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Mathematician and essayist James Warren looks at the Cornish megalithic stone circle Boscawen-Ûn, nineteen granite or quartz menhirs arranged in a rough oval, with a single sloping stone in their midst. The monument was possibly laid-out in Chalcolithic times for unknown reasons.
James Warren measures the layout from an aerial photograph. The plan is not circular and the author demonstrates that the whole array and indeed any choice of three or more component stones cannot mathematically lie on an arc of a circle. The author shows that the stone circuit is plausibly comprised of four elliptical arcs and that these were likely generated by dragging a taut loop of rope or chain around four posts driven at the corners of a square.
About the author
James R Warren was born in Cumberland, England in 1952.Educated at Ware Secondary Modern School and the Aberdeen College of Commerce, Dr Warren is a graduate of Manchester, Strathclyde and Birmingham City Universities and was for twenty years a Senior Lecturer in Information Technology and Quantitative Methods.James Warren is a former Fellow of the Geological Society of London, and a past Member of The Institution of Water Engineers and Scientists, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery.James lives with his wife Jana in Bloxwich, England.
