Description

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The main argument of the book may be summarized as the claim of an early (Neolithic) discovery of the precession of the equinoxes (usually attributed to Hipparchus, 2nd century BCE), and an associated very long-lived Megalithic civilization of "unsuspected sophistication" that was particularly preoccupied with astronomical observation. The knowledge of this civilization about precession, and the associated astrological ages, would have been encoded in mythology, typically in the form of a story relating to a millstone and a young protagonist-the "Hamlet's Mill" of the book's title, a reference to the kenning Aml a kvren recorded in the Old Icelandic Sk ldskaparm l. 1] The authors indeed claim that mythology is primarily to be interpreted as in terms of archaeoastronomy ("mythological language has exclusive reference to celestial phenomena"), and they mock alternative interpretations in terms of fertility or agriculture. 2]