http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/archaeoastronomy/ en-us Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:10:18 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2394234/posts Research at the University of Leicester sheds new light on Ancient GreeksNew research at the University of Leicester has identified scores of Sicilian temples built to face the rising Sun, shedding light on the practices of the Ancient Greeks. Dr Alun Salt, an astronomy technician from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Science at the University of Leicester, found that out of all the temples he surveyed in Sicily, all but three faced the rising sun. The findings have been published on line in the journal PLoS ONE. The results may imply that there is an 'astronomical fingerprint' for Greek settlers in... University of Leicester http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2394234/posts#comment Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:10:18 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2377642/posts Jim Krehbiel was up past midnight making a piece of art by layering maps and field notes onto photos he had taken of an ancient ritual site high on a cliff ledge in the desert Southwest. He looked at the image of the kiva and remembered how the ruins were nearly inaccessible. Krehbiel had to lower himself on a rope to reach them. Why, he wondered that night in the fall of 2007, would anyone build something so important in such a remote spot among the canyons and mesas? It was then that the chairman of Ohio Wesleyan University's art... THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2377642/posts#comment Tue, 3 Nov 2009 20:13:27 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2354625/posts > Researchers have dubbed the site "Bluehenge," after the color of the 27 Welsh stones that were laid to make up a path. The stones have disappeared, but the path of holes remains. > Associated Press http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2354625/posts#comment Sun, 4 Oct 2009 16:08:08 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2340382/posts It's considered to be one of the more recent innovations to help the hapless traveller. But the satnav system may not be as modern as we think. According to a new theory, prehistoric man navigated his way across England using a similar system based on stone circles and other markers. The complex network of stones, hill forts and earthworks allowed travellers to trek hundreds of miles with 'pinpoint accuracy' more than 5,000 years ago, amateur historian Tom Brooks says. The grid covered much of southern England and Wales and included landmarks such as Stonehenge and Silbury Hill, claims Mr Brooks,... The Daily Mail http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2340382/posts#comment Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:13:16 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2338638/posts ANCIENT Egyptian temples were aligned so precisely with astronomical events that people could set their political, economic and religious calendars by them. So finds a study of 650 temples, some dating back to 3000 BC. For example, New Year coincided with the moment that the winter-solstice sun hit the central sanctuary of the Karnak temple (pictured) in present-day Luxor, says archaeological astronomer Juan Belmonte of the Canaries Astrophysical Institute in Tenerife, Spain. Hieroglyphs on temple walls have hinted at the use of astronomy in temple architecture, including depictions of the "stretching of the cord" ceremony in which the pharaoh marked... New Scientist http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2338638/posts#comment Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:14:09 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2284740/posts From the sky, the Mound of the Cross at Paquime, a 14th-century ruin in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, looks like a compass rose -- the roundish emblem indicating the cardinal directions on a map. About 30 feet in diameter and molded from compacted earth and rock taken near the banks of the Casas Grandes River, the crisscross arms point to four circular platforms. They might as well be labeled N, S, E and W... George Johnson http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2284740/posts#comment Fri, 3 Jul 2009 12:09:44 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2270820/posts A qualified surveyor claims a picturesque village on the Essex/Suffolk border might boast the only proper stone circle outside the west of England. For generations the sarcen stones at Alphamstone near Sudbury have been at the centre of hot debate as to whether they were ever part of a stone circle. There are two stones marking the entrance to St Barnabas Church and a number of others further back near - and in - the church, but they form neither a circle nor part of a circle. But Paul Daw, a surveyor who has visited more than 300 of the... Evening Star (UK) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2270820/posts#comment Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:19:48 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2251543/posts In the new authoritative study of the growing discipline of archaeoastronomy, Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy: From Giza to Easter Island, Professor Guilio Magli asks, 'Was it an attempt to reproduce the sky on Earth? To bring down the power of the stars to where they could see it, worship it, and use it?' Magli examines the role of astronomy in antiquity and provides a clear, up-to-date survey of current thinking on the motives of the ancients for building fabulous and mysterious monuments all over our planet. He uses astronomy as a key to understanding our ancestors' way of thinking.... Science Centric http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2251543/posts#comment Fri, 15 May 2009 13:55:39 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2179409/posts The imposing temple in Rome, completed in AD 128, is one of the most impressive buildings that survives from antiquity. It consists of a cylindrical chamber topped by a domed roof with an oculus in the top which lets through a dramatic shaft of sunlight. It boasts a colonnaded courtyard at the