Every nation and every culture, before and after recorded history, created some type of sacred bond between heaven and earth. These sites could have begun as a life giving spring bubbling up from the ground or where a huge sacred oak was the most prominent object on a landscape. It was here the people gathered for sacred rituals and seasonal rites. Evenutally a structure would be erected to honor the sacred nature of a place. If the site became an important focal point to a people, a megalithic structure was quite often erected as a communal project. The Great Pyramids of Egypt in Africa, Stonehenge in England and Newgrange in Ireland are the most well known.
There are even sacred sites here in the Americas...
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STARHENGE
Colorado Plateau
Flagstaff Arizona 2010
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STARHENGE
The vision of S. Nelson and C.Luginbuhl will become a reality in the next few years.
Starhenge will be an interactive artwork and observatory consisting of a 72 foot diameter series of standing stones with a 23 foot Portal Monolith at the center. Surrounding the standing stones will be a 300 foot Henge and Spiral earthwork to connect Colorado Plateau to the sun, moon, and stars for daily and seasonal alignments.
Keep checking back for the latest progress reports on this exciting project
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Ohio Valley - Circa 200 CE
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Some 3,000 years ago, the Adena people of the Ohio valley began building conical grave mounds. The tradition continued with the Hopewell people, and around 200 CE they built mounds of such precision and of such size that they are best viewed from the sky. These gigantic geometric earthworks were usually built in pairs and connected by parallel walls.In Newark, there is a typical prehistoric monument consisting of an octagon and a circle whose diameter is over 3000 feet. The method used to calculate and create such precise geometric shapes on such a large scale can be found by studying the heavens.
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As the Hopewell charted the path of the moon throughout the year, they saw that it didn’t rise and set in the same place each night. They also kept track of the moon’s risings and settings that occurred at different points along the horizon over a period of 18.61 years. Eight of the rising and setting points marked the necessary lines that created coordinates for mapping out the geometric design of the Newark earthworks. Thus, the monumental creation became a lunar calendar that marked the progress of the moon and the passage of time. Once again, human beings had forged a link between the earth, the heavens and themselves.
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The astronomical significance of this site is that it is aligned with the sun and the seasons. There is place on each coil of the serpent at which a point of celestial illumination occurred throughout the year.
Each point represented the equinoxes and the solstices and the coming seasons. It has also been suggested that the seven loops of its body and tightly winding tail represent the seven stars of Ursa Minor and their annual rotation around the pole star.
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One of the most interesting earthworks lies next to Bush Creek, Adams County, Ohio. It is the Great Serpent mound and it is the most famous earthwork in North America and the largest serpent image in the world.
It measures 1,254 feet in length along its curves, and it was built on the edge of an inner crater, within an outer crater four miles wide that was created by the impact of a meteorite. The area contains a magnetic anomaly that was produced by the impact and to this day, a compass won’t work around the site.
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Besides the monumental earthworks, the ancient peoples of North America created other remarkable sites such as Pueblo Bonito, in northwest New Mexico. The pueblo sits at the west end of Chaco Canyon and is a five story D-shaped complex that is accurately oriented with the cardinal directions. It is the largest prehistoric dwelling in the Southwest and once sheltered six thousand people. Within its walls sits a clan house, or kiva. It was a ceremonial house where a sunwatcher kept track of light that shined through a small slit in the wall.
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The shaman would watch a ray of sunlight shine through the slot and strike a place on the wall opposite to the entry point. As the sun traveled across the sky changing positions each day, the ray of light traced the yearly path of the sun.
At the south entrance of the canyon sits another site near the top of Fajada Butte.
It is there that three large slabs of rock stand upright next to a wall.
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On this wall is a large spiral carved into the stone. As the sun moves across the sky, a slit between the slabs of rock create a dagger of light that moves straight down the cliff wall and intersects the spiral on the summer solstice.
At the equinoxes, the dagger of light moves to the right of center. At the winter solstice, two daggers appear - one to the left of the spiral, and one to the right.
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There are many medicine wheels of stone and wood, from America to Canada, designed to measure the sun’s passage and certain stars risings. One of these well-known astronomically oriented wheels is one top of Medicine Mountain in the Bighorn Mountains west of Sheridan, Wyoming. This wheel is a crude construction of sandstone fragments whose rocks are aligned to the sunrise and sunset at the summer solstice. It has been suggested that some alignments were directed at particularly bright stars at the time of its estimated construction between 1500 and 1700 CE.
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Due to sever winter weather in this part of Wyoming, this site is accessible only in the summer. No matter how difficult or remote, humankind has always sought the counsel of the skies.
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