Posted on 05/15/2009 6:55:39 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
In the new authoritative study of the growing discipline of archaeoastronomy, Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy: From Giza to Easter Island, Professor Guilio Magli asks, 'Was it an attempt to reproduce the sky on Earth? To bring down the power of the stars to where they could see it, worship it, and use it?' Magli examines the role of astronomy in antiquity and provides a clear, up-to-date survey of current thinking on the motives of the ancients for building fabulous and mysterious monuments all over our planet. He uses astronomy as a key to understanding our ancestors' way of thinking. Its challenge, he says, is 'predicting the past.'
The motives of ancient civilisations have often been misconstrued, maligned, or even dismissed. Magli shows the limitations of orthodox archaeology in relation to astronomically based artefacts and examines what led the ancients to construct such magnificent structures as the city of Teotihuacan in the Mexico Valley, the Ceremonial Centre of Chaco Canyon in the United States, the Avebury stone circle in Great Britain, and the great pyramids in Egypt.
Through Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy, readers are taken on a 'world tour' of many fascinating and enigmatic places on almost every continent, in search of traces of astronomical knowledge and lore of the sky. Then, the author discusses the fundamental ideas that he believes led to the construction of the giant monuments. Finally, Magli revisits one place in greater detail -- Giza -- in an attempt to provide proof for his ideas on the mindset of ancient cultures.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencecentric.com ...
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marking for later read, thanks.
My pleasure. :’)
Historical Eclipses and Earth's Rotation
by F. Richard Stephenson
Point of this thread seems more upscale than that stuff.
I'll be looking into it as time allows.
Thanks for the thread.
Voyages of the Pyramid Builders:
The True Origins of the Pyramids
from Lost Egypt to Ancient America
by Robert M. Schoch
with Robert Aquinas McNallyVoices of the Rocks:
A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes
and Ancient Civilizations
by Robert M. Schoch Ph.D.
with Robert Aquinas McNally
World's oldest telescope?According to Professor Giovanni Pettinato of the University of Rome, a rock crystal lens, currently on show in the British museum, could rewrite the history of science. He believes that it could explain why the ancient Assyrians knew so much about astronomy. It is a theory many scientists might be prepared to accept, but the idea that the rock crystal was part of a telescope is something else. To get from a lens to a telescope, they say, is an enormous leap. Professor Pettinato counters by asking for an explanation of how the ancient Assyrians regarded the planet Saturn as a god surrounded by a ring of serpents?
by Dr David Whitehouse
Not sure about that, having read both of those, but decades apart. VD made a series of ex cathedra claims throughout the book; MotM (or at least the translated edition I have) consists of a series of unreferenced anecdotes — interesting, but no attribution, not even an index.
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