WUWT: This year the solstice occurs on Tuesday December 22nd at 04:49 GMT, about 15 hours from the time of this posting. This thought provoking article highlights what the ancient people in what we now call Ireland knew 3200 years ago.
WUWT: This year the solstice occurs on Tuesday December 22nd at 04:49 GMT, about 15 hours from the time of this posting. This thought provoking article highlights what the ancient people in what we now call Ireland knew 3200 years ago.
Yep–Read that this morning, and it’s way cool.
As an aside…It’s interesting how each generation is prone to an arrogance of being smarter than the one prior. Yet how many people wandering the shopping mall today even know what a solstice is, or would have the commitment, patience and observation skills to determine where/when it was?
I strongly suspect that people 5,000 years ago–a ‘blip’ in geological time, and perhaps the length of a comma in anthropological history–were as smart as we are today (and quite possibly smarter). It will be interesting to see what other finds come from archaeologists and backyard explorers over the next 100 years to expand our understanding of civilizations long gone. What of what we have today would endure 2,000 years? Not an iPhone, or a car (perhaps in a desert); not our houses. The ancients understood how to build for the long term (never mind the whole slave labor thing).
But did they know about Daylight Savings Time?
We visited Newgrange a couple of years ago. Pretty amazing! Water doesn’t penetrate the ceiling. Mold grows a bit due to the breath of the tourists. Quite cramped inside with a couple of side rooms. Supposed to be some type of burial chamber too if memory servers.
I’ve been to Stonehenge, and what impressed me most was the fact that those ancient people were so kind and considerate, they built a parking lot near Stonehenge, so I wouldn’t have to walk across fields when I came along some 10,000-12,000 years later!
Never underestimate British kindness!
I was there circa 1986….pretty neat place, quite amazing.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming wouldn’t have gotten very far with these folks. They had a good understanding of the seasons and weather patterns that is sorely lacking today. Modern man has zero memory when it comes to weather and that is how the CAGW meme is able to prosper.
This article was fascinating to read. I did not know the place existed. This place, as do other places around the world, make me feel humble and insignificant as far as time, the human race, and the earth is concerned.
I could not resist commenting the following, “Yes, agreed, and it is sad that so much of “science” today is corrupted for profit or power over people.”
Come on, Dr Dan. The parking-lot was built by the Romans.
I’m wondering why mark the winter solstice? What significance is the start of winter? 3 more months of cold, windy, and wet or snowy weather. Yes, the days start getting gradually longer but why would a neolithic culture want devote the time and effort to build a massive structure to measure this? Makes no sense to me.
In contrast or by comparison, agrarian cultures know that the Spring equinox is important because it’s time to plant. The pyramid at Chichen Itza (Mayan) does this:
“On the Spring and Autumn equinoxes, in the late afternoon, the northwest corner of the pyramid casts a series of triangular shadows against the western balustrade on the north side that evokes the appearance of a serpent wriggling down the staircase, which some scholars have suggested is a representation of the feathered-serpent god Kukulkan.”
That’s information that someone can actually use. Just a thought. Maybe someone can enlighten me.
So if I go there on the 20th or the 23rd I wouldn’t see that exact same shaft of light, albeit slightly less intense? Call me a sceptic, but it seems like every major marvel of ancient engineering gets labeled as some sort of astronomy tool. I just don’t buy it. It’s an amazing piece of human history though, one I’d love to see some day.
I was wondering somewhat the same. What have been the effects of precession and continental drift?
I have a theory that would explain the ancient intelligence, to be able to build pyramids, Roman aquaducts and the likes of Newgrange without a single electronic gadget for ‘calculating’.
God created Adam and Eve with perfect bodies, and highly functioning brains. We have devolved since then.
These are tombs and they mark passage into a spirit world. The beam of sunlight at the equinox would carry spiritual meaning. I visited New Grange a few years ago. Impressive and I believe we have lost the capacity to build such a thing.
Escorted Mum to her cousin’s 60th in 2001 and – as an aside – we visited Stonehenge as saw it while crossing southern England from one cousin in Devon to another in Petworth. Stopped, parked, rented the info gear, and went on site. I found it oddly domestic and cozy, with the stones of a human scale. And then the wind changed. Out of the north came a nasty sleet. We did the rest of the site in record time, my concern being to get Mum to shelter.
Actually, that particular trip stands out in my mind as the coldest ever. Had on all my woolies, and was never colder in my life. “Oh to be in England now that April’s here” – not for moi, unless global warming does its thing.
‘I believe we have lost the capacity to build such a thing’
Not really.
Today our religious monuments are of a slightly different nature. Windmills and solar panels dot the landscape built with a faith based conviction that a trace gas called CO2 is affecting the weather.
nold, we have been building on the knowledge of those who came before us throughout time. sometimes there really are those who think going backwards is a plus, I call them liberal socialists.
Were they angry drunken boors back then?
“I’m wondering why mark the winter solstice? What significance is the start of winter? 3 more months of…”
Only three more months to spring. More daylight each day. It could cheer people up to know they’ve past that point.
I think they just didn’t have as much entertainment to distract them. Or leisure time to waste. Modern man is born just as capable, but in the economically successful parts of the world his circumstances are so much easier he is very much less driven to learn and discover.