MacKie was educated at Whitgift School, Croydon between 1946 and 1954 and later graduated with a degree in Archeology & Anthropology from St John's College, Cambridge, in 1959, and had a PhD from the University of Glasgow where he was an honorary research fellow.
Is it fair, for example, to maintain that these achievements are improbable, even impossible, because we 'know' that the societies of the time were too primitive to do such things?
Is an alternative model of Neolithic society feasible which is equally well grounded in the archaeological evidence but which can accommodate these new ideas?
MacKie also conjectured that personal motivation might play a part in determining an archaeologist's attitudes to orthodox and unorthodox ideas.
[9] The hope – not realized so far – then was that by bringing these issues into the open, a more informed debate about British archaeoastronomy for example might result.
Further interests included cultural diffusionism, 18th-century architecture of Scotland, archaeological methodology and museum design.
He also conducted surveys into the level of skill in astronomy and geometry existed in neolithic Britain.
[16] He noticed that two squares of a side equal to the Egyptian remen generates a root five diagonal that is very close to the megalithic yard.