Navel of the World Delphi, announced as the "navel" of the world, meaning a sublime place of measurement as "origin," found that the original (land mass slipping, tectonic movement, et al) longitude would be 24.3433333 degrees to the east of the longitude of Stonehenge. Stonehenge, in 2900 B.C. would have been at 1.833464945 degrees west of the - then, and true - prime meridian. So Delphi would have been at longitude 22.50054417 East (22 deg 30 min 35 sec.52) and on latitude North 38.50054418 (38 deg 30 min 01 sec.95) The truly GREAT key here being that at this site, in 1 hour, 37 minutes 22 seconds, a Foucault pendulum would precess, around the circle, 15.15426224 degrees. Since "e" (Euler's Constant - the base of natural logarithms) is 2.718281828 and the "e" of this number is 15.15426224, this shows that the utmost in mathematical wisdom was coupled with the very fine knowledge of dynamics, such as the pendulum, in its precession as the earth turned, to show what the value of the earth's motion was at that time and gave the "read-out" of the value in the rate of the pendulum precession. Considering "gravity" and such like, latitude and longitude, and the location of the earth in its annual orbit, (not to say the least about the location of the moon, in the space around the earth) ---- all that would be reflected in the precession of the Foucault pendulum at Delphi AT THAT TIME! There are other values derived from the latitude and longitude of the (then) location of the "oracle." So you see, the "oracle" gave the very fine demonstration of just WHAT the earth was DOING at that location. Too, the number of the value of "e" as 2.718281828 when squared, as 7.38905+ shows an adjustment that ought always be given to the perception of "time" because we do NOT see the factor of the earth's deviation of any "straight line" motion in its cosmic spatial travel. All is moving, shifting, gaining and because we are on the earth, we do not register this very important rate of change. It is, however, shown in the acceleration of the falling weight, which gives the value of the rate of change in our motional "velocity" in the cosmos. Bernard Pietsch www.sonic.net/bernard/ Copyright © 1999 - 2005 Bernard Pietsch. All rights reserved. Back to the Château