Posted on 02/09/2015 10:12:51 AM PST by Theoria
Among the mysteries of how ancient people created structures to mark the solstice and equinox with astonishing accuracy, this one is central: How did they determine the dates of those astronomical events?
Houstonian Gordon Houston, who is pursuing a doctorate on this riddle, says he believes he has figured out the answer for centuries-old glyphs known as the Pictographs of Paint Rock, Texas.
Found on a private ranch near San Angelo in northern Concho County, these approximately 1,500 pictographs on a limestone cliff include about a dozen that "had a solar interaction," Houston said. "Some were incredible."
Houston will talk about his findings at the Houston Archeological Society's next meeting, 7 p.m. Feb. 12 at M.D. Anderson Hall at the Umiversity of St. Thomas. The meeting is free and open to the public.
Perhaps the most striking of these dozen pictographs is a red circular design painted on the cliff about 20 feet above the ground. At exactly noon on the day of the winter solstice -- the shortest day of the year and the traditional beginning of the winter season -- there's a dagger of light hitting the exact center of the glyph as the sun shines through spaces between layers of broken limestone.
Whoever put that glyph in the right spot demonstrated a level of accuracy exceeding even more famous monuments, such as Stonehenge in England, said Houston, who holds a master's degree in astronomy and is the Schaefer Observatory director at Blinn College's Schulenburg campus.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Do you think these are some kind of hoax?
These days I suspect EVERYTHING is a hoax.
Even small earth tremors can cause rock to shift - not necessarily so much as to cause a rock slide, but certainly enough to throw off the accuracy of a solar calendar painting.
It is remarkably precise - the shape and location of the “arrow” of light relative to the painting is perfect.
That means that in the time since the figure was painted, NO change, no matter how minute, has occurred to the location or shape of:
1) the rock face where the figure is painted, and
2) the rock formation/hole-in-the-rock/space-between-rocks which cause the shaft of sunlight to appear in the painted area at exactly the same time every year.
It was the Romans.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/665767/posts
Ancient Romans In Texas?
Science Frontiers online ^ | Nov-Dec 1993 | William Corliss
They didn’t have their noses planted in their iphones 24/7.
Been there, saw that. Stood out in the field and looked at the cliff for about 45 minutes with the owner. Kinda cool.
Well I don’t think CC was the first guy here by a long shot. Oh and BTW, who mined all that copper from the upper part of Minnesota and Michigan. Like maybe 1500 years ago or longer.
That there is no real art, or science, or mathematics behind any of it, just stupid grafitti.
I can even imagine their elders complaining about how those young'uns are spoiling nature with their grafitti.
Not to mention that there is plenty of evidence that modern humans have been caught making up stories about what all this stuff is/means.
That was not necessarily the graffiti artists I was pointing to, but I have too often wondered about some or most pictographs. Either the pictograph writers were not really trying to leave a message, but were only trying to rough sketch what they were doing..... sounds a lot like graffiti don’t it.
Is it just me, or does that first pictoglyph (the one that has the “dagger of light”) look like there’s a Spanish influence to the artwork? Looks quite European to me, like a rosette on a shield.
There is a “box” canyon on some private property on th eborder there near Ruidoso, Texas that has a huge open face cave (if that) you can hike up and into, to view similar pictograms...
I recall many trips to that area with my Dad, between Christmas and New Years...
Texas certainly Haas its share of interesting off the trail stuff to go check out... You just gotta go look...
Indeed. We Americans aren't the first people to have called this place home.
I wholeheartedly agree...
And those folks Havre an extremely interesting story to tell... One we can learn from...
Too bad there are stupid people teaching the next generations of mushminds, full of pop culture above real cultures and experienced in our history...
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