Astounding Archaeological Discoveries in Canada, England and Wales
Canada’s Stonehenge – Astounding Archaelogical Discoveries in Canada, England, and Wales (2009) by Gordon R. Freeman
Part One: Òmahk
p1-2 “The Mayan calendar included cycles of the Sun, Moon, and Venus. It had a 260-day sacred almanac, a 365-day secular calendar, a 584-day Venus cycle, and a 52-year (18,980-day) Calendar Round, which meshes 73 x 260-day sacred cycles with 52 x 365-day secular years.”
p2 “Vincent Malmström, in his 1997 book Cycles of the Sun, Mysteries of the Moon, traced the 260-day sacred mayan cycle t an earlier tropical culture at 14°8 N latitude. .At that latitude, 260 days correspond to the time from when the sun passes vertically overhead on teh way South on August 13, to when it returns there on the way back northward on April 30. Ingenious detective work led Malmström to conclude that the 260-day sacred almanac originated on the Pacific coastal plain in Izapa, Mexico, at a date earlier than the Maya Classic Period, and that Day 1 in the almanac was August 13, 1359 BC.”
Big Horn “Medicine Wheel”
p3 [Colorado astronomer John] Eddy proposed that the Moose Mountains and Big Horn Medicine Wheels also have lines between pairs of small cairns or small stone rings that pointed to the heliacal rise of three stars during the period that each device was built. A heliacal rise means that the star rises just a short while before the Sun and is visible for only a few minutes until sunlight overpowers light from teh star. The stars at ech site were Aldebaran, which rose heliacally within a day or two of the Summer Solstice; Rigel, which rose heliacally 28 days later; and Sirius, which rose heliacally 28 days after that. [Tom and Alice Kehoe] later reported that Rigel did not fit the Moose Mountains pattern, but the Sun, Aldebaran, Sirius, Capella and Formalhaut did.”
“These Solstice calendars…indicate that ancestors of Great Plains Indians developed an astronomical calendar similar to the one we use today, containing time units of 28 days (4 weeks), and one solar year.”
p4 “Christopher Tilley‘s A Phenomenology of Landscape demonstrates…that the landscape is part of the artifact.”
p8 “[In Stonehenge Decoded Gerald Dawkins]‘s major contribution was to suggest a credible method of using components of Stonehenge to predict the times of future eclipses. A Full Moon rises in approximately the opposite irection of the Sun set, nd the other way around. However, the Full Moon rise and set directions wobble around teh Sun set and rise irections in an 18..61-year cycle, caused by precession of teh Moon’s orbit about the Earth. If one records cycles only in whole-year periods, three Moon-wobble periods would correspond closely to two of 19 years and 1 of 18 years, making a total of 56 years for a triple cycle. There are 56 equally spaced “Aubrey Holes” around teh circumference of the Stonehenge terrain just inside the Bank. Hawkins suggested the 56 holes were year counters for the triple cycle of the Full Moon’s wobble, and were used to help predict eclipses.”
Mayorville “Medicine Wheel”
p14 “The Mayorville Medicine Wheel is the most intricate stone ring that remains on the North American Plains. It is also the most ancient, estimated at 5,000 years.”
p20 “[Cardinal] comes from the Latin cardo, meaning hinge or pivot.”
p21 “The names of the cardinal dierctions refer to positions of the Sun. ‘East,’ from the Greek eos, means ‘red sky in the morning,’ dawn, and is the direction where the Sun rises. ‘West,’ from the Greek hesperos and the Latin vesper, means ‘evening,’ and is the direction where the Sun sets. ‘North,’ from the Umbrian nertu, means ‘on the left,’ which is the location of this direction when we face the direction of dawn to pray. North is where the Sun never arrives, and implies darkness and cold. Finally, ‘South,’ from the Goth sunno, means ‘Sun’ and is the direction where the Sun is highest in the sky, the word implies light and warmth.”
p42 [note: pioneer = pawn = peon = foot soldier]
p65 “the so-called Equinox days are 12.2 hours long and the nights are 11.8 hours. So the 12-hour-day/12-hour-night, or the Equal-day/night, occurs two to three days, an average of 2.8 ays, before teh Equinox as the days lengthen in March, and tow to three days after teh Equinox as days shorten in September.”
p68 “The 5,000-year-old solar calendar in Ómahkiyáahkóhtóohp is by far the oldest accurate calendar that has been demonstrated by on-site observations to still work.”
“There is also a lunar calendar in Ómahkiyáahkóhtóohp.”
p68-9 “The maximum number of nights that the Moon is visible during one of its cycles is 28. Twenty-eight lines of stones join the sun Cairn to the surrounding ring. … Four of the lines are in the cardinal directions, which divide the ring into quadrants. There are 7 lines in each northern quadrant and 5 in each southern quadrant.”
p71 “Is it a coincidence that big bends in the [Oxbow] river occur at the northerly and southerly extremes of the Full Moon rise viewed from the Sun Cairn? Or was that one of the reasons for building the Sun Cairn at that place?”
