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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
Sacred Sites and Megalithic Mysteries >> Solar alignments?
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Solar alignments? |
Feanor
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from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
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|  Posted 01-01-2013 at 08:11
Hi sem!
When I first dipped my toe into the Portal - long before I joined and well before I wrote a word (or two) - I had scanned most of what JackMe had to say here, and even commented on a couple of his send-ups.
One thing I noticed was that his posts were dated well before, and I wondered why there wasn't anything 'new'.
I am saddened to learn of his passing.
Obviously a man who had long studied Solar and Lunar movements at SH, I came to respect his dedication - even if I didn't agree with several of his suppositions.
I hark to my previous post where I submit that if it's intentional, it's got to be obvious. Especially if you're building with Big Honking Rocks.
If we build a circle of regularly spaced upright stones, cap it with nearly continuous lintels, put up a counter-intuitive, graduated set of large standing arches inside this ring, then we're bound to see a plethora of very convincing sun-shapes, shadows and lighting angles.
Now bang the stones around for 3,000 years and you'll inevitably wind up with pits, notches and scours.
So it's inevitable that we'll see all sorts of ambiguous things that are almost surely not intentional.
It aligned to the Solstices, defined the Lunar Standstills, illustrated the World's position in a 'Working Cosmos', and subjectively explained at least one concept of Death.
These concepts are pretty vast in breadth but are laid out simply, so that subsequent generations wouldn't require a slide-rule to figure them out.
As the Sun swings around the Complex during the day/month/year, it makes some interesting shadows throughout the interior and exterior - but they're just unavoidably cool shadows.
On the other hand, why are S-54 of the South Trilithon and S-55 of the Great Trilithon made of 'purple' Sarsen? Almost identical stone, why aren't they mated?
Why does S-16 look decidedly pregnant?
Why is S-11 so punky?
What's up with these tongue-and-grooved BlueStones?
These and many other yet-to-be answered demonstrable physical riddles would would take us a great deal farther in our understanding of Intent than trying to second-guess, for example, the 'meaning' of what may or may not be the sun-shape of a war-axe splashed upon the face of S-57 when there's a blue moon over your left shoulder on the last Thursday in August.
(Or something ...)
Obviously I ramble a little off-thread here, but we have enough unexplained physical evidence to keep us head-scratching for another millennia.
Let's bake the layer-cake with known ingredients, Then decide what color the frosting will be.
Neil
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tiompan
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 10:18
Basically agree Neil , stone circles with a minimal number of stones provide a huge potential for finding anything astronomically and to a lesser extent metrologically . Go to any stone circle at solstice , equinox or your birthday and you'll find something that appears salient if you look hard enough . It doesn't mean that anyone might agree or more importantly was obviously the intention of the builders . Rock art is sometimes found at some prehistoric monuments e.g. passage graves and stone circles , like astronomy it is an occasional feature , is not the purpose of the monument as it is absent from the majority of the monument type and not to be expected .
George
On 2013-01-01 08:11, Feanor wrote:
Hi sem!
When I first dipped my toe into the Portal - long before I joined and well before I wrote a word (or two) - I had scanned most of what JackMe had to say here, and even commented on a couple of his send-ups.
One thing I noticed was that his posts were dated well before, and I wondered why there wasn't anything 'new'.
I am saddened to learn of his passing.
Obviously a man who had long studied Solar and Lunar movements at SH, I came to respect his dedication - even if I didn't agree with several of his suppositions.
I hark to my previous post where I submit that if it's intentional, it's got to be obvious. Especially if you're building with Big Honking Rocks.
If we build a circle of regularly spaced upright stones, cap it with nearly continuous lintels, put up a counter-intuitive, graduated set of large standing arches inside this ring, then we're bound to see a plethora of very convincing sun-shapes, shadows and lighting angles.
Now bang the stones around for 3,000 years and you'll inevitably wind up with pits, notches and scours.
So it's inevitable that we'll see all sorts of ambiguous things that are almost surely not intentional.
It aligned to the Solstices, defined the Lunar Standstills, illustrated the World's position in a 'Working Cosmos', and subjectively explained at least one concept of Death.
These concepts are pretty vast in breadth but are laid out simply, so that subsequent generations wouldn't require a slide-rule to figure them out.
