What is the function of Stone Town?

Near the historic city of Salisbury in the southeast of England, there is a small village called Amsterbury. In the west of the village, there is a prehistoric building surrounded by many huge stone pillars. The stone pillars are arranged in a circle with a diameter of more than 70 meters. The tallest stone pillar 10 meter, with an average weight of 26 tons. Some stones are placed on two vertical pillars, which are called "stones hanging high in the sky". Now it is one of the tourist attractions in Britain.

Archaeologists have made it clear that this stone city was built in three periods. The first phase of the project was completed around 1900 BC. The second and third stages were completed around BC 1750 and BC 1650 respectively. At that time, the island where Britain was located was in the transitional stage from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age.

Then, why did residents engage in this huge project in the first place? This caused controversy among scientists. In the mid-1960s, astronomer Hawkins discovered an important fact through careful measurement and calculation of the Stone Town: there is a circle of stone pillars in the middle of the Stone Town, and there are many large and small stones on the periphery, many of which are straight lines connected in pairs, aiming at the direction of a celestial body at a certain moment. The celestial bodies here mainly refer to the sun and the moon. Hawkins calculated the orientation of all the straight lines connected by stones, and there were as many as 20,700 such straight lines. There are more than 20 thousand straight lines, one by one, which is obviously too much work. Hawkins entered them into the "IBM7090" computer and soon got exciting results. For example, there is a group of stones *** 14, and 24 lines in their connection point to the rising or setting direction of the sun and the moon during the solar terms such as summer solstice and winter solstice. For example, when sunlight or moonlight passes through a fan-shaped "stone gate" or "stone window" composed of stone pillars, it also marks a certain moment in the calendar. With the help of computer, Hawkins solved the mystery of Stone Town. It turns out that this stone town is a "stone astronomical calendar" used by ancient British residents to determine the 24 solar terms.

Hawkins made a new discovery while reading the book Ancient World History. This book was written by the ancient Greek historian Theodore Luce around 50 BC. In this book, England, far from the sea, is mentioned. The book says, "On this island, there is a magnificent temple of the sun." "Luna visits this island country every 19 years."

The temple of the sun mentioned in the book is this stone city. What does it mean that Luna visits every 19 years? He entered it into the computer again. The calculation results show that Stone Town can not only determine the seasons, but also calculate the dates of solar and lunar eclipses.