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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Change?
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tiompan
tiompan
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Re: Change?
Feb 01, 2017, 20:04
Evergreen Dazed wrote:
tiompan wrote:

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


An interest most definitely, a preoccupation with or major reason to build, i'd say no.

tiompan wrote:

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 .


How do we know that had anything to do with the sky?


tiompan wrote:

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 .


But why such vagueness when we know they can get it* spot on when desired?

*are we to blame in deciding what is significant?

tiompan wrote:

There is also a significant percentage that face roughly east i.e. 60 - 120 degrees .



What does that indicate in terms of the sky?[/quote]

Not sure how to deal with the visual aspect (of the text ) .

I agree about astronomy being far from primary or reason to build .
I doubt "observation " came into either for that matter .

We don't know for sure that the regional orientations had anything to do with astronomy . But there is a clue that suggests it is . When we look at all the regions, as there is the common denominator ,i.e.the vast majority face the part of the sky where the sun , in particular , can be seen at some point in the year . We can show that it wasn't related to the landscape or the horizon , peaks /troughs etc as within the same groupings the horizon can be quite different .It has always puzzled me how the direction of orientation can be maintained when the horizon and heavenly bodies will look different from monument to monument , yet the bearing will be the same . Any thoughts ?

My guess is that the vagueness is not inability , it's just not what matters and it probably is us wanting to wrap it up all up simply with the aligning to astro events, and when they don't, i.e. in the vast majority of cases just ignore it or think they somehow got it wrong .

I didn't understand "What does that indicate in terms of the sky?"
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Re: Change? (Evergreen Dazed)
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