Related papers: Origins of Megalithic Astronomy in Britain
It has already been empirically verified that for many Bronze Age monuments erected in Scotland between 1400-900 BC, there was a concerted effort on behalf of the builders to align their monuments to astronomical bodies on the horizon. It…
I discuss various aspects of archeoastronomy concentrating on physical artifacts (i.e., not including ethno-archeoastronomy) focusing on the period that ended about 2000 years ago. I present examples of artifacts interpreted as showing the…
Sundials and gnomons pointing out dates and times are a beautiful reminder of how we understand the movement of the Sun and use it to structure day and year. They also encapsulate the basic astronomical knowledge and concepts of the…
The tumuli of Newgrange and Knowth in Ireland are among the most monumental heritages of the Neolithic era. The megalithic constructions date back to around 3'200 BC, centuries before the completion of Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.…
Astronomical observations were used as a marker for time and the Calendar from ancient times. A more subtle calibration of epochs is thrown up by an observation of the position of the solstices and equinoxes, because these points shift in…
The history of astrometry, the branch of astronomy dealing with the positions of celestial objects, is a lengthy and complex chronicle, having its origins in the earliest records of astronomical observations more than two thousand years…
The problem of localization of megalithic memorials on the Earth surface is investigated. It is pointed on existence of Great Belt of megalithic observatories - of con- centration of astronomically significant objects near geographical…
We present a mathematical model, based on the compilation and statistical processing of radiocarbon dates, of the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, from about 7,000 to 4,000 BC in Europe. The arrival of the Neolithic is…
In the eighth century BC something peculiar seems to happen on Sicily. The archaeological record starts to show the arrival of Greek material culture. By the fifth century BC the island is effectively 'Hellenised' and ancient historians…
The structure, formation and evolution of the Universe were some of the main topics in the scientific debates during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. They involved novel ideas on the cosmos, which concerned aspects that were not…
The stone alignment 'Nilurallu' at Murardoddi is a megalithic monument containing standing stones of 12 to 16 feet high that are arranged somewhat in a squarish pattern. This is one of the stone alignments listed by Allchin (1956) as a…
We examine the historical development of astrophysical science in Antarctica from the early 20th century until today. We find three temporally overlapping eras, each having a rather distinct beginning. These are the astrogeological era of…
Ever deeper and wider lookback surveys have led to a fairly robust outline of the cosmic star formation history, which culminated around z~2 -- a period often nicknamed "cosmic noon." Our knowledge about star-forming galaxies at these…
A convergence of ideas, observations and technology have led to the greatest period of cosmological discovery yet. Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of our Universe. We are now challenged to make sense of what…
The interdisciplinary topic of archaeo-astronomy links science subjects such as astronomy with archaeology and sociology to explore how ancient societies perceived the heavens above. This is achieved by analysing ancient sites such as…
If the Universe is dominated by cold dark matter and dark energy as in the currently popular LCDM cosmology, it is expected that large scale structures form gradually, with galaxy clusters of mass M > ~10^14 Msun appearing at around 6 Gyrs…
This is a historian's view of how modern astronomy data can be used to discuss the shifting historical worldview of Late Antiquity. In this article an attemp is made to construct an approximate model of how the cycles of astronomical…
This paper presents a necessarily incomplete review of the evolution of cosmology since the first Astro/Cosmo Moriond meeting in 1981. I trace the journey from the classical Big Bang model based on three pillars -- universe expansion,…
We present a mark correlation analysis of the galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using weights provided by MOPED. The large size of the sample permits statistically significant statements about how galaxies with different…
A unique triangular shaped monolith located within the Peak District National Park at Gardom's Edge could be intentionally astronomically aligned. It is set within a landscape rich in late Neolithic and Bronze Age remains. We show that the…