As the Sun swings around the Complex during the day/month/year, it makes some interesting shadows throughout the interior and exterior - but they're just unavoidably cool shadows.
On the other hand, why are S-54 of the South Trilithon and S-55 of the Great Trilithon made of 'purple' Sarsen? Almost identical stone, why aren't they mated?
Why does S-16 look decidedly pregnant?
Why is S-11 so punky?
What's up with these tongue-and-grooved BlueStones?
These and many other yet-to-be answered demonstrable physical riddles would would take us a great deal farther in our understanding of Intent than trying to second-guess, for example, the 'meaning' of what may or may not be the sun-shape of a war-axe splashed upon the face of S-57 when there's a blue moon over your left shoulder on the last Thursday in August.
(Or something ...)
Obviously I ramble a little off-thread here, but we have enough unexplained physical evidence to keep us head-scratching for another millennia.
Let's bake the layer-cake with known ingredients, Then decide what color the frosting will be.
Neil
[/quote]
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Runemage
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 10:22
hi Jonm,
Does his book give the impression that he's been inside it to measure up and answer the questions before they are asked? Might sound a pessimistic question but some ideas are put forward just waiting for critics to tell the author what is wrong. Has he gone through all the technical considerations in the book or is it a bit vague?
Newgrange is a small part of his book so there's not a great lot of info although he applies his experience of measurement and sighting from the two main sites to it.
His measurements for Majorville and Stonehenge are accurate, done over decades in all weathers, there are pages of 'nerd notes' (his term not mine) at the back and pages of his own photographs, all showing the alignments. His point is that the same clever thoughts that our ancestors had about keeping track of time resulted in incredibly accurate calendars placed on the land at the same Lat, 1,000 years and half a world apart. Both calendars use the same method of observation.
He's a chemical physicist, so his work is as you'd expect, accurately done and described, but he's also presented it in the book in a simple form for those of us not used to looking at piles of data. He also has many more technical notes etc. archived at the Uni of Alberta where he was for 35 years. He was born in 1930, retired a few years ago, this is an old page but gives a clue to his academic abilities. http://www.ualberta.ca/~gfreeman/
His latest book is the culmination of decades of work in this field.
Chimera, you mentioned Kazakhstan, it's the author's desire to see if a 'ground calendar' of the same type exists there. NB not necessarily with elevated stones like SH, just somewhere marked with stones that provide the same function as it will be on the same Lat.
Rune
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chimera
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 10:40
This may be if he faces the sun.
File:Ismaili somoni dushanbe.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ismaili_somoni_dushanbe.jpg
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jonm
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 11:40
Quote:
| He performed an interesting experiment there. In 1998, He noticed that the sky could not be seen down the passage from a standing position in the inner chamber. He put his head sideways on the floor at the base of the stone basin to see the tree-dotted horizon in the roofbox. |
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I don't remember seeing the tree-line when you do this, but it sounds right. You do get a few funny looks when you bend over to take a look up, especially if all the other people at the other side of the chamber are young women.
Quote:
| If I've interpreted his diagram on p188 correctly, it seems to have been a visual 'fact' that people could stand in the chamber and watch in the roofbox as the rising sun slows down, stops and then returns the way it came over a period from 19 Dec to 5 Jan. |
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It should look like an inverse version of the sunrise segment of the Building Research Establishment's plot of solar azimuth (the diagrams are done so that people can work out where sunlight will fall from windows into buildings): It's a shallow line gradually working its way up, then each line either side of solstice is offset down with a gradually increasing distances between each as the line trace descends.
However, there's an overlap between each line trace (because of the size of the box). It is possible that it could have been used to determine when solstice occurred, but like Stonehenge it's an extremely elaborate set up if that was the purpose. If you go with the solstice idea, perhaps something like it was used to tell people in Wiltshire when to celebrate solstice at Stonehenge? But the idea doesn't really explain the bowls, the cross-form, the drawings peculiar to the Boyne or anything about monuments such as Knowth or Tara.
Quote:
| Newgrange is a small part of his book so there's not a great lot of info although he applies his experience of measurement and sighting from the two main sites to it. |
|
Sounds like a theory which has them at a fairly advanced level of knowledge? Personally, I think that the whole Newgrange complex could be used for one fundamental purpose which is very much related to Stonehenge but in many ways cleverer.
