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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.
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
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 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?
Answer: All cultures die out over this kind of time span. But for some reason, we just don't pay any attention to the ones that leave no evidence of ever having existed...
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]
In other words an outcrop circle.
Can't be that hard to find. Its right beside the road from Geelong to Bacchus Marsh.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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
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.
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.
> Could I be on to something?
Rozwell.. Rothwell..
By golly, yes!
It seems that aliens are naming the places where they land -- and some of them lisp!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
How they dated it, indeed is the big question. These kind of things are notoriously difficult to date. If there is charcoal, bone or pottery in the pits used to socket the stones, you can date it (and then you still assume the materials in the pit date to the time of digging the pit, which is a dangerous assumption), but otherwise it is almost impossible. 26Al or 10Be dating of the stones itself will bring you no further either, as the surface residence of these stones can significantly predate their incorporation of them into this structure.
From the picture, this structure seems to be made up of rather small stones put on the surface and I doubt they were socketed in pits for that reason. So I would be very weary of that 10,000 year date unless it becomes clear how they arrived at that date.
IAAA (I Am An Archaeologist), by the way.
re the "dying out" of cultures, the commenters before me already answered that. Culture is not static, it changes over time, by definition. So does who is in power (and able to launch large community efforts like building pyramids). Prehistoric cultures without big building projects are gone too.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
The pagans who built Stonehenge gradually grew thinner in numbers as other religions (Christianity) started to sweep through England. Eventually Paganism was outlawed and more or less died off (except for the rumored underground pagan cults)
Sorry, that doesn't wash. Stonehenge is between two-and-a-half and three millenia older than mainstream Christianity in Great Britain, yet after Stonehenge we don't see monumental architecture on such a scale anywhere. It is not proven that the Druids built Stonehenge, but even if they did, there is a big difference between "religion" and "civilisation".
Consider that up until about 100 years ago, most of Europe was institutionally Christian. The Roman Empire was Christian in the latter half of its duration. If religion == civilisation, then our grandfathers were Romans, and we are a different civilisation from our grandparents. And on the other hand, Rome under Constantine was a different "civilisation" than before his ascendancy. Yet the trappings of Roman civilisation -- art, architecture, commerce, etc -- continued.
It's quite possible that henge technology simply became obsolete as artisans found ways to make smaller sundials out of wood. Or maybe they were happy enough with the stone circles they had that they stopped building them and forgot how to make them.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
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.
If one had found a stone circle that you thought was Really Old and deserved investigating, I could see the merits of trying to minimize the location's publicity. The less people that walk in and take stones, or move them, or otherwise mess with it, the better. (That doesn't mean it can't be an outcrop circle, as Chrisq said. ;))