A 5000-year old Moon map
Dr Philip Stooke of the University of Western Ontario in Canada spends most of his time preparing maps of asteroids based on spacecraft observations, but he has also prepared detailed maps of the Moon. Recently, he began looking for the oldest recorded moon map in old manuscripts and history books as well as the records of excavations of the Neolithic sites of the British Isles Then he found one, carved into a rock in one of Ireland's most remarkable prehistoric tombs at Knowth, County Meath.
Knowth consists mainly of a large mound surrounded by 17 smaller ones. The mound contains two rock-lined passage tombs, one facing east, the other west. The lunar map, carved into the stone that forms the end wall of the eastern passage, has three sections, similar, but oriented differently.
Stooke believes they were carved in different orientations because they depict the apparent rotation of the disk of the full moon as it crosses the night sky. No doubt the carvings represent the moon, he says. If you place the drawings over a picture of the full moon, at least a dozen points of correspondence are immediately obvious.
Before this discovery, the oldest map of the Moon was by Leonardo da Vinci, drawn about 1505. The Knowth map is at least 10 times older.
The people who carved this moon map were the first scientists, says Dr Stooke. They knew a great deal about the motion of the moon. They were not primitive at all.
The passage tomb at Knowth is estimated to be about 5,000 years old; investigations at the site almost 20 years ago showed that at certain times moonlight could shine down the eastern passage of the tomb. Remarkably, the moonlight would also fall on the Neolithic lunar map. During excavations, the stone in question was named Orthostat 47. Its right-hand section contains a series of arcs.
It's a fascinating story, which I would consider with some caution, says Prof. Charles Orser of Illinois State University, editor of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology. There are many instances in the realm of fantastic archaeology where people see what they wish to see. On the other hand, it is possible that the people at Knowth simply drew a picture of the moon. It shouldn't be surprising: they looked up in the same fashion as us.
Sources: BBC News, Discovery Online
No more fences at Stonehenge
Plans to restore the site around Stonehenge to how it may have been thousands of years ago have been recently announced. The Stonehenge Master Plan, a joint effort of England's culture and roads ministries, will remove nearby roads and improve the ancient monument's setting.
Fences, one of which was erected at the turn of the century and the other in the 1970s to prevent travelers from holding festivals at the stones, are to be removed as part of the new scheme launched by the British government.
The stone circle currently stands close to a road junction near Amesbury, Wiltshire, near the busy A344 and A303 trunk roads wich disrupt its scenic setting. Under the Master Plan, the A344 will be closed off and the A303 re-routed through a tunnel, said a spokeswoman for English Heritage.
But even as the ancient monument is restored to the way it may have looked thousands of years ago, it will also be ushered into the next millennium with its own logo and a state-of-the-art visitor center to be built nearby, which will boast a park and offer transportation to the circle of stones.
Once the roads have gone, we hope to return the surrounding landscape to chalk grassland and open up the area so people can walk across the site without fencing and without having to pay, said the English Heritage spokeswoman.
Work on the roads is expected to be finished by 2008 and the visitor centre is due to be completed in 2003, at a total cost of about £125 millions. Sir Jocelyn Stevens, Chairman of English Heritage, said the Master Plan would rescue the Stones and the 451 scheduled monuments that surround them from the impact of traffic and the current ugly and inadequate visitor facilities.
Sources: BBC News, Discovery Online
Neolithic ceramic statues found in Romania
Experts of Bukovina's National Museum (Romania) made an exciting archaeological discovery in the village of Mihoveni, near the northern city of Suceava. They have found six small ceramic statues that belonged to the Cucuteni culture, which existed during the Neolithic period from 2,000-700 B.C., and was indigenous to Romania's northeastern area.
The six small statues are zoomorphic idols that represent a "species of horned cattle." Experts say the area where they were found may have been a special site dedicated to the performance of rituals to a bull totem or deity, a figure that is culturally significant and symbolic to agricultural communities.
Source: CNN News
Irish tomb aligned to both Sun and Moon
Martin Byrne, a researcher and artist in County Sligo, Ireland, studied for many years the Neolithic tombs at Carrowkeel in the Bricklieve mountains. He thinks that at least one of these tombs, the Cairn G, is positioned so that the light from the Moon could peep into the inner chamber at midwinter.
The tomb's "lightbox" is only the third ever discovered (the other two being the Newgrange Neolithic complex in Ireland and the recently discovered Crantit tomb in Orkney, Scotland) and is by far the most complex. Given the number of Neolithic tombs in the Carrowkeel area this was one of the most sacred regions of ancient Ireland. Over a dozen mountain-top cairns can be seen looking across the hills of Sligo.
