The aggregate alignment is geographic. The monument–settlement divergence is not.
Monument enrichment: 2.52× (Z = 6.74) · Settlement: anti-clustered (Z = −2.91) | Replicated across 8 independent databases | 0 of 10,000 random circles match
Explore the data ↓The overall site count is explained by habitable terrain. But within those corridors, only monumental architecture clusters on the line. Settlements — built by the same people, in the same places, during the same periods — do not.
An eighth database (Historic England) serves as a negative control — and returns exactly zero.
| Database | Sites | Monument Z | Settlement Z | Divergence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pleiades (pre-2000 BCE) | 34,470 | 8.55 | −1.43 | 9.98 |
| Megalithic Portal (non-European) | 61,913 | 11.03 | 4.29 | 6.74 |
| p3k14c (radiocarbon) | 36,693 | 8.09 | 1.91 | 6.18 |
| DARE (Roman atlas) | 29,760 | 0.50 | −5.65 | 6.15 |
| OSM (OpenStreetMap) | 145,000 | 4.21 | −2.14 | 6.35 |
| DARMC (Medieval/Roman) | 28,000 | 3.87 | −1.52 | 5.39 |
| Wikidata (crowdsourced) | 42,000 | 5.12 | −0.83 | 5.95 |
| Historic England (control) | 20,026 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 ✓ |
Seven databases, over 600,000 sites total. The monument–settlement divergence appears in every database that intersects the circle — and is absent from the one that doesn't.
The divergence is strongest between Egypt and Iran. In the New World, both types cluster equally — that's geographic coincidence.
Peru has 2,462 sites on the circle — but monuments and settlements cluster there at equal rates. The anomaly is specifically in the Egypt-to-Iran corridor, where only monumental architecture concentrates on the line.
Peak significance at 10–20 km (Z = 14.72 for monuments). Settlements never reach significance at any scale.
The single most important control. Pleiades Gazetteer, pre-2000 BCE sites only. Same geography, same rivers, same time period.
If the pattern were caused by geography — fertile rivers, trade routes, coastlines — settlements would cluster too. They don't. Only monumental architecture clusters on the line. Split-sample blinded validation confirms: mean Z = 9.45 across 100 random splits, minimum Z = 7.31.
Click a cluster to fly to it on the globe.
93% of the circumference has nothing near it. The honest reporting of misses is what makes the hits credible.
| Site | Distance | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Machu Picchu | 16 km | On the line |
| Preah Vihear | 31 km | On the line |
| Marajó Island | 42 km | On the line |
| Cusco | 49 km | On the line |
| Angkor Wat | 168 km | Near miss |
| Kuk Swamp | 164 km | Near miss |
| Rego Grande | 369 km | Miss |
| Baalbek | 421 km | Miss |
| Göbekli Tepe | 770 km | Miss |
| Stonehenge | 2,915 km | Miss |
| Teotihuacan | 4,559 km | Miss |
Define your own great circle pole and see how many sites it catches. This measures raw site proximity — the real test is whether monuments and settlements diverge, which requires the full statistical pipeline.
Monument-specific clustering in the Egypt-to-Iran corridor cannot be explained by geography, astronomy, geology, or database bias. The cause remains an open question.
We explicitly do not claim: (a) that a lost civilization coordinated site placement, (b) that ancient transoceanic contact occurred, or (c) that the circle has astronomical significance.