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Aboriginal Sundial Pre-Dates Stonehenge
brindafella writes "Look out, Stonehenge, here come the Wurdi Youang rocks in the Australian state of Victoria. The semi-circle of stones has been examined by an astrophysicist from Australia's premier research group, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), who says this arrangement of rocks is a carefully aligned solar observatory that may be 10,000 years old. It would have been created by local Aborigines, the Wathaurong people, who have occupied the area for some 25,000 years."
It doesn't look like much from the picture. The only supporting statement in the article is:
its two points set in perfect alignment with the setting sun on a midsummer's day.
I'd like a little more supporting documentation before getting all excited about this.
So what. It's not like you can take either one of them with you. The real question is: which watch do chicks dig better!
After all, there's so much more sun there than in Wiltshire.
Imagine if watches were invented downunder.
Btw, this is the way you answer the "do toilets flush clockwise in Australia":
"Their flush direction depends entirely on how they were manufactured, but Sundials go anti-clockwise in Australia"
There are older stone circles in the UK than Stonehenge. The stone circles in Orkney predate Stonehenge for example, though admittedly not by as much as those claimed here.
Linky here
> But enough of this. Nothing more need be said
However, you felt it pertinent to add > 70 words in 5 sentences using about 10 punctuation marks and 2 apostrophes.
Thank goodness, you closed this one out so succinctly.
Is there an archeologist in the house? Couldn't I just dig up some old rocks, and arrange them in any shape that I liked? I'm just wondering if this is the equivalent of "crop circles" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circles in England?
Yikes! From the Wikipedia article:
In 2009, BBC News reported that Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, stated that Australian wallabies had been found creating crop circles in fields of poppies after consuming some of the opiate-laden crop and running in circles.
So, maybe Australian junkie wallabies constructed the stone structure?
What also puzzles me, is why cultures that create such structures, just kinda sorta die out? Like the Egyptians who built pyramids, whoever built Stonehenge, and the like?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It wouldn't stay uncovered for 10 000 years in a grassy field like that.
Try 75,000 years old, in Africa.
http://www.adamscalendar.com/pages/michael-tellinger.php
Well, the guy might be a bit of a loon. Apparently he believes in little green men in flying saucers too, but the stone circle is apparently real.
What's that you say?
Then that's not science, it's a bullshit claim by one guy who for all we know throw down some rocks in his back yard and took a picture of them. [citation needed]
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If anybody is interested there is a spot in Lysterfield Lake Park which seems to have been used for aboriginal ceremonies of some sort. The first time I found it they had firewood stacked up and wood for a little shelter. There were strange little piles of stones. Its on bare stone right at the top of a hill and quite close to the Boys Farm track. Since I was first there it has been cleared out by a fire. One time at that location a really big kangaroo came out of the bush at me, hopped past and disappeared. Obviously felt that it owned the place and I didn't.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It's famous, but it's hardly a yardstick for antiquity.
Newgrange in Ireland is older than Stonehenge in England and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.
But 10,000 years old? The Aborigines seem to have them all well and truly beaten.
Visit the island of Gozo, near Malta, and prepare to have your credulity stretched beyond breaking point.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It is pissing it down from dark clouds this very moment, which admittedly is a change from snow and hail, and all I can say is, you insensitive clod.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The article says this is also called the Mount Rothwell site. There is also an odd similarity with the appearance of the ground and rocks with those in New Mexico. Is anyone seeing the connection? Could I be on to something?
This is nothing special or new - there are loads of stone circles and other landscape features which pre-date stonehenge and are astronomically aligned. Stonehenge isn't even the best stone circle in the area.
If you want to get up close to the stones and see a proper ancient landscape then head up to Avebury instead.
You have the village inside the huge circle, the other circles, the avenues, Silbury Hill, the Kennet Long Barrows, The Sanctuary.
All together Avebury is a much better AND cheaper stone circle complex to visit than stonehenge.
Just calculate at which point in the past the rocks were in closest alignment with the sun.
You know that the sky isn't static, right?
Why does that number get thrown around a lot? It's nice and round I suppose. If you're trying not to offend fundamentalists you'd really want to go with 6,000 years ago so is 10,000 a compromise of some sort?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
The two web-articles give no clue how they arrived at the 10,000 year bp date. Has the structure been radiometrically dated in some way? Or is it just a wild guess?
As others already commented, even in Europe there are megalith sites with possible sun/moon allignments that are older than Stonehenge, b.t.w.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
It's not even really a sundial, as it doesn't actually tell the time. Not the least because it's facing West instead of South. So, you know, it would require a Sun that moves from North to South or viceversa instead of East to West, to tell you the hour.
What it is argued that it does is basically track the two extreme points where the sun sets, and the middle of that interval.
