Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | The Modern Antiquarian Forum

tiompan

5758 posts

Re: Change?

Feb 01, 2017, 17:58

[/quote]

Apart from a few notable exceptions, i'm beginning to think, *as far as monument orientations are concerned*, there isn't much to support the idea that neolithic people were concerned with what was going on in the sky, or what time of year it was!

Fair?[/quote]

The exceptions , i.e. the classic major monument examples , alone should be enough to alert us to an interest .

There is the regional variation whereby some areas, at some point , choose a "quarter " to orient their monuments towards ,and this can change over time in the same area . Little doubt that the solstices ,equinoxes , standstills , notches on hills etc are particularly favoured .What is clear though is that the vast majority face the part of the sky where the sun or moon will be seen sometime in the year . Admittedly that is a large percentage of the horizon , but the remaining percentage is much bigger than the tiny percentage of monuments that don't face the sun or moon .
This applies to anywhere where we have good data , Britain ,Europe , Near East ,North Africa. There is also a significant percentage that face roughly east i.e. 60 - 120 degrees .

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Re: Change? (Evergreen Dazed)

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