Carefully set into the entrance of Cairn G is a hole that is positioned to let the Sun's rays into the inner chamber for a month either side of midsummer. But according to Martin Byrne, it would also let in the light of the setting full moon on either side of the winter solstice.
Capturing the Moon may have been the main purpose of the tomb, because it is pointing at a hill called Knocknarea, which means "Hill of the Moon". Knocknarea is said to be the burial place of the wild Queen Maeve, one of the major figures in the Irish saga, the Tain Bo Cualnge.
The tomb points to the most northerly point the setting Moon reaches on the horizon, an event that only happens every 18.6 years.
Positioning the Carrowkeel tomb would have required a sophisticated understanding of the cycles of the Moon, as well as patient and careful observations over many years. Further evidence that the Moon was important is that Knocknarea is on a peninsula called Cuil Irra, "the Remote Angle of the Moon".
Source: BBC News
Turkish Neolithic outpost
Höyük is the Turkish word for a tell, artificial hills that grew as for millennia people built new settlements on the ruins of older ones. Tells are because of their stratification and longtime occupation hotspots for archaeologists. The Ilipinar höyük, near the northwestern Turkish city of Orhangazi, dates back as far as the sixth millennium BC. This was the time when a new way of living spread from the Middle East in the direction of Europe: the Neolithic. A more or less sedentary way of live combined with the production of food (in stead of solely hunting and gathering) and pottery.
In 1987 Dutch archaeologist J.J. Roodenberg began excavations at the site, revealing that Ilipinar höyük was continuously occupied between 6.000 and 5.500 BC. Then followed a hiatus of about twelvehunderd years. Occupation returned in the Early Bronze Age and stayed until the sixth century AD. Always a nearby freshwater stream must have attracted people to the location. Ilipinar means lukewarm well.
The 1998 excavations concentrated on the earliest occupation. Around 6.000 BC the first village consisted of some ten dwellings. Small and simple rectangular houses built of wood and mudcovered reed. A burialground close to the houses contained about fifty graves. Some deceased were buried on broad planks. By 5.700 BC the villagers began to use sundried clay tiles for their dwellings. Real houses appeared at Ilipinar, a couple of them two stories high, with a light construction for a roof. Why the village was abandoned so suddenly at 5.500 BC remains unclear.
Source: Alphagalileo
Double Iron Age burial
East of the village of Lent, north of the city of Nijmegen (the Netherlands), a remarkable Iron Age burial was discovered. Two persons had been buried on top of each other. The lower one, a male, lay on his back. The upper one, whose gender could up to now not be established, was placed face down and transverse on the lower. Archaeologist P.W. van den Broeke discovered this remarkable grave last summer when he was excavating a small Iron Age burialground. C-14 dating has pinpointed the burial in the fifth century BC.
The Iron Age burialground of Lent, belonging to a farming community, contains some twenty cremations and five inhumations. Why few people were inhumated while in the same the others were cremated remains unclear.
On the upper burial was a person, a grown-up, wich was laying face down with one hand in the neck. The man in the lower grave, 1,71 metres long, was about forty years old when he died. Left and right and just below his acoustic ducts a bronze ring was stuck horizontally to his skull. According to Van den Broeke these rings must have hold the plaits of the man.
What then could be the relationship between the two? Van den Broeke says: The upper grave and the other inhumations in this burialground were laid down on the same depth. I think that these people knew there two bodies going to be buried here. They dug the first gravepit extra deep, laid the man down, filled the deep pit and buried the second body over it, transverse. And the hand in the neck of the upper person, a gesture of selfprotection?
Source: Alphagalileo
New lead body to protect English heritage
On 1 April 1999 English Heritage and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England have been combined to form a lead body for the protection, management and enjoyment of England's historic environment. David Miles, recently appointed Chief Archaeologist of English Heritage, will encompass, alongside archaeological fieldwork and archaeological science, the study of historic buildings and architectural and landscape history.
Sir Jocelyn Stevens, Chairman of English Heritage, said: "The merged strengths of English Heritage and the Royal Commission will bring great benefits to the nation's heritage. Together we will be able to combine the resources at our disposal to address everything from broad conservation strategies to the detailed evaluation of an historic building or artefact. The enhanced organisation will focus on four key aims: the protection of the historic environment; increased physical and intellectual access to its riches; improved understanding and enjoyment of the built heritage; and the effective management of resources."
Source: English Heritage News