We had a beautiful sunrise here this morning, the moon is up and it's strangely warm. I think we're in for a good day!
Happy new year!
Jon
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jonm
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 11:44
Love the picture Neil.
Quote:
| My feeling has always been: If you have to laboriously guess with smoke and mirrors about some obscure 'alignment' - something not clearly or obviously observable - then it may not be what was intended. |
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I'd go with that as well. There's an amazing amount of theories about alignments though
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jonm
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 11:46
Quote:
| He once told me he suspected Stonehenge had the "ability" to predict every possible sun and moon rise and set via various gaps, notches etc. Furthermore, he suspected that generations of "astronomer-priests" lived and learned there. He seemed to think of Stonehenge in the same way that the archaeos now think of the Ghiza Pyramids, ie a dedicated workforce and priesthood. |
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I haven't heard of Jack Sem. Did he ever say what he thought the reason was behind the "why?" of places such as Stonehenge?
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Runemage
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 13:17
Quote:
|
On 2013-01-01 11:40, jonm wrote:
Quote:
| He performed an interesting experiment there. In 1998, He noticed that the sky could not be seen down the passage from a standing position in the inner chamber. He put his head sideways on the floor at the base of the stone basin to see the tree-dotted horizon in the roofbox. |
|
I don't remember seeing the tree-line when you do this, but it sounds right. You do get a few funny looks when you bend over to take a look up, especially if all the other people at the other side of the chamber are young women.
...
LOL Jon!
...
Quote:
| If I've interpreted his diagram on p188 correctly, it seems to have been a visual 'fact' that people could stand in the chamber and watch in the roofbox as the rising sun slows down, stops and then returns the way it came over a period from 19 Dec to 5 Jan. |
|
It should look like an inverse version of the sunrise segment of the Building Research Establishment's plot of solar azimuth (the diagrams are done so that people can work out where sunlight will fall from windows into buildings): It's a shallow line gradually working its way up, then each line either side of solstice is offset down with a gradually increasing distances between each as the line trace descends.
However, there's an overlap between each line trace (because of the size of the box). It is possible that it could have been used to determine when solstice occurred, but like Stonehenge it's an extremely elaborate set up if that was the purpose. If you go with the solstice idea, perhaps something like it was used to tell people in Wiltshire when to celebrate solstice at Stonehenge? But the idea doesn't really explain the bowls, the cross-form, the drawings peculiar to the Boyne or anything about monuments such as Knowth or Tara.
...
Absolutely not, his was a straightforward sun observation.
did you know, one of the bowls in Knowth was too big for thieves to get out of the passage.
....
Quote:
| Newgrange is a small part of his book so there's not a great lot of info although he applies his experience of measurement and sighting from the two main sites to it. |
|
Sounds like a theory which has them at a fairly advanced level of knowledge? Personally, I think that the whole Newgrange complex could be used for one fundamental purpose which is very much related to Stonehenge but in many ways cleverer.
............
Definitely, he's of the firm belief that ancient man was just as much a genius as man today. Personally I've never been able to comprehend the 'howling barbarians' theory and suspect it's promoted more in the US and Canada to justify the colonists' actions whereas the Spanish are more widely condemned for similar in South America.
.....
We had a beautiful sunrise here this morning, the moon is up and it's strangely warm. I think we're in for a good day!
...
Frosty and sunny here, crisp and clean.
....
Happy new year!
...
and to everyone!
...
Jon
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Runemage
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 13:24
Jonm,
Click on the last 10 news articles link to see all of them
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/user.php?op=userinfo&uname=JACKME
Rune
Quote:
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I haven't heard of Jack Sem. Did he ever say what he thought the reason was behind the "why?" of places such as Stonehenge?
|
|
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Runemage
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 14:07
Very nice, but a little too recent, he was thinking of something in Kazakhstan on Lat 51 approx the age of SH give or take a thousand years.
Rune
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tiompan
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 16:19
Don't mention .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkaim
George
Quote:
|
On 2013-01-01 14:07, Runemage wrote:
Very nice, but a little too recent, he was thinking of something in Kazakhstan on Lat 51 approx the age of SH give or take a thousand years.
