The Mên Scryfa and Boskednan stone circle

A few blog posts ago I wrote about the Mên-an-Tol (see here) in Cornwall and that it stands not too far away from some other Neolithic monuments. 

The first of these is the Mên Scryfa (inscribed stone). It's a single standing stone bearing the inscription 'Rialobrani Cunovali fili'. This translates as 'Rialobranus son of Cunovalus'. Rialobran is not known elsewhere, but he may have been a Cornish petty king or tribal leader. Or Rialobran (or Ryalvran) may be Cornish for 'royal raven', and Cunovallos may be British for 'famous leader', thus the inscription would read 'royal raven son of famous leader'. Antiquarians, at one time, used to identify Cunovalus with the pre-Roman British king Cunobeline.

Beyond that lies Boskednan stone circle, also known as the Nine Maidens.

The first obvious thing that strikes you about this circle is that there are 11 stones, not nine. This may be because, in Cornwall at least, many circles are called 'Nine Maidens' because the number nine has magical and mystical significance. The name doesn't really have anything to do with the number of stones in the circle.

The stone circle may have once consisted of 22 granite blocks set in a circle with a diameter of approximately 22m. It's hard to say for sure because, like so many of these ancient monuments, the wind and rain have knocked them over and people used to haul the stones away to build houses and gateposts. 

The first mention of the stone circle in modern times is found in the work Antiquities, historical and monumental, of the County of Cornwall (1754) by William Borlase, who reported 19 upright standing stones. 

It's interesting that Borlase put the number of stones at 19 as, in Cornwall at least, the number seems to be quite significant. The Merry Maidens, Boscawen-un and Tregeseal stone circles also all have nineteen stones. As it happens, the number 19 is connected to the Metonic Cycle in astronomy. Nineteen years (235 lunar months) is the length it takes for the new and full moons to return to the same dates of the year. Basically the lunar and solar cycles coincide every 19 years. It seems possible that our ancestors used these circles to mark the passage of time - one stone for each of the years before the ‘clock’ reset. 

You may have heard of the extraordinary Antikythera Mechanism (see here) made by the Greeks in 40-60BCE. It's a mechanical device to track the movement of the sun, moon and nearest planets. One dial on the mechanism follows the 19 year Metonic Cycle. The Moon was far more important to our ancestors than it is to us now. Its changing phases provided a way to track the passing of time and the passing of the year as 13 lunar months of 28 days  make up a year. The word 'month' is derived from 'moon'. 

There are also the Ishango Bone (see here), found in East Africa. The baboon bone dates from 22,000 years ago and, scratched into its surface, are notches grouped in six consecutive prime numbers 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 and 19. As all of these numbers have a relevance to astronomy it has been suggested that the bone was an early form of calendar. This assumption is further supported by the mathematician Claudia Zaslavsky, who cites the female menstrual cycle as the reason for measuring time in the rhythm of the moon's phases. 

The ancients knew far more about the world than we give them credit for. 

Primitives? 

Hardly.