Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization

by Graham Hancock

For some reason, too, it had taken their fancy to place the Great Pyramid almost exactly on the 30th parallel at latitude 29° 58ʹ 51˝. This, as a former astronomer royal of Scotland once observed, was ‘a sensible defalcation from 30°’, but not necessarily in error: For if the original designer had wished that men should see with their body, rather than their mental eyes, the pole of the sky from the foot of the Great Pyramid, at an altitude before them of 30°, he would have had to take account of the refraction of the atmosphere; and that would have necessitated the building standing not at 30° but at 29° 58ʹ 22˝.16 Compared to the true position of 29° 58ʹ 51˝, this was an error of less than half an arc minute, suggesting once again that the surveying and geodetic skills brought to bear here must have been of the highest order.