Arcadia Discussion Zone

I have been a member of an archaeoastronomy group for many years. It is a closed group and to be allowed to join you have to show a reasonable degree of knowledge of the subject and ability to understand the concepts of astronomy. The exclusivity is necessary because of the many time-wasters with no real knowledge but plenty of unsubtantiated opinions who would otherwise swamp the real work that is going on. Many repeated pictures of sunsets, Rudstone and a man in baggy trousers would have you thrown out pretty damned smartish, even if you got in.

One of the members of this quiet but exclusive group is James Q Jacobs, who has been investigating an area that I have not seen discussed anywhere else. He calls this area of research Archaeogeodesy, which he defines as:

That area of study encompassing prehistoric and ancient place determination, navigation (on land or water), point positioning, measure and representation of the earth, geodynamic phenomena, and the applied astronomy. Archaeogeodesy, by combining fundamental astronomy, geodetic knowledge, applied mathematics, accurate positional data and archaeology, presents a methodology for investigating the architecture, placements, spatial properties, relationships and arrangements of prehistoric sites and monuments. As a new area of inquiry, archaeogeodesy presents unique avenues of assessing ancient understandings of geography, of place, and of the earth and the cosmos as evidenced by archaeological remains.

In short James is investigating the siting and positions of ancient monuments from all over the world, many from large stone building cultures (ie megalithic). He is seeing correlations and angular displacements between monuments globally, that suggest either a cultural connection or a common tapping into something that is lost to us today.

This something may well be related to the earth's magnetic field, vibrations of various frequencies. Higgs-Bosons and dark matter for all I know.

James can seriously do the maths, shows his exact location coordinates, the published sources for these where he has not been able to do his own research. He also publishes his findings in the form of Excel spreadsheets.

Happily he includes the Ure-Swale monuments which include the Thornborough henges, to the east of which area is the Rudstone which Roscoe loves so much, sitting in the churchyard as he rightly says many surviving UK megaliths are.

James has some interesting things to say about Göbekli Tepe. He says:

It was more explicit associations with astromony that caught my attention with reference to Harran, an ancient center on the great plain south of Göbekli Tepe.

Harran is renowned as a Sabaean center associated with a moon "temple" and as an earlier Sumerian center. Harran was an important, once-populous prehistoric crossroad. I noticed Harran's latitude is 36.87 degrees, the acute angle of a 3:4:5 geodetic triangle (3/4 arc tangent = 36.8699°). Was knowledge of the latitude considered in locating a moon temple at Harran? When is a "moon temple" an observatory? When is idolatry exact science?

At this point the Old World had captured my attention once again, distracting from great pueblo geometry near the same latitude. The history/myth of Mesopotamia holds that Ur and Harran are two important, related Sumerian centers, both associated with the moon. I checked the Ur ziggurat, at 30.963 degrees. At first I did not notice colatitude equals 5/3 arctangent (atan). Colatitude is the distance to the nearest pole, a geodetic reference point. Latitude references the equator, the mid-poles plane perpendicular to the rotation axis. The local level plane at Harran intersects the rotation axis at a 4/3 atan angle, forming a 3:4:5 right triangle, as does latitude in relation to the equator and geodetic center.

Summarizing, colatitude at Harran equals 4/3 atan and at Ur 5/3 atan, while latitude at Harran equals 3/4 atan and at Ur 3/5 atan. Perhaps these "idolators" were doing astronomy? Lucky me, astronomy is not punishable idolatry anymore.

Getting to why I did not notice the Ur colatitude right off, I checked latitude first because the precise value for pi caught my eye in the conversion table. We live in a 360 degree world, probably due to ancient astronomers in this region. Cultures also invent 365 degree worlds, as known from the history of astronomy in China. Divide earth's circumference by days per solar orbit (0.98561° = SO), multiply by 10 pi, and the result is the latitude of the Ur ziggurat, or 30.9638° = 31.4159 SO. This 10x version of pi caught my eye, distracting from the latitude tangents. But, I digress with this precise pi coincidence given a 365.25 degree world.

