How Was This Not Spotted? | The Long Man of Wilmington Discovery | Megalithomania

Hey, Megalithomaniacs. Here we are today at the Longman of Wilmington. You can see him up there on the hill. I'm here with Stuart Mason. He's a good friend of mine. He's also the author of the Longman of Wilmington Decoded. Now, some of you saw him at Megalithomania give a lecture about this. He also has a podcast you can listen to at the link below. And we're gonna get into it today because we're here on the autumn equinox to witness a remarkable phenomenon, which is just starting to happen. The shadow's starting to move across. And we're gonna see something spectacular. In fact, if you look carefully on the book cover, you'll see that this is what we're gonna see today. We're gonna see this remarkable shadow effect take place. We're gonna have Stuart explain not only what's gonna happen today on the equinox, but we're also gonna get an overview of what appears to be like an annual calendar that the shadows on the Longman represent, and also the context of the greater landscape here because there's much more going on here than just this particular site. Hi, I'm Stuart Mason, and I'm here to show you something remarkable that happens here at the Longman of Wilmington over the equinox period. In an hour or so, we're gonna see the shadow that's been forming on the right here bisect the Longman completely in half. And this happens at the spring equinox and the autumn equinox. So we're here today in the right weather conditions, and we've got a good shadow forming. And fingers crossed, we're gonna be able to see the shadow. We're gonna look at some of the interesting features above the Longman. You can see now a very long line. Now that's actually called the Giant's Causeway, and that's a footpath, and that's man-made, and that's very old, and that's what's starting to cause the shadow that we're seeing forming on the right here. And if we do look over to the right, we can see this massive excavation. This was previously called the Chalk Quarry, but it looks incredibly like a huge egg, a giant egg. And then below it, we see a platform that we're gonna have a look at in a bit more detail. This is a double-stepped platform. In the old images that we've got of this, it's brilliant chalk white. It's a brilliant chalk white pyramid, and it connects to this pathway that's also man-made here, which we feel may look a bit like a serpent, and this is the head of the serpent. And we can see over here, this is the body. There's some trees and bushes that obscure it now, but with the right conditions, like now, we can see over there, the shadow is forming on this particular footpath, which give it form and make it look a bit more like a sliding serpent. So we're gonna have a look at that later as well. The propulsion is one from the bottom to two up the side. So it's actually a double square, okay? So within that double square, there's lots of sacred geometrical propulsions that can be derived from that two-to-one propulsion. In fact, all measurement can come from the double square. That's another conversation. But the two poles, some people think that these could be surveyor's poles, and this could be a surveying motif where the two poles represent measurement and walking across the land and measuring the land. That's another potential for the poles. Or the 235 feet could actually be a reference to the 23.5 degree tilt of the earth, the pole of the earth or the earth's axis. Okay, so incredibly, it's not just one event that happens here. The long man can actually be read as if it were a clock. And if you know how to read the clock, then you can tell the time or you can tell where you are in earth's orbit around the sun. So for example, at the summer solstice, we discovered that the long man was illuminated all day from the first sunbeam over at the northeast here, the first sunbeam touches the long man, and then the last ray of sunset touches the long man. So all day he's illuminated. However, in the winter, wintertime, winter solstice, he's fully in dark all day. Not one ray of sunlight touches him. Yet at the equinox, which is equal day, equal night, this is the time of balance when we can have equal day, equal night, male, female, up, down, left, right. The dualities go on. But at this particular time, just in the afternoon at 4.44 p.m., a perfect bisection of the long man happens, cutting him clean in half, possibly symbolizing equal day and equal night. But incredibly, the same thing happens again in the morning as well, making a perfect mirror image when the sun is at a similar elevation in the sky. So the long man is part of a massive, broad landscape. This is not an individual feature. We know, for example, that on top of the long man, there is a long barrow, a round barrow, and a possible cursus connecting them. Now, if you sit on top of that long barrow, that long barrow is aligned to 51 degrees north, which is the exact position of the sunrise on the summer solstice, and exactly in the opposite direction, the sunset on the winter solstice. So on top of the long man, there's a long barrow aligned to the winter and summer solstice. And then if we go into the middle of the valley this way, there's a huge mound, massive, wider than Silbury Hill, bigger than Silbury Hill in distance, that's called burlow or barrow low, or the barrow of the lowland, okay? This barrow, if you're standing on what I believe is the observation point at winter solstice, if you're standing on top of it, then you'll see the sunrise over the long man through the barrows that are on top of the hill there, as if it was interconnected, like one interconnected web of calibration of time. You see? And then on the other side, if you go even one stage further at Berwick Church, there's another mound, which is in an alignment to the burlow mound and to the long man. So this landscape is completely interconnected. It's not just this as an isolated site by any means. It's almost as if the entire landscape was just one giant celestial clock. So just about two miles in that direction, we have the village of Alphastone. And this is also a very close site to the long man of Wilmington. And incredibly in Alphastone, we find the remnants of a supposed stone circle. And if we have a little walk around the village, we can actually find these stones embedded into the fabric of the village. There's one near the car park, which is one of the most beautiful stones I've ever found in Sussex. There's another one just underneath the pavement outside of B&B. And then there's more around by the church and outside the clergy house. And then actually in the mound of the church itself. So these stones are still scattered around within the fabric of the village of Alphastone. But for now, come for a little walk with me and we'll explore the long man in a bit more detail because he's got a few very interesting features that I want to share with you all. This is incredible as you walk up to him though. The scale and the proportion change. This is the second biggest human geoglyph on planet earth. Biggest in Europe. Only, the only one that's bigger is the giant of Atacama in