic monuments reflect and enhance a natural pattern on the Earth that connects its major features. The rows of standing stones at Carnac in France, for example, point to the summits of Mount Everest and K2, and Angkor Wat in Cambodia is on a straight line joining Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and the tip of Cape Comorin in India. The authors examine the geography of many islands and each continent, including Antarctica, to show how the highest peak on each landmass falls on a line connecting coastal extremes. They reveal how circles of standing stones and man-made mounds mark intersections of these lines. They explore the connection between the Nazca lines in Peru and the Amazon, Nile, and Ganges deltas and explain how the locations of the Giza pyramids, Stonehenge, and Machu Picchu are integrated into the natural design on Earth.
As they uncover geometric patterns on the Earth line by line, point by point, the authors reveal how the world’s ancient monuments represent a form of transglobal communication that far predates the written word.
• Explains the geometry inherent in the mountains and coasts on all continents
• Reveals how ancient monuments were built to reflect and enhance the Earth’s design, often connecting sites around the world
• Includes detailed maps that show the simple geometrical relationships among the world’s mountains, coastlines, islands, and ancient monuments
From continent to continent across the globe, Mark Vidler and Catherine Young reveal that order is everywhere on Earth. On remote islands, soaring summits, and level deltas, they unveil natural topographic patterns related to pi, the golden ratio, and right-triangle geometry. And as the planet’s design emerges, it becomes clear that this hidden order in nature decided the location of ancient monuments the world over.
Through detailed maps, Vidler and Young show how the locations of megalithic monuments reflect and enhance a natural pattern on the Earth that connects its major features. The rows of standing stones at Carnac in France, for example, point to the summits of Mount Everest and K2, and Angkor Wat in Cambodia is on a straight line joining Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and the tip of Cape Comorin in India. The authors examine the geography of many islands and each continent, including Antarctica, to show how the highest peak on each landmass falls on a line connecting coastal extremes. They reveal how circles of standing stones and man-made mounds mark intersections of these lines. They explore the connection between the Nazca lines in Peru and the Amazon, Nile, and Ganges deltas and explain how the locations of the Giza pyramids, Stonehenge, and Machu Picchu are integrated into the natural design on Earth.
As they uncover geometric patterns on the Earth line by line, point by point, the authors reveal how the world’s ancient monuments represent a form of transglobal communication that far predates the written word.
Excerpt
8
A Line to Everest
Carnac Revisited
Neolithic people habitually transported stones weighing from 5 to 50 tons over several kilometers and stood them upright. At Carnac more than 3,000 stones were set in a series of lines spanning over three kilometers. Le Menec West runs straight for about 500 meters.
Ritual Beliefs
These “primitive” people are understood to have been in the earliest stages of peasant living; stone, wood, and bone were their principal materials, and pots rendered from baked sea mud were their luxury culinary items. If life was short and mere survival a struggle, what could have driven them to waste precious time moving rocks? Tens of thousands of hours of labor were dedicated to creating these lines at Carnac. Today, their purpose is variously suggested to have been ceremonial, processional, devotional, astronomical, or funereal, yet none of these fully explain the effort.
Is it credible that ceremonies, rituals, or festivals provide an explanation for tens of thousands of standing stones and millions of tons of earth moved in Europe? What degree of obsession ate into the heart of these Neolithic people and so overwhelmed them, generation after generation, with the need to shift vast rocks into rings, rows, dolmens, and monoliths, or to pile up great mounds and earth banks? Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained these things. The present-day interpretation has determined that these monuments were created with cultish rituals of varying kinds in mind. It is a best guess, and it may be true. But it is not what the stones explicitly communicate.
The Enigma of Carnac
Following the Lines
The Carnac stones are set in lines that stretch as far as the eye can see--and farther. Like an army battling with time itself, rank upon rank of these stones are merely the survivors in a project of vast proportions. It is obsessive line making, not in any abstract way, but physically, on the ground itself. How else could they describe geometry in the landscape more clearly?
Although the stone lines meander there is a clear visible correlation between the ancient stone rows and the lines extending to the world’s three highest mountain summits. But the evidence that these lines were purposefully directed at these mountains does not rest on the visible correlation. The common Neolithic code appears clearly through measurement.
