Saturday, October 22, 2016

Stonehenge Station Stones : Precession of the Equinoxes (Axial Precession) : A Graphic-Based Decipherment Encore

This posting explains the Stonehenge Station Stones as marking the locations of the Solstices and Equinoxes in the galactic Milky Way context of ca. 26000 years of "Precession of the Equinoxes". The more modern term for that is axial precession.

Some such new terms instituted by the International Astronomical Union would seem to generate more confusion than good. Constantly renaming things is not good science, especially when the history of astronomy is replete with the older terms, which are far better known to everyone. We say that as a dictionary author too. Increased creative but remote "jargonizing" of terminology acts as subject obfuscation, not as clarification.

At Stonehenge Decipherment Panorama 15 we wrote previously that these outer stones show that the ancients understood the ca. 26000-year cycle of Precession of the Equinoxes together with its "galactically" asymmetrical effect on the locations of the Autumn and Vernal Equinoxes in the stars (that is, the stars visible behind the Equinoxes at the time of their occurrence).

Below are our two seemingly complicated (but in fact easily understandable) graphics explaining the matter and commented in greater detail below, showing how the large rectangle at Stonehenge formed by the four station stones with its sides in a length ratio of 5 to 12 constitute a starry recordation of their understanding of the Precession of the Equinoxes.

Our images below show that the stars that the ancients used, when connected by lines, also show that same 5 to 12 ratio of the length of the shorter to the longer sides. The reader can measure them himself to check that out.

Please note, however, that only two station stones remain and whether the other two ever existed or whether the remaining mounds themselves instead of missing stones are the original markers is unclear.

The Stonehenge Station Stones show us the following galactic understanding as we have marked that same rectangle in the stars:

Stonehenge Station Stones : Precession of the Equinoxes 1

When the Summer Solstice is at Gemini and Sirius, the Winter Solstice is at ca. the top stars of the Teapot of Sagittarius, while the Autumn Equinox is at Crux, the Southern Cross, and the Vernal Equinox is at Diphda (Deneb Kaitos in Cetus). That variant position of the Solstices and Equinoxes in the stars is shown below by the lower half of the rectangle (for which reason we have cross-hatched out the top half):


Stonehenge Station Stones : Precession of the Equinoxes 2

On the other hand, when the Winter Solstice is at Gemini and Sirius, the Summer Solstice is, as expected, symmetrically at the top stars of the Teapot of Sagittarius, BUT, then the Autumn Equinox is at Fomalhaut and the Vernal Equinox is at ca. the stars alpha and beta Centauri, which both straddle the Galactic Equator, each on the other side of it, so one may have taken a middle route marked by two Aubrey Stones (and not the expected one) on top of Mound 92 at Stonehenge. That variant position of the stars is shown below by the upper half of the rectangle (for which reason we have cross-hatched out the bottom half):


TAKEN TOGETHER -- the ancients have combined BOTH variants into ONE rectangle -- those two variants explain the Stonehenge Station Stones, but it took this decipherer YEARS to figure that out, because the Stonehenge manner of recording that understanding with one rectangle it is not obvious. We first had to understand the galactic nature of Stonehenge to get it right.

As for the causes of precession, one can say that the wobble of the earth on its axis of rotation is a "cause", but of course, it is much more complicated than that, which we need not get into here. We refer generally to Milankovitch Cycles for discussion of the Earth's eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession.

Astronomers call axial tilt obliquity. As written at the Wikipedia link on Axial Tilt, "Earth's obliquity has varied between 22° 2′ 33″ and 24° 30′ 16″, with a mean period of 41,040 years."

How much the builders of Stonehenge specifically knew about "astronomy" in the formal sense of modern understanding is of course subject to discussion, but our decipherment images above suggest clearly that they understood precession of the Equinoxes to be a long-term astronomical, "galactic" cycle involving changes in the seasons respective to the stars, a development that they saw related to a ca. 24° variable of some kind.

In any case, in our decipherment view, the Station Stones at Stonehenge mark Precession of the Equinoxes, thousands of years before Hipparchus.

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Sky Earth Native America


Sky Earth Native America 1:
American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy
,
Volume 1, Edition 2, 266 pages, by Andis Kaulins.

  • Sky Earth Native America 2:
    American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
    Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy
    ,
    Volume 2, Edition 2, 262 pages, by Andis Kaulins.

  • Both volumes have the same cover except for the labels "Volume 1" viz. "Volume 2".
    The image on the cover was created using public domain space photos of Earth from NASA.

    -----

    Both book volumes contain the following basic book description:
    "Alice Cunningham Fletcher observed in her 1902 publication in the American Anthropologist
    that there is ample evidence that some ancient cultures in Native America, e.g. the Pawnee in Nebraska,
    geographically located their villages according to patterns seen in stars of the heavens.
    See Alice C. Fletcher, Star Cult Among the Pawnee--A Preliminary Report,
    American Anthropologist, 4, 730-736, 1902.
    Ralph N. Buckstaff wrote:
    "These Indians recognized the constellations as we do, also the important stars,
    drawing them according to their magnitude.
    The groups were placed with a great deal of thought and care and show long study.
    ... They were keen observers....
    The Pawnee Indians must have had a knowledge of astronomy comparable to that of the early white men."
    See Ralph N. Buckstaff, Stars and Constellations of a Pawnee Sky Map,
    American Anthropologist, Vol. 29, Nr. 2, April-June 1927, pp. 279-285, 1927.
    In our book, we take these observations one level further
    and show that megalithic sites and petroglyphic rock carving and pictographic rock art in Native America,
    together with mounds and earthworks, were made to represent territorial geographic landmarks
    placed according to the stars of the sky using the ready map of the starry sky
    in the hermetic tradition, "as above, so below".
    That mirror image of the heavens on terrestrial land is the "Sky Earth" of Native America,
    whose "rock stars" are the real stars of the heavens, "immortalized" by rock art petroglyphs, pictographs,
    cave paintings, earthworks and mounds of various kinds (stone, earth, shells) on our Earth.
    These landmarks were placed systematically in North America, Central America (Meso-America) and South America
    and can to a large degree be reconstructed as the Sky Earth of Native America."


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