Rocks of Ages: A composite photo of the Oshoro Stone Circle in Otaru, Hokkaido [Andrew Kershaw]
Posted on 12/15/2008 7:26:02 AM PST by SunkenCiv
In 1861 at Oshoro, southwestern Hokkaido, a party of herring fishermen, migrants from Honshu, were laying the foundation for a fishing port when they saw taking shape beneath their shovels a mysterious spectacle -- a broad circular arrangement of large rocks, strikingly symmetrical, evidently man-made. What could it be? An Ainu fortress? ...Oshoro today is part of the city of Otaru, on its western fringe, 20 km from the city center and 60 km west of Sapporo. The Late Jomon period (circa 2400-1000 B.C.) was an age of northward migration. The north was warming, and severe rainfall was ravaging the established Jomon sites, primarily in the vicinity of today's Tokyo and Nagoya... "By devoting a special area to burials," writes J. Edward Kidder in "The Cambridge History of Japan," "Late Jomon people were isolating the dead, allowing the gap to be bridged by mediums who eventually drew the rational world of the living further away from the spirit world of the dead." ...It is one of about 30 Late Jomon stone circles scattered through northern Japan. In terms of size it ranks about midway between the smallest enclosures and the largest one at Oyu, Akita Prefecture, bounded by thousands of stones. No bones have been found to make an airtight case of the cemetery theory, but relatively few Jomon bones have been found anywhere, the acid in the soil claiming them long before the archaeologist's trowel can.
(Excerpt) Read more at search.japantimes.co.jp ...
Rocks of Ages: A composite photo of the Oshoro Stone Circle in Otaru, Hokkaido [Andrew Kershaw]
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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You know, when I was a kid, we lived out in the country and I used to drag rock around with my 4-wheeler and made circles and piles and such. I wonder if several millennium from now, someone will find it and speculate if it was a temple, fort, place for human sacrifice, or astronomical clock.
Ok, everyone ‘fess up. Who saw that photo and thought, “let’s party?”
I’m thinking it was, maybe, the village “time out” circle for unruly children.
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These old stone circles might be the way ancient folks tried to play Twister. Things like, "Left hand, quartz! Right foot, feldspar!" They didn't have plastics for mats . . . |
When we were kids we used to take big rocks and logs and arrange them to make pretend forts.
Two days later, there's a knock on my door and it's my landlord. He's looking at me it a most amusing fashion, and asks "did you guys do anything weird last weekend?" [Apart from drinking, fishing, shooting, and causing a ruckus the answer was no].
I replied, "what do you mean?" and he takes me out back where there is a seemingly random pile of stones arranged around a perfect circle. I was mystified.
It took me two days to determine that my friends had spent a good part of the night throwing stones at circular tent (where someone had passed-out). The stones bounced-off in all directions and when the tent was taken-down, a perfect circle in the center remained. It was pretty cool.
Many, many, many years ago, there was creative story in Reader’s Digest along the basic lines of what would an archeologist say if they discovered rements of today’s society thousands of years from now.
The discovery was an old hotel. Apparently, they determined it was a temple for some sort of cult. The alter was this plastic box with a glass front and funny dials on it and wires inside of it to resemble some sort of being. The diety’s name must have been Zenith because of the label printed on the front.
The chief priest’s name was Tootandcomein based on a sign on the door. There where ritual baths, shrouds, and some sort of device that made people think there where spirits by shaking the seating platform.
I can’t remember the whole thing, I was probably ten when I read it, but I recall it was funny, and it did make me think twice whenever I see archeologists label everything as a temple.
lol, that’s how ancient history is made don’t ya know.
Farside did something like that too, iirc.
I seem to remember one where an archaeologist held an old dial type phone and claimed it was, obviously, a religious device that priests used to try to contact the gods.
The dial proved the (our) culture had a rudimentary grasp of numbers. And the device was used by banging the two parts (hand set and base) together over head to make the bell jingle.
Granite, you may have a point there.
Aha! We always figured you kids were sacrificing humans out there.
I can’t remember the whole thing, I was probably ten when I read it, but I recall it was funny, and it did make me think twice whenever I see archeologists label everything as a temple.
Same here. If they find an object that they can't identify or that looks too technologically advanced for the strata it was found in, they label it a "shamanistic" or "religious" device.
We *thought* you were keeping quiet about your time in Japan.
“Granite, you may have a point there.”
Oooh, that wasn’t gneiss!
Quit pitchblende at me.
/rimshot!
I read the story but I remember it as a motel.
There are probably many variations along this line, but in all of 'em, the archaeologists never come out well.
Here is the book.
http://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay/dp/0395284252/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product
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