The bearing from the summit of Mount Everest to Le Menec is 314.0 degrees.
The bearing from the summit of Mount Kanchenjunga to Le Menec is 314.4 degrees.
The mean bearing from these two mountains to Le Menec is therefore 314.2 degrees.
The code of practice found among the Neolithic circle builders elsewhere in Europe echoes resoundingly at Carnac with these pi measurements. The specific digits recognized from Orkney to Msoura are emphatically repeated at Carnac, and the lines are still visible on the ground. There they remain, witness to an unseen aspect of our ancient history. Carnac is a location chosen by people who knew exactly where they were. The monument introduces an amazing global pattern, an insight into the foundations supporting the ancient worldview of an ordered earth. They communicate this view through measurement. To the east lie the Himalayas; what lies to the west?
American Peaks
Measurements from Le Menec to the highest mountain summits on the North and South American continents are:
North America: Le Menec to Mount McKinley’s summit is 4,002 nautical miles.
South America: Le Menec to Mount Aconcagua’s summit is 6,000 nautical miles.
Neolithic builders were sticklers for whole number measurements. The highest peak in the Americas, Mount Aconcagua, is signified by such a measurement, just as the highest mountains in Asia are signified by alignment. But the remarkably calculated nature of this Neolithic work is found by joining the lines. When lines to the American and Asian summits are drawn from Carnac, the angle between them is 161.8 degrees.
The phi digit angle in figure 8.3 is created by two lines starting at the Le Menec stone circle. The first line is 6,000 nautical miles long and extends to the summit of Mount Aconcagua. The second line follows the stone rows and has the mean bearing of lines extended to the three highest summits in the world. The angle between the lines is 161.8 degrees rounded to one decimal place.
The scale of Carnac reflects its global reach. It is big because it needs to be. Carnac has identified the highest summits in Asia by alignment and pi digit bearings and the highest summit in the Americas, Aconcagua, with a phi digit angle and 6,000 nautical mile distance.
Worldviews
The measured order on the veins of a leaf or the scales of a fish comes as little surprise, yet the conceptual leap toward recognizing something similar on the surface of the earth is clearly enormous. But the evidence from early recorded history is also clear on this point: there was no great conceptual leap for these people. From the dawn of history it was understood that the earth was ordered. Be it leaf, fish, or landscape, nature was as one. The genius of the monument builders was then to discover a location that illustrated, or demonstrated, the true nature of the ordered earth. The natural pattern is found through alignment and through sexagesimal-based measurement, and at its foundation are the digits 3,142 and 1,618. These digits have already appeared in measurements from Carnac, but like the other monument locations Carnac is at a focal point from which measurements to topographical extremes repeatedly produce alignment and pi and phi digit measurements. Locations such as this are not found by accident. What further insight can be gained from the Neolithic people and why the location of Carnac was significant to them?
A Line to Everest
Carnac Revisited
Neolithic people habitually transported stones weighing from 5 to 50 tons over several kilometers and stood them upright. At Carnac more than 3,000 stones were set in a series of lines spanning over three kilometers. Le Menec West runs straight for about 500 meters.
Ritual Beliefs
These “primitive” people are understood to have been in the earliest stages of peasant living; stone, wood, and bone were their principal materials, and pots rendered from baked sea mud were their luxury culinary items. If life was short and mere survival a struggle, what could have driven them to waste precious time moving rocks? Tens of thousands of hours of labor were dedicated to creating these lines at Carnac. Today, their purpose is variously suggested to have been ceremonial, processional, devotional, astronomical, or funereal, yet none of these fully explain the effort.
Is it credible that ceremonies, rituals, or festivals provide an explanation for tens of thousands of standing stones and millions of tons of earth moved in Europe? What degree of obsession ate into the heart of these Neolithic people and so overwhelmed them, generation after generation, with the need to shift vast rocks into rings, rows, dolmens, and monoliths, or to pile up great mounds and earth banks? Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained these things. The present-day interpretation has determined that these monuments were created with cultish rituals of varying kinds in mind. It is a best guess, and it may be true. But it is not what the stones explicitly communicate.
