Astro-Archæology & Archæoastronomy
News Archive 2010
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Marine Archæology News Archive
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With satellite imagery increasingly being used for archaeological investigations The Morien Institute has decided to report
Likewise, many ancient legends that have previously been dismissed as purely "mythological" are now proving to be based on fact, and so Alongside these will be material about ancient astrological beliefs which were inextricably inter-linked with archaic astronomical science
"Spring Equinox at Mnajdra Temples – Heritage Malta"
March 06, 2009, Gozo News, Malta
Spring Equinox at Mnajdra Temples
Sunrise on the first day of each season underlines the relationship between the temples and celestial bodies. Although it is not known for certain whether these orientations were intentional, they are so systematic that this is very probable. In prehistoric agricultural societies, observation of the motion of the stars, the moon and sun could have been related to the changing seasons and times of planting and harvesting crops. In a bid to provide an enhanced experience to visitors, only 40 visitors will be allowed during the event.." [Full Story]
"Syria's Stonehenge: Neolithic stone circles, alignments
March 02, 2009, The Independent, UK
One of the corbelled stone structures found in the Syrian desert. Archaeologists suspect that its an ancient stone tomb. In the front of it are the remains of a stone circle
Dr. Mason explains that he 'went for a walk' into the eastern perimeter of the site - an area that hasn’t been explored by archaeologists. What he discovered is an ancient landscape of stone circles, stone alignments and what appear to be corbelled roof tombs. From stone tools found at the site, it’s likely that the features date to some point in the Middle East’s Neolithic Period – a broad stretch of time between roughly 8500 BC – 4300 BC. It is thought that in Western Europe megalithic construction involving the use of stone only dates back as far as ca. 4500 BC. This means that the Syrian site could well be older than anything seen in Europe. At a recent colloquium in Toronto, Canada, Mason described his shock at discovering the apparent tombs, stone circles and stone alignments: 'I was standing up there thinking, oh dear me, I’ve wandered onto Salisbury Plain'." [Full Story]
"Sunrise in the Abu Simbel sanctuary"
February 23, 2009, Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt
Light falls on the faces of statues At exactly 6:20 AM, the first beams of light fall on the sanctuary. The Abu Simbel Sun Festival occurs biannually, on 22 October and 22 February, dates on which the sun shines directly into the temple's sanctuary. Many people wait to go inside the sanctuary and two troupes perform music and dance for about an hour until officials allow the visitors to enter. Some say the sun shines in this way twice per year to commemorate the coronation and birthday of Ramses, which would indicate that the temple was built to honor the pharaoh on these days specifically." [Full Story]
"A Tree Carving in California: Ancient Astronomers?"
February 09, 2010, Time Magazine, USA
The counterclockwise rotation of stars around Polaris as viewed from Painted Located in a shady grove atop the Santa Lucia Mountains in San Luis Obispo County, the centuries-old gnarled oak had the image of a six-legged, lizard-like being meticulously scrawled into its trunk, the nearly three-foot-tall beast topped with a rectangular crown and two large spheres. 'I was really the first one to come across it who understood that it was a Chumash motif', says Saint Onge, referring to the native people who painted similar designs on rock formations from San Luis Obispo south through Santa Barbara and into Malibu. Amazingly, Saint Onge had just identified the West Coast's only known Native American arborglyph, one long hidden behind private property signs. But the discoveries didn't stop there. After spending more time at the site, Saint Onge realized that the carved crown and its relation to one of the spheres was strikingly similar to the way the constellation Ursa Major — which includes the Big Dipper — related to the position of Polaris, the North Star." [Full Story]
"Amazon revolution? Researchers unearth lost cities"
February 01, 2010, CTV News, Canada Based on a true story, the movie stars Brad Pitt as Percy Fawcett, a world-famous British explorer who disappeared in 1925, during an expedition to find the mythical city of El Dorado, which Fawcett codenamed 'Z' to keep his plans secret.