front. When Robert Hannah of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, visited the Pantheon in 2005, researching for a book... he realised that the Pantheon may have been more than just a temple. During the six months of winter, the light of the noon sun traces... New Scientist http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2179409/posts#comment Fri, 6 Feb 2009 02:39:00 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2177615/posts An academic maverick is challenging conventional wisdom on Canada’s prehistory by claiming an archeological site in southern Alberta is really a vast, open-air sun temple with a precise 5,000-year-old calendar predating England’s Stonehenge and Egypt’s pyramids. Mainstream archeologists consider the rock-encircled cairn to be just another medicine wheel left behind by early aboriginals. But a new book by retired University of Alberta professor Gordon Freeman says it is in fact the centre of a 26-square-kilometre stone “lacework” that marks the changing seasons and the phases of the moon with greater accuracy than our current calendar. “Genius existed on the prairies... The Canadian Press http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2177615/posts#comment Tue, 3 Feb 2009 20:19:57 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2149829/posts we knew nothing of how Minoan people reckoned the days of the year and the flow of time. No advanced and prosperous society could manage its agriculture, foreign trade and ritual life without a calendar. And yet, till now, little was known except that the 4-year timing of Olympic Games (first recorded in 776 BCE) was based in a much older calendar that began each year at Winter Solstice. This mystery began to be solved in 1972, when American scholar Dr. Charles F. Herberger published The Thread of Ariadne and revealed the Minoan calendar hiding in plain sight -- in... Crete Gazette http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2149829/posts#comment Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:07:04 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2149000/posts In 1861 at Oshoro, southwestern Hokkaido, a party of herring fishermen, migrants from Honshu, were laying the foundation for a fishing port when they saw taking shape beneath their shovels a mysterious spectacle -- a broad circular arrangement of large rocks, strikingly symmetrical, evidently man-made. What could it be? An Ainu fortress? ...Oshoro today is part of the city of Otaru, on its western fringe, 20 km from the city center and 60 km west of Sapporo. The Late Jomon period (circa 2400-1000 B.C.) was an age of northward migration. The north was warming, and severe rainfall was ravaging the... Japan Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2149000/posts#comment Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:26:02 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2132700/posts Archaeological excavations have continued this summer within ‘The Heart of Neolithic Orkney’ World Heritage Site. The Ring of Brodgar, the third largest standing stone circle in Britain and the Ness of Brodgar, its accompanying settlement site, have been the focus of an investigation funded by Historic Scotland and Orkney Island Council under the direction of Dr Jane Downes (Orkney College UHI) and Dr Colin Richards (Manchester University). This season saw the anticipated re-opening of Professor Colin Renfrew’s 1973 trenches at the Ring of Brodgar, the impressive monument which is thought to be 4 to 4,500 years old although the date... 24 Hour Museum http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2132700/posts#comment Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:16:50 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2103225/posts Stonehenge was used as a cremation cemetry throughout its history, according to new evidence that divides archaeologists over whether England's most famous ancient monument was about celebrating life or death... The latest evidence is from a team of archaeologists from a number of British universities who have been carrying out excavations over the past five summers... The report said: "We propose that very early in Stonehenge's history, 56 Welsh bluestones stood in a ring 285 feet 6 inches across. This has sweeping implications for our understanding of Stonehenge." The second significant finding was from radiocarbon dating of human remains found... Telegraph http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2103225/posts#comment Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:21:44 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2063572/posts Discovered by Clonmany man Sean Devlin, the previously unrecorded structure appears to be an underground tunnel or souterrain. Mr Devlin revealed yesterday that he first discovered the underground chamber several years ago while landscaping his front garden, but didn't make much of a fuss about his amazing find at the time. The historic significance of the tunnel only became apparent recently after Mr Devlin showed it to amateur archaeologist friends... Souterrains are underground man-made drystone built structures roofed with large lintels, comprising of one or more chambers linked by tunnels called creepways. Their entrance is concealed at ground level. They... Derry Journal http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2063572/posts#comment Mon, 18 Aug 2008 05:10:44 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2059458/posts Archaeologists have discovered traces of a Bronze Age place of worship in Germany in what they say might be the country's answer to Stonehenge. Scientists from a university in Halle are excavating a roughly 4,000 year-old circular site in eastern Germany which contains graves that bear a strong resemblance to Stonehenge, a prehistoric stone circle of towering megaliths in southern Britain. "It is the first finding of this kind on the European mainland which we have been able to fully excavate and which shows a structure we have until now only seen in Britain," Andre Spatzier, head of the excavation... Reuters http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2059458/posts#comment Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:27:01 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2034346/posts <p>As the sun rose at 0458, a cheer went up from the brave crowds who had taken up their positions overnight at the stone circle on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.