Maes Howe (Orkney, Mainland) – Rekonstruktion der Planung einer jungsteinzeitlichen Grabanlage

Abstract

On the Island of Orkney/Mainland, north of Scotland, a prehistoric tomb from about 3000 BC exists that will be examined here to reconstruct its measures and the geometry of its plan. That buildings have been planned – and that since more than six millennia – is rather new in science. The plan of Maes Howe consists of squares (Q) and “Pythagorean” triangles (pTs, resp. pDs in German). But up to now only a qualitative approach has been searched for, that contradicts the determination of measures in the physical world of building. „Planning“ means „to make even“: cutting up of a three-dimensional body into three rectangular planes, to which the mathematical tools Q and pT can be applied. Rectangularity is to be installed from either side of a linear edge, as simpliest solution: Definition of slanting is not needed. A new thesis introduced here is the model of „standard set“ (abbr. as STS) A1, A2 (Q and pT no. 1) and then B1, B2 (pT no. 2 and no 6), both reversible (fig. 3b), applied throughout the history of building. Our presentation here sets on  comprehensibility rather than reconstructing the original of the plan, leaving open what the first step of the planning might have been. Fig. 4 shows the plan on the base of a length of 132 hands. Significant is the discovery of a 3-hand partition of a 12” foot, the oriental-roman system, instead of the greek 4-hand partition of a 16” foot. The obligatory double square (fig. 8) shows, that the middle tomb chamber belongs to the original plan; total measures being 52 feet (156 h) by 28 feet (84 h). Systemic plan organization is also transversal (fig. 11). Reconstruction of the north (fig. 15) and south tomb chamber (fig. 16); the latter holds an exceptional position as largest tomb: a dominating single pT 1-14 on 84 hand (fig. 21), probably the beginning of the plan.