The Lakota used their constellations and the solar positioning as a calendar. Not so much of when to plant, since they were nomadic, but more of when to be in certain locations. For example, when the sun was in the stars we call Gemini, it was time to go to Devil's Tower for the Sundance. Another constellation represented time to collect red willow in the winter camps to dry for smoking.

etc.

It also was a way that small bands could gather in specific locations at specific times of the year when otherwise they might never run across each other.

Without their constellation calendar, they would not have been able to get together for trading, ceremonies, weddings, and such.

__________________
"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

Would you know your date of average last frost without a calendar?

Average date of first frost?

How do you measure the length of the days without a clock?

__________________
"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

I think I've seen him referenced or quoted before but never have I read him directly.

Thanks!

__________________
"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

I think I could recognize the position of the sun in the sky throughout the course of a year, without knowing it was a "year," and recognize the pattern, yes.
I wouldn't necessarily need a formal system to demarcate the "date."

I think most agriculturalists, or farmers, could as well.

Good question, but what has base 60 to do with farming?

__________________
"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Yes, and that would require you to mark the position of the sun. Something that the post I was replying to implied was not necessary.

Again, I was replying to RalofTyr, and I was asking how he could measure the length of the days accurately. I mentioned clocks because that is how we do it today, however, ancients did not have clocks and so they would have needed to measure the position of sunrise or sunset. Unless RalofTyr has another method.

__________________
"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

Well, the case for alignments has been overstated somewhat, so perhaps I should give a more skeptical view. Stonehenge for instance, could have been built around just one alignment, the alignment with mid-summer sunrise, and the rest of the stones arranged geometrically around that alignment would have lined up by chance with other celestial events.

My wife has a copy of Hawkins' book 'Stonehenge Decoded', where he used an IBM supercomputer in 1966 to find two dozen alignments at Stonehenge. I would guess that the computer he used was at least a hundred times less powerful than the one in front of the person reading this message on the screen. Hawkins was almost certainly mistaken.

Anyone with a computer can find alignments in a geometric arrangement of stones; that is a real problem with archaeoastronomy. Computer programs which can help the archaoastronomer are easily available now; using Starry Night or Celestia I bet dozens could be found for most circles. They are all, or nearly all, spurious.

Maeshowe is certainly aligned on the midwinter sunrise, as is Newgrange; this is almost certainly deliberate. My wife suggests that even Stonehenge may have been aligned with midwinter sunset rather than midsummer sunrise, as the midwinter events seem to have been more important. Several monuments and circles have at least one alignment of this kind... but the idea (as suggested by Hawkins) that they would be used to 'calculate' anything, such as imminent eclipses, is bunk.

Sometimes quite spectacular alignments occur by chance- for instance Box Tunnel, a railway tunnel built by the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is aligned with sunrise on his birthday. This is almost certainly a coincidence. Archaeoastronomy relies too much on coincidence for my liking.

__________________
Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense- Novella Contest Issue! . OA Flickr set

*cough* sunset *cough*

Otherwise, as I suspected, your opinions on the matter are practically identical to mine.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Oops; I've been inside Maeshowe, but I got that wrong. Newgrange is definitely aligned on the sunrise, though, according to Wiki; I haven't been inside that one.

__________________
Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense- Novella Contest Issue! . OA Flickr set

Many apologies for the act of thread necromancy, but Stonehenge is in the news over here again.

Some archaeologists have publicised their theory about the stones purpose. Not a theory that I think will enjoy much support.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

A place of healing, a place of worship, a cemetery, a place for sacred rituals, a place for oratory and community gathering, an astronomical calender, none of these are mutually exclusive. Stonehenge to me is merely an early work at creating a god-place, a place designed to stir the emotions to a sense of awe and wonder.

__________________

As I posted earlier in the thread, maybe the fact that the stones come from the west of Stonehenge, roughly where the Sun sets, this may mean that it is about reincarnation, either in this world or the next. As the Sun goes down, so a person's life comes to an end, and as the Sun rises the next morning, so a person is reborn in some way.
Maybe people went to Stonehenge for some ritual and the chipped of some stone to take home, and when they died, perhaps were buried with that piece of stone.
Perhaps archaeologists should look out for pieces of this stone where people have been buried; although I suppose that this would have already been noted, if it had happened.

Mike Parker Pearson's theory about Stonehenge is probably the best one I've ever heard. It fits the site (and, crucially, the landscape and nearby sites) perfectly - and the model also applies very well to other ritual landscapes, such as on the Orkneys in Scotland. I'm not sure if he's nailed it down perfectly, but everything he says about these ritual landscapes seems to fit, and make perfect sense.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Why do you think that?

As RC says, such a place will have multiple purposes, both spiritual and practical, just like a Christain cathedral or an Islamic mosque. Healing may have been one.

There is a fascinating animation of the building and collapse of Stonehenge at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7322444.stm
Is this imaginative or based on archeology, does anyone know?

John

To be fair, I've not directly read their reports yet - so I'm only going on what I've read in news reports. There's a TV show on in the UK where their findings are fully explained, so I'll reserve judgement until I've (at the very least) seen that.

However, from the snippets I've read there seem to be far more plausible explanations for every piece of evidence I've seen. Stone fragments, for example, are to my mind likely to be the debris from the stones being dressed on the site rather than religious/healing keep-sakes. Wouldn't people usually take such things away with them, rather than deposit them at the site they came from in the first place, etc..
Indeed. In the "Bronze" and "Iron" Ages, religion was ubiquitous - although there were important, sacred sites for ritual there were no equivalents of churches that people would attend, and then forget about until they went again next week (for example). People lived and breathed their beliefs as part of their day to day lives. These religions are likely to be evolutions of older, far more ancient systems.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

That makes sense. The BBC report doesn't go into that aspect deeply. Perhaps the chips left at the site were not 'keepers'?

Maybe, aye. Once I've seen the TV show (on Saturday) I'll have a better idea of what exactly they're proposing, and once I get my hands on the full reports I'll have an even clearer picture. Also, I expect the subject will crop up in the discussions I regularly have with archaeologists - although these tend to be Scotland focused.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Well, I've seen the TV show and it left me positively underwhelmed.

While I respect the very good work done with regard to (slightly) improving the date and sequence of the site - there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever presented in support of the "place of healing" idea. Plenty conjecture, assumptions and flights of fancy though. I'll have to try to find the formal reports somewhere, perhaps there's more detail and substance in something that's not designed as mass entertainment.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.