Two Ohio Wesleyan professors have greatly furthered the cause of my decades-long megalithic research by confirming what I have always argued about the ancient megaliths and such megalithic sites as the Malta Temples.
They are all astronomy, here on the example of the Anasazi (Ancestral Pueblo) Kivas, as proven by Jim Krehbiel, head of the Ohio Wesleyan University Art Department, together with Barbara Andereck, a professor of astronomy and physics at Ohio Wesleyan and one of her students, Natalie Cunningham, who did important calculations.
Here is what they have discovered about the Kivas as astronomical observatories, using stone formations as lines of sight:
source of the ilustration at
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/science/stories/2009/11/01/graph.html
Posts
Is this research double blinded and repeatable?
ReplyDeleteIf not, then most regretably, it is suspect.
quote from the research....
"He doesn't always find alignments with distinct features on the horizon. About 30 percent of the sites he's checked showed none, he said." That must be hard to admit, considering "distinct features" could include notches, peaks, flat spots, just about anything which could appear on any horizon.
One wonders where the ancients got the circular trig tables, by the means of which "everything fell into place".
Although early in the article, he states that the sky features were corrected for precession over the last thousand years or so, he notes that "Then, just at the right time, the sun blazed through the rock window, shining onto the shrine." I guess the precession error wasn't that great on that location huh? Would the drama hold up a thousand years ago, or do you think the shrine gets lit up every day, solstice or not? Just askin'.
You can usually find some alignment when you are looking for it, whether it be an astronomical sight line or the startling discovery that my kitchen window, my neigbour's car and HIS kitchen window are all in a line on Monday mornings.
Wouldn't it be nice if the kivas were all big calendars. One wonders why they would want to know the moonrise, and other useless phenomon like that, but here we must add speculation onto supposition.
Hopefully the peer reviewed publications will be illuminating. No doubt the facts and conclusions suffered a little bit in the translation between dry academic papers and quite enjoyable, rattlin' good human interest story as told by Doug Caruso.
And of course, proper respect to Jim Krehbiel for doing all this difficult research. Its easy for me to sit here at my computer and throw hopefully good natured skeptical rocks, but he had to go out there in all sorts of weather time after time to take these measurements. Kudos Jim, at the very least you have given the world something to discuss.
Bill
stag@cyberus.ca