The Enigma of Carnac
Following the Lines
The Carnac stones are set in lines that stretch as far as the eye can see--and farther. Like an army battling with time itself, rank upon rank of these stones are merely the survivors in a project of vast proportions. It is obsessive line making, not in any abstract way, but physically, on the ground itself. How else could they describe geometry in the landscape more clearly?
Although the stone lines meander there is a clear visible correlation between the ancient stone rows and the lines extending to the world’s three highest mountain summits. But the evidence that these lines were purposefully directed at these mountains does not rest on the visible correlation. The common Neolithic code appears clearly through measurement.
The bearing from the summit of Mount Everest to Le Menec is 314.0 degrees.
The bearing from the summit of Mount Kanchenjunga to Le Menec is 314.4 degrees.
The mean bearing from these two mountains to Le Menec is therefore 314.2 degrees.
The code of practice found among the Neolithic circle builders elsewhere in Europe echoes resoundingly at Carnac with these pi measurements. The specific digits recognized from Orkney to Msoura are emphatically repeated at Carnac, and the lines are still visible on the ground. There they remain, witness to an unseen aspect of our ancient history. Carnac is a location chosen by people who knew exactly where they were. The monument introduces an amazing global pattern, an insight into the foundations supporting the ancient worldview of an ordered earth. They communicate this view through measurement. To the east lie the Himalayas; what lies to the west?
American Peaks
Measurements from Le Menec to the highest mountain summits on the North and South American continents are:
North America: Le Menec to Mount McKinley’s summit is 4,002 nautical miles.
South America: Le Menec to Mount Aconcagua’s summit is 6,000 nautical miles.
Neolithic builders were sticklers for whole number measurements. The highest peak in the Americas, Mount Aconcagua, is signified by such a measurement, just as the highest mountains in Asia are signified by alignment. But the remarkably calculated nature of this Neolithic work is found by joining the lines. When lines to the American and Asian summits are drawn from Carnac, the angle between them is 161.8 degrees.
The phi digit angle in figure 8.3 is created by two lines starting at the Le Menec stone circle. The first line is 6,000 nautical miles long and extends to the summit of Mount Aconcagua. The second line follows the stone rows and has the mean bearing of lines extended to the three highest summits in the world. The angle between the lines is 161.8 degrees rounded to one decimal place.
The scale of Carnac reflects its global reach. It is big because it needs to be. Carnac has identified the highest summits in Asia by alignment and pi digit bearings and the highest summit in the Americas, Aconcagua, with a phi digit angle and 6,000 nautical mile distance.
Worldviews
The measured order on the veins of a leaf or the scales of a fish comes as little surprise, yet the conceptual leap toward recognizing something similar on the surface of the earth is clearly enormous. But the evidence from early recorded history is also clear on this point: there was no great conceptual leap for these people. From the dawn of history it was understood that the earth was ordered. Be it leaf, fish, or landscape, nature was as one. The genius of the monument builders was then to discover a location that illustrated, or demonstrated, the true nature of the ordered earth. The natural pattern is found through alignment and through sexagesimal-based measurement, and at its foundation are the digits 3,142 and 1,618. These digits have already appeared in measurements from Carnac, but like the other monument locations Carnac is at a focal point from which measurements to topographical extremes repeatedly produce alignment and pi and phi digit measurements. Locations such as this are not found by accident. What further insight can be gained from the Neolithic people and why the location of Carnac was significant to them?
Product Details
- Publisher: Inner Traditions (January 22, 2016)
- Length: 288 pages
- ISBN13: 9781620554692
Browse Related Books
Raves and Reviews
“The intriguing theories of Catherine Young and Mark Vidler concerning the coincidence of prominent landscape features shown in their juxtapositions to express mathematical ratios in terms of nautical miles should not be dismissed.”
– John Neal, author of Measuring the Megaliths and The Structure of Metrology
“An astonishing piece of work and utterly compelling.”
– Allan Brown, illustrator and contributor to How the World was Made
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Sacred Geometry of the Earth eBook 9781620554692
