Oldest Lunar Calendar Found In Scotland

First time accepted submitter eionmac writes "The BBC reports that Archaeologists believe they have discovered the world's oldest lunar 'calendar' in an Aberdeenshire field. Excavations of a field at Crathes Castle found a series of 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar months. A team led by the University of Birmingham suggests the ancient monument was created by hunter-gatherers about 10,000 years ago. The pit alignment, at Warren Field, was first excavated in 2004. The experts who analyzed the pits said they may have contained a wooden post. The Mesolithic calendar is thousands of years older than previous known formal time-measuring monuments created in Mesopotamia. The analysis has been published in the journal Internet Archaeology."

Re:The more they study it ...

[PmanAce]

Who is claiming everything started with the Egyptians?

Re:The more they study it ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Recorded history begins with Egyptians because they were the first ones to record history in an enduring medium still readable after 5000 years. Chinese might have recorded history but it was probably lost. Indians don't have the habit of recording much. Most of Indian history comes from the records of Greeks [wikipedia.org] Chinese [wikipedia.org] or fragmentary stone inscriptions on temples and carved pillars.

But before recorded history we have some reconstructed history from artifacts. Tracing the histories of domesticated plants and animals also give us some insight into earlier histories. Then there is genetic and DNA research. As our technology improves we get greater insights and better reconstructed history. For example, now we can now answer when we started wearing clothes. http://scienceandreason2.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/when-did-humans-start-wearing-clothes/ [wordpress.com]

So we are not simply going to say it started with the Egyptians. We will say it started with the Africans.

Re:The more they study it ...

[argStyopa]

I've found that people today are generally very dismissive of early cultures, as if 'primitive' was synonymous with stupid.

Personally, in terms of raw horsepower (and conceding that these early people would likely have much more broadly suffered early childhood illnesses, malnutrition, and such that would generally impair higher functions) I suspect early peoples were generally much MORE intelligent than we are today.

Of course, it could be that they weren't so constantly distracted. I'd think about this more, but I think someone just texted me.

Re:The more they study it ...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

(I really love the episode where he doesn't even take the hint from some Oxbridge geneticist that around 80% of the English population are of Celtic descent..)

Certainly you're mistaken. The majority of English genetic material, as far as I know, is actually of pre-Celtic descent. Both the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon element were mostly cultural admixtures rather than large-scale population movements. Certainly no genocide of the original population took place. Or am I wrong?

...WHAT? Mick is dead? Fuck me. Fuck me again. :(