To celebrate the 20th anniversary of my archaeogeodesy studies, I updated ArchaeoGeodesy with v2007.01.11.
I also began releasing some important findings, especially material related to threatened sites. Here is a teaser:
"At Avebury, when obliquity equaled precisely 24 degrees,
the level summer solstice sunset pointed precisely to Newgrange."
More, links, software, etc. at: http://jqjacobs.net/blog/index.html
Solstice angle changes with time. See http://jqjacobs.net/astro/epoch_2000.html. The Avebury solstice angle points directly to Newgrange when obliquity equals exactly 24 degrees, in 2758 bce. I am now examining if this is a temporal benchmark for the Neolithic array of placemarks.
A cautionary point to make, before everyone starts seeing lines everywhere, regards precision. We discussed this in the Archaeocosmology group on Yahoo when I released the finding. For a 400,000 m long line like Avebury to Newgrange, the line does not "hit" unless the angle accuracy is correct to a deep decimal. The stone circles in question are only 103 m wide, so the tangent is 103/400,000. That's a 1/100th of a degree target.
Of course, I'm keeping all the good stuff secret still. ;-)
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