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THE builders of Britain’s ancient stone circles such as Stonehenge used Pythagoras’s theorem 2,000 years before the Greek philosopher was born, experts have claimed.

A new book, Megalith, has re-examined the geometry of Neolithic monuments and concluded they were constructed by sophisticated astronomers who understood lunar, solar and eclipse cycles and built huge stone calendars using complex geometry.

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One contributor, Robin Heath, a megalithic expert, has even claimed that a great Pythagorean triangle in the British landscape links Stonehenge, the site from which the Preseli bluestones were cut in Wales, and Lundy Island, an important prehistoric site.

Pythagoras’s discovery — that the sum of the areas of two squares on the sides of two triangles will add up to the area of a square on the hypotenuse — has been used for millennia to help builders attain perfect right-angles.

Photo by GEOFF CADDICK/AFP/Getty Images

The book, published today to coincide with the summer solstice, shows how within one of Stonehenge’s earliest incarnations, dating from 2,750BC, there lies a rectangle of four sarsen stones which, when split in half diagonally forms a perfect Pythagorean 5:12:13 triangle. The eight lines that radiate from the rectangle and triangles align perfectly to important dates in the Neolithic calendar, such as the summer and winter solstices and spring and autumn equinoxes. They also mark Imbolc, the ancient date for the beginning of spring on Feb 1, Beltane, or May Day, Lammas, the start of the wheat harvest and Samhain (Oct 31) when cattle were brought down from summer pastures and slaughtered.