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Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

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Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#31

Post by SilverBirch »

There's a different way of going about this. So the author uses various projections and evaluates whether the churches are aligned. But this is backwards. The churchs were selected because they lined up. And they lined up on a mercator projection. There's simply no way that the churches could line up on different projections (subject to certain conditions).

So, let's just look at the churches as they line up on the Mercator projection. If you google the churches one by one, you start to notice a pattern. They all predate the invention of the Mercator projection. You also notice, as someone else pointed out, there's a hell of a lot of Churches called St Micheals.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#32

Post by SilverBirch »

OnACoffeeBreak wrote: post #26

Matt Parker ("Stand up Maths" channel on YouTube) gave a very informative and entertaining lecture in 2010 titled "Clutching at Random Straws" [0], which, among other things, covered something similar. From the subtitle of the video: "Did aliens help prehistoric Britons find the ancient Woolworths civilisation?" The answer is "no". Given enough data points, you can find all sorts of patterns. 0: https://www.youtube.c…

I've got to assume that this is partly a Birthday Problem - that the probability of something unlikely being true grows rapidly as the population grows. Probability of 3 random churches lining up? Small, probability of 3 churches lining up when there are 100,000 churches in Europe? Basically 100%

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#34

Post by Archelaos »

logtempo wrote: post #13

Are they aligned because they are famous, or are they famous because they are aligned? Or are they aligned because if I pick 7 famous monuments aligned I can draw a line, look over my shoulder and say "ho look, if we draw a line it match!" From wikipedia, the list of St Michael churches: St. Michael's Church (disambiguation) Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel (es), San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato Mexico World Heritag…

This Wikipedia list has a lot more St. Michael's churches:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michael%27s_Church

Around 150 in Europe alone.

For the next hackaton: Write a programme to find all possible approximately straight lines between any 7 of these churches.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#35

Post by voidUpdate »

gruturo wrote: post #11
voidUpdate wrote: post #3

> Did the builders knew the earth was round? Yes. This has been known since ancient greek times, and Aristotle calculated the size reasonably well. Maybe not every labourer knew or cared but the architects almost certainly did

> Aristotle calculated the size reasonably well Eratosthenes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_circumference#Eratos... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_Ea...

Sure, Eratosthenes got it more accurately than Aristotle did, but Aristotle was only 5000 miles out, came before Eratosthenes (died about 50 years before Eratosthenes was born) and on the scale of a planet, with the technology he had available, I'd say thats reasonably good

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#36

Post by masswerk »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #20
tokai wrote: post #10

> Certainly 7 cathedrals are too many to be a coincidence With the number of cathedrals in Europe I don't really think this is supported.

There are not all cathedrals, actually. They are seven sacred sites dedicated to St Michael (of which there are many all over Europe). If they really were cathedrals, a coincidence would have been extraordinary.

If they were cathedrals, this may raise the question why those towns were perfectly aligned, in the first place.

Traditionally, it had been mostly exposed locations that were dedicated to St Michael, e.g., locations that had been alleged entrances to the underworld in antiquity. 6 out 7 of these locations are in costal areas, with corresponding erosion features. So this shouldn't be of much surprise, as the line crosses several costal regions – of which there are plenty.

(In other words, the line crosses 6 costal areas with a St Micheal nearby and 6 without. The second fact may be as remarkable as the first one.)

Edit: Challenge, can we identify a "St Michael's Serpent", approximating a sine wave?

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#37

Post by masswerk »

willis936 wrote: post #8

Cathedrals are the highest tier of vanity projects of one of the most powerful institutions in written history. It's little surprise that the makers knew the top three most import factors for real estate value: location, location, location. Are they pointing to anything though?

Cathedrals were erected by the townships and were indeed a major economic investment. They generally payed off well, giving raise to tourism (then known as pilgrimage) and elevating the status of the city, both with considerable effects on commerce. If you were a major town or city, or aspired to become one, you definitively wanted to build a cathedral. (And, as already pointed out by several other comments, none of these locations were cathedrals.)

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#38

Post by willis936 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #23
chippy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are all dedicated to the same saint, St. Michael.

Which isn't really all that special. In England alone, there are 816 churches named after St Michael. He's pretty popular. It'd be a lot more spectacular if they were all named after someone much more obscure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedications_in_the_Church_of_E...

Only ~30 are cathedrals, still more than a selection of 7.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Saint_Michael

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