Aboriginal Sundial Pre-Dates Stonehenge 145
brindafella writes "Look out, Stonehenge, here come the Wurdi Youang rocks in the Australian state of Victoria. The semi-circle of stones has been examined by an astrophysicist from Australia's premier research group, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), who says this arrangement of rocks is a carefully aligned solar observatory that may be 10,000 years old. It would have been created by local Aborigines, the Wathaurong people, who have occupied the area for some 25,000 years."
Re:Sloppy Half-circle (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you who would actually read TFA if it were available:
N258: Wurdi Youang: An Australian Aboriginal Stone Circle with possible solar indications.
Ray P. Norris, Priscilla M. Norris, Duane W. Hamacher, and John Morieson , 2010, To be submitted to Archaeoastronomy Journal
From the Authors webpage:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rnorris/
Stonehenge isn't even the oldest in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
More details from the CSIRO (Score:5, Informative)
10,000 years, that's nothing--- (Score:4, Informative)
Try 75,000 years old, in Africa.
http://www.adamscalendar.com/pages/michael-tellinger.php [adamscalendar.com]
Well, the guy might be a bit of a loon. Apparently he believes in little green men in flying saucers too, but the stone circle is apparently real.
Older than Stonhenge (Score:4, Informative)
This is nothing special or new - there are loads of stone circles and other landscape features which pre-date stonehenge and are astronomically aligned. Stonehenge isn't even the best stone circle in the area.
If you want to get up close to the stones and see a proper ancient landscape then head up to Avebury instead.
You have the village inside the huge circle, the other circles, the avenues, Silbury Hill, the Kennet Long Barrows, The Sanctuary.
All together Avebury is a much better AND cheaper stone circle complex to visit than stonehenge.
Re:Sloppy Half-circle (Score:5, Informative)
Don't the precessions influence the relative position of the sun and Earth in a way that would be significant after 10k years, meaning that something on Earth aligned with a specific Sun position at a specific time of the year now would not be valid 10k years ago, and conversely?
Yes, but that only changes the positions relative to the stars. Precession means the rotation axis of the earth changes the way it points, but the axis is the same. North is always the same direction, apart from a relatively small polar motion.