Part Three: History of the Christian Calendar
[note: Equalnight refers to the dates when the day and night are equal - see table below - Dr Freeman replaces our misnomer Equinox with SZM, Sun Zenith Midaltitude, which is the day when the Sun crosses over the Equator]
p194-6 “If the sky is clear, one sees a Full Moon once every 29 or 30 nights. The Full Moon is seen against a background of star paterns. At each succeeding Full Moon, the star pattern that surrounded last month’s Full Moon has moved nearly one-twelfth of a circle, 29°, to the west of the current Full Moon. Successive Full Moons move 29° eastward each moonth [i.e. lunation] through the patterns of stars. After twelve Full Moons, the next one returns to about 11° short of the place of the first Full Moon among the stars, a fist’s width at arm’s length, to begin a new cycle. Every two or three years, a thirteenth moonth is needed to bring the Full Moon back near the original starting place.”
“One can make a chart of the stars seen near the Full Moon each Gregorian month during a year. The twelve charts combine to make a complete band of stars around the sky. If one marks in the sky chart the positions of all the Full Moons for the eight years 1990 to 1997, one finds that there are ninety-nine positions in the band. Five of the years contain twelve Full oons each. If these Moon positions are numbered successively one through twelve for each year, all the ones fall in a cluster, all the twos in a cluster, and so on. The other three years each contain thirteen Full Moons. Each of the two Moon positions in December 1990 are labeled twelve, the two in September 1993 are labeled nine, and those in July 1996 are labeled seven. both Moons occur in the appropriate month segment.Over many years, two Moons occur in every month except February, which is usually two days too short to get a second Full Moon.”
“The band of stars along the annual path of the full Moon consists of twelve equal compartments, each 30° wide. The same band of stars and twelve compartments have been identified by several cultures around the world. To assist remembering the location of each compartment in the sky the star pattern in each compartment was imagined to represent the image of a different animal, a zöon, a living being. The word zoo comes from Greek. The twelve animals an humans in the band of stars along the Full Moon’s path make up the zodiac, zódia, in Greek. The animals and humans and their seasonal comings and goings are related through stories, or myths, for teaching and for entertainment.”
“the particular set of living beings…was selected by the Babylonians about 2,500 years ago and adopted by the Greeks, then by the Romans, and on down to us. Other cultures imagined different animals or Gods, or objects, in the same twelve compartments of sars. Many cultures developed zodiacs and myths to go with them.”
“One of the animals in teh Babylonian zodiac was replaced by an Equal-arm Balance, to represen the lunar month in which the Spring Equalday/night occurred. The Arabic term for the Equalday/night is still Al Istiwáa, which means The Balance… The Latin word for equal-arm-balance is libra, the name we use for the constellation.”
“The Babylonian New Year began with the first visible New Moon after the Spring Equalday. The following Full Moon appeared in The Balance (Libra). In the presen era, the full Moon that follows the Spring Equalday appears between Virgo and Leo, in March or April. During the last 2,500 years, the seasons have moveda bit more than one constellation toward the west in the zodiac. The seasons regress through the entire zodiac every 26,000 years, due to precession of the Earth’s spinning axis. Now the logic behind the name The Balance has een lost, since Libra no longer frames the Full Moon that follows the Spring Equalday/night. “
p197 “I wonder if in a solar calendar about 2,500 years ago, February was assigned 30 and 31 days in the leap year cycle, which would put the Equalday at the middle of March, and if that is the root of the astrological significance of what the Romans called the Ides of March. the Latin iduo means to divide, and perhaps Idus of March anciently referred to not only the onth divided in halves, but to the day divided in halves. If the Moon happened to be Full, which is the half-point of the Moon cycle, on the March Equalnight, one had three Ides of the day, month and Moon* together! Beware the Ides of that March! It would happen each nineteenth year, in the lunar-phase 19-year cycle.“
[note: apparently March 15 44 BCE, the day of Caesar's assassination, was such a triple Ides day]
|
Dates of Equalnights* |
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|
Latitude
|
North |
South |
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|
3 5 10 20 |
About Feb 3-9 Feb 25-26 Mar 7-8 Mar 13-14 |
About Nov 4-10 Oct 17-18 Oct 5-6 Sept 29-30 |
About Apr 30-May 6 Apr 14-15 Mar 31-Apr 1 Mar 26-27 |
About Aug 9-12 Aug 28-29 Sept 10-11 Sept 16-17 |
|
30 40 50 |
15-16 16-17 17-18 |
26-27 25-26 25-26 |
23-24 23-24 22-23 |
18-9 19-20 19-20 |
|
60 80 |
17-18 17-18 |
24-25 24-25 |
22-23 22-23 |
19-20 20-21 |
|
90 |
Sun rises abut Mar 18, sets about Sept 24 |
Sun rises about Sept 20, sets about Mar 22 |
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*Calculated for 0° longitude, A.D. 2000. SZM: March 20, Sept 22. Solstice: June 21, Dec 21 |
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Gordon Freeman’s work online:
- Canada’s Stonehenge
- Observational Archaeoastronomy at Stonehenge: Summer Solstice Sun Rise and Set Lines Accurate to 0°2 in 4000 BP
305 Days to Dec 21st 2012
Related articles
- Stonehenge as you’ve never seen it (guardian.co.uk)
- Ancient Astronomers (neatorama.com)
