The Quarry
The Quarry Podcast delivers in-depth conversations on local news, culture, and the issues shaping our community. As the audio companion to thequarry.media, it brings thoughtful journalism and local voices straight to your ears.
The Quarry
First temple to Easter, first sky-God image, first direct equinox measure: new evidence at Le Déhus
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Le Déhus is a quiet, enigmatic place.
You have to duck to get through the low door into the burial chamber, and stooping feels like a small act of respect, forcing you to nod to the people who built it 6,000 years ago on a low hill in the north-east of the island
Inside it is cold and still, with only the pigeons cooing.
Switch on the lights and, on a capstone above the central chamber, a face looks back at you from the granite: Le Gardien du Tombeau, the guardian of the tomb.
Below it stands a mysterious single stone, and in daytime light floods in from the doorway, casting the stone's shadow across the floor.
It is here that a fascinating story unfolds.
It begins with a new look at hard evidence: geometry, and the movement of the sun and stars. Then the rest is a new interpretation, a hypothesis that aims to make sense of the stone positions and carvings.
Put together, it points to a site of real importance.
A place where the equinox was fixed as a stone calendar, and possibly the earliest direct measurement of earth time; where light and shadow mark the season we now call Easter; and where, carved into the roof, may be the oldest surviving image of a sky-father, the same iconography you can follow all the way through history to
Michelangelo's God reaching out to Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Martyn Dorey came to Le Déhus by chance, while writing a book on mathematics. Here he tells us what he has discovered.
At The Quarry's one year anniversary live event in the Cafe at St James he told us what he discovered.
Read the story in full and examine the modelling: www.thequarry.media/le-dehus-ancient-guernsey-temple-may-be-worlds-first-easter-monument-and-earliest-image-of-god/
We were also joined on stage by Ellen Groves, Gregory Harrison, and Jade Kershaw Martyn Dorey as we explored our cultural links with France, the opportunities they create and how they could be strengthened.
Local media is under pressure like never before.
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