In 1966 Sir Fred Hoyle examined the arguments in favour of an astronomical purpose for the holes and concluded that the 28 day lunar cycle could still have been indicated by moving a marker stone representing the moon anticlockwise by two holes every day, ending up with 56 holes in total. By moving another marker anticlockwise two holes every 13 days, which represented the Sun, an annual journey around the circle could also be made. Two further marker stones would also have had to be moved round 3 holes per year to represent the points where the moon (or rather its marker) crossed the Sun marker's path. Hoyle proved that this could have been used to produce a much more reliable method of predicting eclipses as whenever the moon and sun markers are directly opposite each other and the other two stones occupy those same opposing points, an eclipse can be guaranteed. This also has the additional benefit of not needing any standing stones to be present at the site.