It's actually something pretty trivial to do. All you need is about a year and some movable stone. Each evening you stand in the designated spot and see if the sun sets a little to the left or to the right of where you left the marker point yesterday, and yell to some other guys to move it a little if so.
Think of it as the non-computer equivalent of, basically
if (x xMax) xMax = x;
If you have two stones that represent the xMin and xMax and move accordingly over a year, you end up with exactly the two ends of the interval marked. If you want to be sure, you repeat it over a couple more years.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I thought standing stones were primarily of use to agrarian societies; for planning when to plant seasonal crops and such. Probably the most impressive thing about indigenous Australian technology is the woomera, a rigid sling for hurling spears. Given that European explorers (Cook's crew) didn't find evidence of cultivation,it's hardly likely they were spearing maize. My personal (uninformed) opinion is that it was likely a technological leap that didn't quite take off. Clever scientist types of the day might have wanted to figure out a bit more about how those points of light up there moved around, and why they seem to repeat their patterns. They probably suffered death by woomera, setting their culture back a few thousand years until we could show up, invent the goon cask, and ruin it forever. If they'd made a calendar, then they might have made writing, started recording history as more than campfire stories. What Dirk Hartog found on the West coast, and what James Cook found on the East might have been very different.
*prepares to be modded negatively for the goon comment, to the exclusion of all other points*
I used to be all impressed with ancient astronomy stories, things like being able to predict where the sun would be on a given day. I read all the Von Daneken books when I was a kid. Then one day it occurred to me that anyone with a stick and the ability to stick it in the ground could also predict where the sun was going to rise exactly 1 year in the future. Solar observatories are just a series of sticks stuck in the ground.
TBH I don't understand what's so incredible. I mean, it's interesting as history information, but it's not like it's some great knowledge. Humans 10,000 years ago were already the modern humans, and probably just as smart as most people here.
As I was saying in another post, there is a very simple way of marking where the sun sets for the solstices, because they're the extreme points left and right. Just moving a stone each evening until you found the rightmost point the sun sets, and a different stone for leftmost, will get you those two points pretty well. The third point is simply the middle of the segment, and something that you can measure even with your feet.
The whole thing is perfectly within the range of things human could figure out 10,000 or even 100,000 years ago.
They don't even have to understand such things as solstice or equinox. Pretty much you just need someone to figure out "hey, didn't the sun set behind the other bush some time ago?" And from there, if you're bored and have a year or two to look where it sets, you can mark pretty well how far north and how far south can the sun set.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"What also puzzles me, is why cultures that create such structures, just kinda sorta die out? Like the Egyptians who built pyramids, whoever built Stonehenge, and the like?"
Every culture (well, there might be one or two exceptions, I don't know), at least most, die out once enough time passes, for a variety of reasons.
Look at the Egyptians first the Greeks conquered them, and started intermarrying with them and influencing/changing their cultures, then the Romans, then eventually, the Arab Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula invaded and conquered them.
Ethnic and Cultural intermixing is the natural path of all societies, sooner or later. Eventually that mixing happens to such a degree that we say that a new people have emerged - but they still carry on the genetic and cultural legacies of the peope's that they descended from. The ethnicities/cultures that are most 'pure' at this point, I believe, are mostly the ones that due to geography, were the most isolated for the longest periods of time.
Stonehenge is newfangeles stuff. It's only about some 5000 years old. Actually old stuff are things
like Goebli Tepe: http://knol.google.com/k/suresh-emre/g%C3%B6bekli-tepe-first-temple-11500-years/35vsnxisjn2mw/320
This semicircle of rocks would be far more interesting / culturally significant if there as an actual reason to see it as such. Stonehenge (and the other henges known to exist) were typically significant, large-scale endeavors that were years in the making. According to the linked articles, this is a few waist high rocks with some smaller, relatively easy to move outliers. I'm not disputing that it may be a sundial but I'd like to know more about the culture of the tribe(s) that've lived there and whether any bits of lore have been passed down through myth/legend. Assuming the find is validated, it points to how silly our understanding of "firsts" is. I suspect that if we could look backwards clearly, we'd see that discoveries like this were made and remade over and over during prerecorded history. When you consider how much time has passed and how great a part war, climate change, and prevailing ecological conditions may have played, it's small wonder that so few have survived.
I could see an agrarian society using solstices & equinoxes to plan growing & harvesting times; but what usefulness would seasonal calender information have to a hunter/gatherer society?
Technologically that's not really the case. I think that may be the cause of this perception.
HAND.
Its location is a closely guarded secret.
Dear Anonymous,
Who cares about government scandals. We wanna see this place! I expect gps coordinates within the week.
Love, someone who is definitely not your leader or anything...
So nice of you to come over, Mr FBI investigator...
If the research is correct then it should not come as a surprise. The Aboriginal tribes have shown an amazing awareness of their natural surroundings. Good on em!