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Visiting the Past: Finding and Understanding Britain's Archaeology

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<< News >> Archaeologists find oldest observatory in Americas

Submitted by coldrum on Monday, 15 May 2006  Page Views: 5514

Neolithic and Bronze AgeCountry: Peru Archaeologists working high in the Peruvian Andes have discovered the oldest celestial observatory in the Americas - a 4,200-year-old structure marking the summer and winter solstices that is as old as the stone pillars of Stonehenge.

The observatory was built on the top of a 33-foot-high pyramid with precise alignments and sight lines that provide an astronomical calendar for agriculture, archaeologist Robert Benfer of the University of Missouri said.

The people who built the observatory – three millenniums before the emergence of the Incas – are a mystery, but they achieved a level of art and science that archaeologists say they did not know existed in the region until at least 800 years later.

Among the most impressive finds was a massive clay sculpture – an ancient version of the modern frowning “sad face” icon – flanked by two animals. The disk, protected from looters beneath thousands of years of dirt and debris, marked the position of the winter solstice.

More: Fort Wayne / LA Times
Contributor Bio for coldrum: Based in Milkyway, contributing since 2002. Favourite site: Avebury.

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"Archaeologists find oldest observatory in Americas" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
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'Brazilian Stonehenge' discovered by Anonymous on Monday, 15 May 2006
Another discovery in South America:

Brazilian archaeologists have found an ancient stone structure in a remote corner of the Amazon that may cast new light on the region's past.

The site, thought to be an observatory or place of worship, pre-dates European colonisation and is said to suggest a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy.

Its appearance is being compared to the English site of Stonehenge.

It was traditionally thought that before European colonisation, the Amazon had no advanced societies.

The archaeologists made the discovery in the state of Amapa, in the far north of Brazil.

A total of 127 large blocks of stone were found driven into the ground on top of a hill.

Well preserved and each weighing several tons, the stones were arranged upright and evenly spaced.

It is not yet known when the structure was built, but fragments of indigenous pottery found at the site are thought to be 2,000 years old.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4767717.stm
[ Reply to This ]
    Re: 'Brazilian Stonehenge' discovered by Anonymous on Wednesday, 28 June 2006
    SAO PAULO, Brazil - A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory — a find archaeologists say indicates early rainforest inhabitants were more sophisticated than previously believed.

    The 127 blocks, some as high as 9 feet tall, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill, like a crown 100 feet in diameter.

    On the shortest day of the year — Dec. 21 — the shadow of one of the blocks disappears when the sun is directly above it.

    "It is this block's alignment with the winter solstice that leads us to believe the site was once an astronomical observatory," said Mariana Petry Cabral, an archaeologist at the Amapa State Scientific and Technical Research Institute. "We may be also looking at the remnants of a sophisticated culture."

    Anthropologists have long known that local indigenous populations were acute observers of the stars and sun. But the discovery of a physical structure that appears to incorporate this knowledge suggests pre-Columbian Indians in the Amazon rainforest may have been more sophisticated than previously suspected.

    "Transforming this kind of knowledge into a monument; the transformation of something ephemeral into something concrete, could indicate the existence of a larger population and of a more complex social organization," Cabral said.

    Cabral has been studying the site, near the village of Calcoene, just north of the equator in Amapa state in far northern Brazil, since last year. She believes it was once inhabited by the ancestors of the Palikur Indians, and while the blocks have not yet been submitted to carbon dating, she says pottery shards near the site indicate they are pre-Columbian and maybe older — as much as 2,000 years old.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060627/ap_on_sc/brazil_tropical_stonehenge
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