Stone Age Britons Travelled Using GPS Coordinates as Early as 5,000 Years Ago

It was impossible to get lost in Britain during the Stone Age, or at least it wasn't when you were making use of GPS coordinates and Britain's first ancient - crude version of a - satellite navigation system system. That is, according to Tom Brooks who says that the Stone Age's satnav was based on the stone circle and other megalithic markers that can be found all over southern England and Wales. Historian and writer Tom Brooks, says this shows that Britain’s Stone Age ancestors were 'sophisticated engineers' and far from a barbaric race.

Brooks says he studied all known prehistoric sites in Britain - including standing stones, hilltop forts, stone circles and hill camps which makes the number total over a 1,000 as Standing with Stones will tell you - as part of his research and found that the prehistoric man was able to travel between settlements in England with pinpoint accuracy, thanks to a complex network of hilltop monuments, as each was built within eyeshot of the next.

These covered much of southern England and Wales and included now famous landmarks such as Stonehenge and The Mount. Brooks' research suggests that these prehistoric markings in the landscape were built on a  geometric grid of isosceles triangles that ‘point’ to the next site. Each triangle has two sides of the same length and ‘point’ to the next settlement. This should have provided a simple way for ancient Britons to navigate successfully from point A to B without the need for maps: anyone standing on the site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire could have navigated their way to Lanyon Quoit in Cornwall without a map.

"To create these triangles with such accuracy would have required a complex understanding of geometry. The sides of some of the triangles are over 100 miles across on each side and yet the distances are accurate to within 100 metres. You cannot do that by chance," said Brooks. He suggests the triangle navigation system may have been used for trading routes among the expanding population as well as by workers to create social paths back to their families while they were working on these new prehistoric monuments.

What do the Stonehenge experts think? Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology, told the Daily Mail: "The landscape of southern Britain was intensively settled and there are many earth works and archaeological finds. It is very easy to find patterns in the landscape, but it doesn't mean that they are real."

You could counter this by stating not everything needs to be 'bonne chance' and that Tom Brook's 'Stone Age Satnav Theory' is possible, but then where does the 'satellite' part come from? Well, Brooks does not rule out extraterrestrial help.

"So advanced, sophisticated and accurate is the geometrical surveying now discovered, that we must review fundamentally the perception of our Stone Age forebears as primitive, or conclude that they received some form of external guidance," says Brooks.

Yeah sure, and giant monkeys build the pyramids! I must note though, that if one ever shows me a 'real' alien, stating it's race has helped building Stonehenge and made that ancient Britons beat the Americans to the invention of GPS, I'll offer Mr. Brooks' my most sincere apologies. In the mean while, for other - deliberately - insane Stonehenge theories, have a look at this collection. If you choose to double-check Tom Brooks theory, try this impressive 3D animation of the Stonehenge landscape by Wessex Archaeology, or make your own calculations on Woodhenge and Avesbury using Google Earth.

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Ann Wuyts (follow me: e-mail or )

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Unique Iron Age Hoard goes on display at Ipswich Museum | Royal Artefacts - Including King Tut's Golden Trumpet - Returned to Egyptian Museum Cairo | SCA releases full list of treasures missing from the Cairo Museum

Ann 'Vint' Wuyts is looking after the Heritage Key community and avatar health & entertainment. She is slightly fascinated by everything to do with 3D technology and what's commonly defined as 'Web 2.0'. When she grows up, Ann - eventually - wants to be a mummy. Favourite game: Buzzword Bingo /…