Some of the 260 ancient earthworks located in the Amazon basin by archeologist Denise Schaan and her colleagues, which are challenging traditional assumptions about the region's history
The premise of the movie, and its name, are taken from a book by David Grann, who retraced Fawcett's route through the Amazon to investigate what happened to him. Along the way, Grann learned of a group of archeologists who are unearthing evidence that, just as Fawcett believed, there were indeed large communities thriving in the Brazilian rainforest before Europeans arrived. As the evidence mounts, it's challenging conventional wisdom of the Amazon as a place so inhospitable it could only support small, nomadic tribes. Instead it seems that large, complex societies may have tamed parts of the Amazon centuries before Spanish explorers sailed across the Atlantic. As that idea gains momentum, it's also gaining more attention beyond archaeological circles. 'There is now becoming, not just in the scientific and academic work but in the public world, a sense of the breadth of these discoveries', Grann told CTV.ca from New York. 'There is now becoming, not just in the scientific and academic work but in the public world, a sense of the breadth of these discoveries'. Archaeologists came across a series of 127 granite blocks on a Brazilian hilltop in 2006. Some of the blocks appear to be arranged astrologically, and may have been placed there as long as 2,000 years ago. The site has become know as the Stonehenge of the Amazon." [Full Story]
"Jebel Hafeet's riddle written in stones"
January 25, 2010, The National, United Arab Emirates Theories range from them being representions of the night sky created by ancient tribes to random piles created during oil prospecting in the area. From up close, they look like stones scattered about in a haphazard fashion.
Hasan al Naboodah, a history professor at UAE University, walks among But then, as one starts to climb the eastern slope of Jebel Hafeet and looks back, the perspective of distance reveals something strange. The stones are, in fact, grouped in shallow piles that form a mysterious mosaic across the flat plain fringing the mountain. Some are grouped together to form low, circular pyramids, positioned at almost equal distance from each other. Others are arranged into parallel rectangular shapes. In addition to stones, some of the piles have pieces of coral. 'There are many theories about these piles, some more mystical, and others less romantic', says Prof al Naboodah. 'Given their careful design and wide span of the terrain, they could have been aligned with the stars, as the stars were used by our ancestral tribes for geographical landmarks and for marking down the seasons.'. Websites are dedicated to the rocks, with some photographs on Google Earth adding to speculation about their mysterious origins." [Full Story]
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"A Sumerian Observation of the Kofels' Impact Event"
useful books from our
"A Little History of
"Stonehenge today is a battlefield, not only for police and festivalgoers at midsummer but also for rival camps of archaeologists, astronomers, and other researchers into the mysteries of prehistoric religion and science. Controversy flared up in 1963, when Gerald Hawkins made early use of the computer to identify Stonehenge as an observatory for the sun and moon and an instrument for predicting eclipses. Further studies of megalithic sites by Alexander Thom proved that many of them were also related to the seasonal positions of the heavenly bodies. The study of astro-archaeology has now expanded worldwide, bringing new revelations about the mystical sciences of antiquity. This "little history" summarizes the issues involved in astro-archaeology, and illustrates its principal sites and personalities. Included are recent findings of British scientists, whose records of anomalous levels of natural energies at stone circles are in accordance with the magical reputations of such places in local folklore."
