Posted on 05/21/2006 12:08:09 PM PDT by ApplegateRanch
Pyramid is giant farming clock John Harlow, Los Angeles
THE archeologist Bob Benfer will never forget the moment when he realised that a pyramid he had unearthed high in the Andes was the New World’s oldest alarm clock.
On a barren hillside just north of Lima, he had found an observatory more than 4,000 years old that had been built by a lost civilisation with astonishing sophistication.
The oldest astronomical observatory in the Americas, it told farmers exactly when to sow their crops. Its discovery has provided startling clues to the way in which early man learnt to cultivate his fields.
“I was staring up at a statue on a ridge above the temple and realised it all aligned with the stars — it was an amazing moment,” the bearded scientist said last week.
“This alignment meant that at dawn at every winter solstice 4,200 years ago, key stars would appear in line with the temple and alert priests that river flooding was due and it was time to start planting crops. It was laid out as a wake-up call to the community.”
Other archeologists now believe that Benfer, 67, has found a temple built in 2200BC, which proves that the ancient Andeans were familiar with the movements of the stars long before the ancient Britons finished Stonehenge, which many believe is linked to the heavens.
Benfer stumbled across the temple while trawling through a green valley floor in search of information about ancient diets. Working with a number of Peruvian colleagues, he unearthed a 30ft-high pyramid that had once been brightly painted red and white. He believes that it served its community, known as the Kotosh people, for 800 years.
The 20-acre site is dominated by two buildings. The northern pyramid, which Benfer has called the Temple of the Fox after a painting of the animal, is built around a priests’ platform.
This points at 114 degrees directly to an 8ft tall carved head on a mountain ridge nearly 200ft away. On December 21 each year, just before the local River Chillon starts flooding, a constellation known to Andeans as the fox swings into the sightline. According to Andean myth, the fox is the creature that taught farmers how to cultivate plants.
To the south, another temple holds a scowling clay head, which Benfer believes represents the earth goddess Pachamama. It aligns with stars that line up when the harvest is due to be gathered.
Larry Adkins, professor of astronomy at Cerritos College in California, said that such alignments were beyond coincidence: “They may not be precise by modern standards, but they are close enough to allow the priests to produce a theatre of predictions.”
To the south, another temple holds a scowling clay head, which Benfer believes represents the earth goddess Pachamama. It aligns with stars that line up when the harvest is due to be gathered.
What I don't understand is why archaeologists seem to believe that farmers are too stupid to know when a crop is ready to harvest.
The timing of the local flooding, I understand; beyond that, plant when the field dries out, and harvest when ripe...
"I'll et whan I'm 'ungry,
I'll drink whan I'm dry;
Iff'n the whusky don' kill me,
I'll live till I die!
Same thing with planting & harvesting.
)))Ping!(((
The flooding and everything follows the clock to the minute. Yep, you can set your watch by when that gully washes out. Happens every year at 3:35 PM. Too bad if somebody just sowed the cornseed; it would all wash right out.
Actually, this shows how smart the farmers were in figuring out what is the exact best time to harvest.
I saw something like this in The Fifth Element with Bruce Willis.
What is so astonishing about this?
That farmers figured out the annual floods came when certain stars appeared is hardly amazing. If they did not figure this it would be astonishingly stupid.
Yes indeedy! Best time to harvest, whether ripe, green, or rotten on the vine!
I would suspect a harvest FESTIVAL, (Cinco de Molé?) rather than actual harvest. Maybe even Pachamama's birthday.
Or it shows how smart the religious charlatans were in selling "alarm clocks" to the farmers.
Like refridgerators to eskimos.
How come none of the local buggers ever put any of these finds to their benefit? Why are they stampeding to the US Border? Hmmmmmm?
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and "let on" to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor "development of species," either! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
---Mark Twain --- Life on the Missisippi
Scientists are every bit as prone to flights of fancy as everyone else; perhaps more so.
Picture an "educated" doofus, with no marketable skills, but an excess of grants, self-importance and unlimited imagination. Never mind that plunking a pyramid anywhere in the world, at random orientation, will always precisely line up with some sort of significant heavenly seasonal event.
Unfortunately, the geniuses who planned all this never were able to transform their spoken language into a written one, and thus utterly unable to tell us directly why they built the damned thing, what purpose it serves and why that specific orientation was chosen.
So somebody has to speak for the noble savage. Unfortunately, in most instances, it's simply a modern one. No less clueless than the original.
*which, now, is becoming far too uncommon.
The position of the stars/constellations has changed so much in 4,000 years that the archeologists don't know what was being pointed at/randomly being pointed at/just happens to point skyward since it higher than ground level.
I love The Fifth Element. It was odd the first time I saw it, but gets better with every viewing. I have the German version. When the Professor asks the creature if he was from Germany, in the German version he asks if he was from Earth. Wimped out.
I like The Fifth Element more each time, too. Didn't think much of it at first but now I like it better and better. I'm also that way with Twelve Monkeys and Jacob's Ladder.
"Pyramid is giant farming clock (South America)"
Or, as Dr. Emmett Brown stated in "Back to the Future" about November 5, 1955, it could be just an amazing coincidence!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.