Rune
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chimera
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from Australia
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 17:55
[quote]
On 2013-01-01 14:07, Runemage wrote:
Very nice, but a little too recent, he was thinking of something in Kazakhstan on Lat 51 approx the age of SH give or take a thousand years.
[quote]
No problem. Lat 38 has the Mycenae Lion Gate just like the Dushanbe trilithon with 2 lions, and the lintels of Mycenae=SH.
The simplest solution is best.
(With your camera on the ground they all align with the horizon)
[ This message was edited by: chimera on 2013-01-01 17:57 ]
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chimera
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 18:44
May I take this opportunity to introduce the Stonehenge Trilithon Awareness Campaign (STAC).
This is inspired by the Stonehenge Lintel Awareness Campaign (SLAC) in Stones Forum.
Remember, if it's not a trilithon it once used to be.
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Runemage
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 19:28
Don't mention www.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkaim
George
I won't, George, it's not on 51 degrees  And I'm not sure it would fit what he's searching for which is uninhabited and much wider in area than the central site in the cases of both that he's documented.
Otherwise it's a very interesting place in its own right,
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146412998
Google Arkaim and hit images, it seems to be made up of several sites. Another one to add to my wish-list.
Rune
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tiompan
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 20:26
Rune , it’s only 50 miles away from 51 degrees lat , Majorville itself is also 38 miles away from 51 . Fwiw there’s bound to be something among the Sintashta and Poltvaka cultures that are actually within the magic number Arkaim is interesting but most of the stuff we tend to get is dodgy . It’s industrial scale copper production with major fortified settlements with earlier Kurgan cemeteries in the area .Note that the there is the same interest in the astro and latitude connection with Stonehenge . The Aryan connection is intriguing as some of the funereal rites match those mentioned in the Vedas .
George
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chimera
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 22:41
Cudgel Culture Volume 55 Number 2, March/April 2002
by Mark Rose
Third-millennium B.C. cudgel has links to hymns written 1,000 years later. (Pavel Kuznetsov)
Discovery of a unique copper cudgel at Kutuluk, a group of burial mounds near the central Russian city of Samara, proves a long-suspected link between the Yamnaya people of the steppe and the tribes that migrated to India in the second millennium B.C. The Yamnaya culture, named for its characteristic burials in rectangular pits (yama is Russian for pit) beneath kurgans or mounds, is found throughout the steppe north of the Caspian and Black seas and west of the Ural River.
Pavel Kuznetsov of the Institute of History and Archaeology of Povolzhye made the discovery while excavating Kurgan 4 at Kutuluk. The kurgan, about 69 feet in diameter, has been radiocarbon dated to 2500-2300 B.C. Its main burial held the skeleton of a man, estimated to have been 35 to 40 years old and about five feet, eight inches tall.
Resting on the skeleton's bent left elbow was a 25-inch-long copper object. Its blade is diamond-shaped in cross-section, with sharp edges, but the end is not pointed. Traces indicate that the five-inch-long handle was wrapped, probably with a quarter-inch-wide leather strap.
Kuznetsov knew of no similar objects from Bronze Age Eurasian steppe cultures, but found a striking parallel in the Rig-Veda, an ancient Indian collection of hymns to the gods compiled ca. 1500-1200 B.C. in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. It mentions repeatedly the vajra the weapon of Indra, one of the most important deities:
Oh, Indra, getting your support
Let us take cudgels,
Like...vajra,
And will gain a victory over all the rivals
According to the Rig-Veda, the vajra was four sided and had a cow-skin strap. It was called "golden vajra" and "glistening vajra." The Kutuluk artifact is the only object ever found corresponding to the vajra, a metal weapon used to deliver heavy blows. Even the leather wrapping of the handle is similar. It is likely, Kuznetsov concludes, that the Kutuluk artifact was a ritual weapon like the legendary vajra.
The Kutuluk grave is substantially older than the Rig-Veda, and probably represents a society that was ancestral to the people who compiled the hymns. Archaeologists have long thought that the Yamnaya people spoke an early Indo-European language and that their offshoots migrated to India and elsewhere (see "Tracking the Tarim Mummies," March/April 2001). Identification of the Kutuluk cudgel as the vajra of the Rig-Veda confirms that belief.
© 2002 by the Archaeological Institute of America
archive.archaeology.org/0203/newsbriefs/cudgel.html
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chimera
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| Posted 01-01-2013 at 23:47
Was the Nebra sun disk made by British scientists in Germany?