</p> <p>Clad in ponchos, black cloaks and makeshift waterproof jackets made from bin-bags, revellers gathered at the Heel stone....</p> DailyMail http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2034346/posts#comment Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:29:26 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2044236/posts Pearson said, "I think the key thing is that from the moment that Stonehenge is built -- this is very shortly after 3,000 B.C. -- they're putting in burials as well as the parts of the monument itself. And I think it's something that is going hand in hand with it." He referred to alternative theories, including Bournemouth University archaeologist Timothy Darvill's idea that Stonehenge was a place of healing, as in no way inconsistent with the site also serving as a cemetery. A place devoted to the ancestors naturally could have a variety of secondary uses, such as invoking... Columbus Dispatch http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2044236/posts#comment Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:01:31 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2039571/posts Digging up the past at ancient stone circle Date: 02 July 2008 By John Ross WORK will start next week to unearth the secrets of one of Europe's most important prehistoric sites. The Ring of Brodgar in Orkney, the third-largest stone circle in the British Isles and thought to date back to 3000-2000BC, is regarded by archaeologists as an outstanding example of Neolithic settlement and has become a popular tourist attraction in the islands. It is believed it was part of a massive ritual complex but little is known about the monument, including its exact age or purpose. It is... The Scotsman http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2039571/posts#comment Wed, 2 Jul 2008 03:41:02 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1986161/posts A Pembroke man was playing with Google Earth - an online digital map of the planet - when he came across something that seemed out of this world: an apparent meteorite crater in Pawtuckaway State Park in Nottingham. "I was just searching around on Google, looking at lakes, because I'm a sailor," said Stephen Dupuis, 52. "As I was panning down through the landscape, it kind of caught my eye." Dupuis, a multimedia artist, has been fascinated with astronomy and outer space since his father, a former engineer, built the heat shields used for the Apollo spacecraft in the 1960s.... Concord Monitor (NH) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1986161/posts#comment Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:12:40 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1947891/posts The 2,000-year-old site remains under temporary protection laid in 2003. Nine years ago, an array of American Indians, environmentalists, preservationists, New Age spiritualists, diviners, even Cub Scouts rose up to save the Miami Circle, a 2,000-year-old artifact that many embraced as America's own Stonehenge. But today, the Circle -- a series of loaf-shaped holes chiseled into the limestone bedrock at the mouth of the Miami River -- is interred beneath bags of sand and gravel, laid over the formation in 2003 to protect it from the elements. And though taxpayers shelled out $27.6 million to purchase the 38-foot Circle and... Orlando Sentinel http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1947891/posts#comment Thu, 3 Jan 2008 21:08:31 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1941208/posts A brief moment of wonder awaits a few lucky people who see the winter solstice sunrise in Newgrange, Co Meath, Ireland, reports Sophie Campbell. If you put your head on the floor of the burial chamber at Newgrange, Ireland's most famous passage tomb, rest your cheek on the soft grit and look back down the slightly wonky passage of upright stone slabs, you can see a wigwam of light at the end. This is the entrance, which faces south-east over the wide, shallow valley of the River Boyne and a ridge called Red Mountain. If you are lucky enough to... Daily Telegraph (U.K.) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1941208/posts#comment Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:32:41 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938844/posts Ancient stone circle found in Skåne Published: 9 Dec 07 10:57 CET Ancient remains including a 3,000 year-old stone circle and presumed place of sacrifice have been discovered near Vitemölla on Österlen in the far south of Sweden. The site extends over two hectares and is older and bigger than the region's celebrated Ale's Stones. The site, presumed to date from the bronze age, is reported to be probably the largest stone circle in the whole of northern Europe. The find was made by Bob G Lind, a private researcher and archeoastronomer, reports Kvällsposten. Lind has named the stone circle... The Local http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938844/posts#comment Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:18:42 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1891966/posts I found this really interesting. This guy is building his own Stonehenge with simple handmade tools. http://youtube.com/watch?v=lRRDzFROMx0 Youtube http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1891966/posts#comment Thu, 6 Sep 2007 14:27:18 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1858386/posts A Saudi archaeologist... claims the Dilmun civilisation marked the first day of the year by the summer solstice, which falls today and every year on June 21. The theory is based on a discovery made by Dammam Regional Museum archaeologist Nabiel Al Shaikh in 1996, while he was conducting an excavation with a British team of archaeologists. At the site, he found an ancient temple with an oddly positioned triangular corner room, which he claims was used as an astronomical device to measure the position of the sun. He believes that during the summer solstice the sun would set over... Gulf Daily News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1858386/posts#comment Fri, 29 Jun 2007 16:48:11 GMT