Stone Age satnav: Did ancient man use 5,000-year-old travel chart to navigate across Britain

When did a chart become satellite navigation?

It’s considered to be one of the more recent innovations to help the hapless traveller.
But the satnav system may not be as modern as we think.

On the contrary. I think the satnav system is precisely as old as we think.

He analysed 1,500 prehistoric sites in England and Wales and was able to connect all of them to at least two other sites using isosceles triangles – these are triangles with two sides the same length.

This, he says, is proof that the landmarks were deliberately created as navigational aides. Many were built within sight of each other and provided a simple way to get from A to B.

Or, settlements were quasi-equally spaced, as the terrain allowed, because most people making a new settlement probably wouldn’t choose a site too close to an existing settlement, for fear of conflict.

Mr Brooks added: ‘The sides of some of the triangles are over 100 miles across, yet the distances are accurate to within 100 metres. You cannot do that by chance.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you could. Given the kind of packing restrictions present, I’d bet a semi-random distribution of sites would yield many such triangles.

(The comment about ET helping out is icing on the cake; I wonder if it the information was offered or solicited)