Chile. There's a few feet bigger than our friend here, the long man. So that in itself says something about how unique this geoglyph, this chalk hill figure in sleepy old Sussex really is. And the pole symbolism is something that fascinates me because other researchers, and I'm thinking of Richard Cassaro, has identified that the staff holding a person is an ancient, ancient symbol that goes back a long, long way. It can be found in Sumeria, in Babylon, in Egypt. It can be found in Celtic. It can be found in the Norse. It can be found in the Indian. It can be found in African cultures all over the world. A figure holding two staffs or a snake and some other implement of magical quality. It's a universal figure. And we happen to have the biggest representation of one here, right here in Sussex. And this figure has always caused speculation and debate and re-dating and dating again. It's gone through the mill, but no one actually knows when it was built. But what we do know is it does interact with the sun and it does interact with the shadow. And if you know how to read it, you can tell the time and tell where you are in the year by observing the shadows. And that's something we've been doing down here for years now. So we're at the base now of the Longman and we're going to just have a little look around here. You can see this incredible figure that the perspectives changed incredibly. And he's now right upon us. And where I'm standing is actually in between the middle part of the Longman. And there is a famous lay line that Alfred Watkins wrote in his seminal work, The Old Straight Track. And that is the Longman lay line, which comes right through where I'm standing now. And if you can see in the distance, there's a church spire and the priory. We can just see the top of the priory, but you can see the top of the church. So that alignment goes through the church, the priory, the Longman, up onto the hill through a long barrow, through a barrow, and then right the way over into Friston Forest where it concludes. Now, this is a very interesting feature, okay? This is the double-stepped platform that we believe is the head of a giant serpent, okay? This is the head and the body of the serpent. You'll see winds over wind over hill. Now, why we think this was a serpent's head as well is because in the old etchings of this, this wasn't grass. This was brilliant chalk white. So there are etchings that you can find, old engravings that show you this as being white, okay? Now, I want to ask you the question, okay? You can see it for yourself. We're going to walk up there. You're going to see the scale of this. Where did all this debris come from for the serpent, the serpent's head? Where did all the material come from for this? Because as we'll see, this is huge, okay? We believe it came out of this, the giant egg. Now, this incredible feature here is a footpath going up and down. However, this is quite steep, and this is a more shallow incline. But look, it looks like a snake's tongue. It literally, whether this is natural or whether this has been done on purpose, I don't know, but it looks like a tongue. So we're going to, I'm going to walk up there. The young people can run up here, no problem, but us older folks, we take the easy path up. And then we come up to the top of this viewing platform, this perfectly flat viewing platform that gives us an incredible perspective over the Sussex Weald. The shadow is just getting close to it now. The shadow now is filmed from one shadow being cast from the giant's causeway above it. The egg shape, which I believe built the mound that I'm standing on now, is also, the shadow of that has joined this, and now it's going to start forming into a line, a straight line. And that straight line is very unusual to find anywhere on the round, curvy, wavy South Downs. But here it happens at the Equinox, and it happens around 4.44 p.m., which is incredible because in Mexico, at the same time, at the Pyramid of Korkul Clan in Chechnya, which I've been to and watched, there's a serpent in shadow that descends the pyramid and connects with a stone head at the bottom. It's a very famous archeoastronomical alignment. And that's happening at the same time as this is happening. So right now, in Mexico, or in the same time, this similar buildup is happening at this particular time in the afternoon. I don't know if there was something special about this time in the afternoon, but it's just a very interesting serpent connection. So this is the head. This is what we believe is the serpent head. So we've got this beautiful flat platform, and from here, we make observations on the imbol above the Longman. The sun pokes its head out at the zenith and gives you an incredible halo above the Longman. This is in the book. This is the viewing platform, the serpent's head. But if you continue in that direction, you meet a little trackway, a little path, and it winds its way around what people call Windover Hill. But if you read it in a different way, it's Windover Hill. So possibly this is the snake's head. That's the snake's body winding over the hill. So what we're gonna see today is a repeatable, for repeatable shadow phenomena that occurs, not only at the autumn equinox, but at the spring equinox as well. And it's incredibly accurate, like to the minute accurate. This has been absolutely amazing. We have had 100% success. We're right at the end now, where the last beams of the sun are interacting with the top of the Longman's head. And it has been another very successful observation at the Longman of Wilmington. And I've got all the alignments that I found in my book here. You can find this at thelongmanofwilmington.com if you wanna grab yourself a copy of that. If you've got any thoughts about the video, we've got the time-lapse there, we've got the drone footage. This is happening on the equinox, and this amazing effect happens. You know, it reaches a point of beautiful balance, day and night. If you've got any thoughts about that, or any other ideas, whack them in the comments to this video and come and see the Longman of Wilmington at the equinox. It's amazing. Thanks a lot, Stuart. No, thanks, Hugh. That was really cool. So I'm delighted to be here to get this chance and to have Megalithomania involved in Stuart's discovery. Obviously, you can check out the book, which I highly recommend, which I wrote the foreword for as well because I was so impressed by it. But also, we did a whole lengthy podcast on the Longman and on Stuart's remarkable discoveries in archaeoastronomy and his analysis of various places he's visited around the world. But this is really it. This is one of, to me, this is like the most important solstice and equinox-aligned site in Britain. It's way up there with Stonehenge, in my opinion. And it's got all these parallels with Carahan Tepe, which really get me as well, which we'll get into another time. But I want to thank the team. Come in, say hi, come in, jump into shot. Quickly, quickly. These are the guys, the masons and friends helping us out. So thanks for watching, everybody. Stay tuned, check out Stuart's book and website, and we'll see you next time.