[According to an initial analysis of trace elements by x-ray fluorescence by E. Pernicka, then at the University of Freiberg, the copper originated at Bischofshofen in Austria, while the gold was thought to be from the Carpathian Mountains.[2] However a more recent analysis found that the gold was from the river Carnon in Cornwall.[3] The tin content of the bronze was also from Cornwall.[4]]
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jonm
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| Posted 02-01-2013 at 10:49
Quote:
| Absolutely not, his was a straightforward sun observation. |
|
Okeydokey. Perhaps he's only concerned with first light? I'll have to get the book to see what he's done.
Quote:
| did you know, one of the bowls in Knowth was too big for thieves to get out of the passage. |
|
The bowl is very interesting because it fits with the structural observations: For example at Newgrange some of the components said to be structural are not matched: If I were doing a structural survey, my question would be why it was done in different stages because, purely from a structural point of view, the sequence of construction does not make logical sense. The bowl confirms that it was done in stages, matching up to the apparently non-logical sequence of construction.
So some descriptions of the monument surprise me a bit given what is actually there.
Quote:
| Definitely, he's of the firm belief that ancient man was just as much a genius as man today. Personally I've never been able to comprehend the 'howling barbarians' theory |
|
I agree. However, I think that most 'non-howling barbarian' theories are based on our own knowledge, perceptions and assumptions. What if we had no knowledge but plenty of intelligence: Would we quickly come to the same beliefs and conclusions or would there be a series of obscure and unrecognisable intermediate steps?
Things are changing so rapidly. When I was young, the concept of a Solar Plane was still taught at school (even though it is a geocentric concept based on a theory well over 300 years out of date). Nowadays, a solar plane is an aeroplane that uses renewable energy. The ability to recognise older obscure scientific concepts may well disappear within the next few generations.
My version of Stonehenge could not exist without something like the Boyne complex, so it will make a great storyline continuation (hence the Irish connection in the book). But like Stonehenge, it needs a lot of illustrations because it's so conceptually different. In a way it's lucky that so many of my explanatory sketch details already seem to exist in the kerbstones at Knowth. But this adds the significant complication of having to match and explain each modern illustration to its counterpart if I were to try to do a non-fiction explanatory version.
Personally, I think that the Boyne complex could hold the key to understanding monuments elsewhere because there is so much there and, unlike Stonehenge, it does not seem to have been made over-complex by secondary considerations. It'll be interesting to read what he has to say.
Jon
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tiompan
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| Posted 02-01-2013 at 19:19
Quote:
|
On 2013-01-02 10:49, jonm wrote:
[quote]
In a way it's lucky that so many of my explanatory sketch details already seem to exist in the kerbstones at Knowth.
Jon
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Could you expand on that Jon ?
George
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jonm
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| Posted 03-01-2013 at 10:22
Quote:
| Could you expand on that Jon ?
George |
|
It's to do with the same set of ideas as at Stonehenge George. After I stumbled across Stonehenge, I went looking to see if my other thing also existed (which is now another part of the storyline for the end of the novel series).
After finding it, I figured that I would need a 'what do you do next if you know what Firsprofen is' explanation to lead into the why of how of Stonehenge came to be, so drew up how you could do it together with some explanation sketches. My wife's from Dublin and she told me that the 'how to do it' drawings looked a lot like Knowth & Newgrange. So I went to have a look and found that Knowth has the required sketches on the kerbstones and that the monuments also have bowls, which is a very nice touch.
The explanation sketches are only needed if you haven't got your head around the concepts. The concepts aren't easy to understand nowadays because it's about a matter of great concern which we in the modern era would not recognise as relevant. So it's almost philosophical rather than scientific.
It's another weird set of coincidences. I thought that if Solving the Neolithic covers its own costs, then I'd do a second one on Newgrange. Either way, it'll work well for the novel because it adds background motivation to the whole storyline.
Basically, this envisages the Boyne complex as a place whose primary purpose is to preserve and protect rather than passage graves. High intellect rather than superstition. The trouble with this sort of stuff is that you have to forget everything you know about how things are: The 'why' will not make sense to a modern audience without a lot of explanatory drawings.
Jon
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