NewBooks 2009
"Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy:
"This complete, authoritative study of the growing discipline of Archaeoastronomy examines the role of astronomy in antiquity. Professor Giulio Magli 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. 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? The connecting thread is astronomy: Giulio Magli uses astronomy as a key to understanding our ancestors’ way of thinking. It is a challenge he likes to call ‘predicting the past’ - archaeology as a science is able to make predictions, like any other science, and to check them. All of the astronomical achievements of the past are considered as a whole, in a comprehensive way that shows the depth and breadth of the thought behind them. In the past, the motives of the ancients – and particularly their scientific thought – have often been misconstrued, maligned or even dismissed. In an ironic, provocative style, Professor Magli shows the limitations of orthodox archaeology in the face of astronomically-based artefacts and tries to understand what led the ancients to construct magnificent buildings such as the city of Teotihuacan in the Mexico Valley, the Ceremonial Centre of Chaco Canyon in the USA, the Avebury stone circle in Great Britain or the Great Pyramids in Egypt. The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the reader is taken on an ideal ‘world tour’ of many wonderful and enigmatic places in almost every continent, in search of traces of astronomical knowledge and lore of the sky. In the second part, Giulio Magli uses the elements presented in the tour to show that the fundamental idea which led to the construction of the astronomically-related giant monuments was the foundation of power, a foundation which was exploited by ‘replicating’ the sky. A possible interpretive model then emerges that is founded on the relationship the ancients had with “nature”, in the sense of everything that surrounded them, the cosmos. The numerous monumental astronomically aligned structures of the past then become interpretable as acts of will, expressions of power on the part of those who held it; the will to replicate the heavenly plane here on earth and to build sacred landscapes."
"Canada's Stonehenge: Astounding Archaeological Discoveries in Canada, England, and Wales"
"The discovery of a 5000-year-old Sun Temple and an ancient "time machine" - Stone Age calendar - in Canada led scientist Gordon Freeman to ground-breaking discoveries in Stonehenge. During fieldwork and research from 1986 to 2006, Freeman found striking similarities between the surface geometry of the two sites. These similarities push back the boundaries of written history and have far-reaching implications for North American and European history. Passion and science blend in this remarkable, readable book, as Freeman takes us along on his patient and exciting discovery of a 5000-year-old Temple in the plains of Alberta. What he finds at the Majorville Medicine Wheel in turn informs his convincing account of Stonehenge archaeoastronomy"
Astro-Archaeology
"Under Ancient Skies:
"In all of the world's myths and religions we find traditions of a Great Flood. There are stories too of a Golden Age: the antediluvian paradise that it destroyed. Might these be real memories of the ancient world? And how can we analyse the subject scientifically? The key to unlock these ancient myths lies in astronomy. "Under Ancient Skies" will examine the astronomical evidence for an ancient cataclysm and in the process will explore a number of related anomalies in prehistory, including: Was there a single great flood in human prehistory, or have there been many? Could the workings of ancient calendars and the records of ancient eclipses give us clues about the Flood and the antediluvian world? Did the Celtic Druids use a calendar based on the orbit of Saturn; and is this the same antediluvian calendar as is described in Plato's myth of Atlantis? Do Hindu, Chinese and Mayan cosmology myths recall the years after the Flood when our world wobbled on its axis? Geologists have recently found the crater in Yucatan, where an asteroid impact destroyed the world of the dinosaurs. Scientists and astronomers have stopped dismissing the theory that a comet could have struck the Earth during prehistory - but any suggestion that a comet impact just a few thousand years ago might have caused the Biblical Flood, remains the last taboo. It is time for this barrier too to be washed away. If you read this book and you understand it then be warned - it may scare you!"
"East Asian Archaeoastronomy: Astronomical Observations of China, Japan and Korea"
"Historical astronomical records can play an important role in modern research, especially in the case of ancient Chinese observational data: sunspot and aurora records are important for the study of solar variability; solar and lunar eclipse records for the study of the Earth's rotation; records of Comet Hally for the study of orbital evolution; "guest star" records for the study of supernova remnants; planetary conjunction records for research in astronomical chronology. In the past, Western scientists have not been able to exploit these valuable data fully because the original records were difficult to gather and interpret, and complete English translations have not been available. East-Asian Archaeoastronomy is the first comprehensive translation into English of such historical records for modern research. The book also features an introduction to East Asian astronomy and offers guidance on how to use the records effectively. It will not only be a valuable research tool for astronomers but should also be of great interest to historians of China and Chinese science. Xu; Zhenoao Purple Mountin Observatory,Pankenier; W Department of Modern Foreign Language and Literatur,Yaotiao; Jiang Nanjing University , China." |
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