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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Feniak Lake Alaska Noatak National Preserve: 3-Sided Megalith Marks Stars of the Sky and Astronomical Parameters ca. 1500 B.C.

This posting presents our decipherment of a marvelous 3-Sided petroglyphic megalith viz. boulder of Feniak Lake in the Noatak River region of Alaska (68.273N 158.33W), Noatak National Preserve (U.S. National Park Service). The decipherment must be regarded as provisional because the markings on the stone are subject to differing drawings of the "incised and pecked lines and pecked cupules" on the rock. Note also that the Feniak Lake megalith(s) are similar in style in their incised and pecked lines and pecked cupules to the megalith of Ciudad Perdida, Columbia that we have previously deciphered.

Photographs and illustrations of the megalith are found in an image at Scott Shirar, Jeff Rasic, and Eric Carlson, High Alpine Lakeside Villages and Associated Rock Art in the Brooks Range, Alaska, NPS Archaeology Program: Projects in the Parks, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Figure 3: A stone covered in petroglyphs near Feniak Lake, consisting of a complex series of incised and pecked lines and pecked cupules covering three surfaces of the stone. Photographs and Illustrations by Mareca Guthrie.
http://www.nps.gov/archeology/sites/npsites/images/noatak3LG.jpg.

We have made our own drawing illustration of the three-sided megalith, relying on the image cited above, whose photographs and illustrations have served as the basis for our astronomical decipherment below, although our own illustrations differ in some particulars from those in the cited source based on a tracing of photographs of the stone.

What are called "boulders" in the literature -- we prefer the term "megaliths" --
have been found at three different Feniak Lake lakefront locations, as reported at "Northern Alaska Rock Art, YouTube, Rock Art in the Noatak National Preserve", a video on YouTube by Scott Shirar, University of Alaska, Museum of the North, Research Archaeologist, uploaded on August 26, 2011.

Shirar writes there by way of introduction of the video:

"While prehistoric rock art is common in some regions, such as the American Southwest, it is exceptionally rare in Interior and Northern Alaska. Archaeologists working in the 1960s and 70s found boulders adorned with petroglyphs at three different lakefront sites in what is now the Noatak National Preserve in Northwest Alaska. The rock art remained on location, unobserved for almost 40 years until this summer when a team from the UA Museum of the North and the National Park Service assembled to create a permanent record with sketches and tracings. Museum staff members Scott Shirar, research archaeologist, and Mareca Guthrie, fine arts collection manager, were among the crew that visited the village sites in July."

Below we decipher the 3-sided Feniak Lake megalith viz. "boulder", showing that it is a sky map that we date to ca. 1500 B.C. based on the locations of the Solstices and Equinoxes as marked on the megalith:

The 3-Sided viz. 3-Surface Feniak Lake Megalith viz. Boulder
Noatak National Preserve
Deciphered as a Sky Map of the Stars ca. 1500 B.C. 


Note how the human head profiled at one end of the megalith splits Perseus in half, with one eye on each side of the dividing edge of the front and back side, marking the Vernal Equinox, and thus marking the astronomical date at ca. 1500 B.C.

The following parameters and star groups (not necessarily seen identically to the way we see them today) are marked on the megalith:

Astronomical Parameters: Ecliptic, Vernal Equinox, Autumn Equinox, Summer Solstice, Winter Solstice, North Celestial Pole, South Celestial Pole, Galactic Meridian, South Galactic Pole (uncertain), Milky Way

Star Groups: Today we call these stellar "Constellations" (the stars we use modernly may differ): Cetus, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Cygnus, Aries, Andromeda, Pegasus, Libra, Virgo, Leo, Cancer, Canis Minor, Canis Major, Auriga, Taurus, Eridanus, Phoenix, Sculptor, Grus, Tucana, Pisces Austrinus, Indus, Pavo.

Stars specially marked by us: Algol in Perseus, Enif in Pegasus.

THIS POSTING IS Posting Number 128 of
The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America

Feniak Lake Alaska Noatak National Preserve: 3-Sided Megalith Marks Stars of the Sky and Astronomical Parameters ca. 1500 B.C.