I turned next back to Göbekli Tepe and Harran. The sites are apparently intervisible, just over 40 km apart. The difference in latitude from Harran to Göbekli Tepe equals precisely 1/1,000 of earth's circumference. This is where we enter a twilight zone in ancient astronomy. Of course, the opposite metaphor is the proper one regarding the inference, "the dawn" of ancient astronomy. Also, Göbekli Tepe features the oldest known room aligned north-south.

Even non-archaeos understand stratification and deposition basics—deeper is older. Göbekli Tepe is 12,000 years old. Harran is equated with Abraham of biblical fame, and with Ur of Sumeria, the "Civilized Land" and a "cradle of civilization." That cradle and astronomy is presumed to be 4,000 to 5,000 years old, not 12,000. Harran is located at 3/4 atan latitude, a fixed parameter, and Göbekli Tepe is at a specific latitude difference north. Because the fixed parameter must come first, the conundrum, of course, is that this precise 1/1,000 of circumference latitude difference is either coincidence, or ancient astronomy just took a leap back to 12,000 years ago.

Anyway, that's how I came to notice the latitudes and colatitudes of Ur and Harran, excitement enough without entering twilight zones of inference and interpretation. But if I must, I might argue the Ur and Harran "moon temples" evidence a relationship to astronomy and precise knowledge of geodesy. In other words, what we call exact sciences.

You can read about Geodesy here: http://jqjacobs.net/astro/aegeo.html

You can read his full article about Göbekli Tepe here: http://jqjacobs.net/blog/gobekli_tepe.html

whoops_john wrote There are those in the archaeoastronomy group who doubt James's findings have validity, as they also might doubt if asked to believe that megaliths were connected in some way with waveforms and the shedding of sacrificial blood or earth currents.

higher mathamatics and such detailed astronomy to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers] its [not scientific fact, its speculation;

whoop_john wrote -James Q Jacobs does have quite a revolutionary theory. I think he is out on quite a limb with it and many won't share his enthusiasm. It's an avenue of exploration nevertheless which he believes is worthwhile and another approach.

whoop_john wrote - I don't know why people built such monumental structures, all over the world, involving such large heaving of masonry about, for millennia. It must surely have had a purpose other than simply to show status or impress. Whether they were devotional things in the cause of shared beliefs or had more practical purposes which really worked, such as channelling energy for healing or something I don't know. They may have been initiatory in nature, perhaps to induce states of higher consciousness. On a regular basis or as a one-off event at puberty. I don't really like to speculate personally, but I love and respect all these places as works of art and products of mankind's ingenuity. The fact that engineers today cannot fathom out how some of them could ever have been built gives us cause to marvel.

....i think you need to factor in that these sites are way older than we are led to believe...a whole other lifetime/civilisation ago, when the sea levels and land masses where not as we see them today.

Such as Doggerland, now beneath the waves of the North Sea.

I am saying that there are those with the understanding and capability of assessing astronomy, doing the sums, knowing which measurements can be trusted and which cannot.

None of us are, to my knowledge, members of any Masonic lodge, not that that would have any relevance to the work in which we are involved, which is looking at archaeological sites and ascertaining where there might be astronomical alignments that indicate to us that the ancients knew about such things.'

As for knowledge-filtering, the archaeoastronomy group is a discussion group who runs ideas around and assesses them among themselves until there is a sufficient case for releasing them to a wider audience, which indeed happens where something interesting of value emerges. Those that are invited to assess such theories critically within the group have to have the necessary background knowledge in order to do so. The research is private, thus there has to be trust within the group not to release the unpublished work of others until they themselves choose to do so.

The distance from Beer Sheba to Harran, on the plain south of Gobekli Tepe, is 735.5km. What are you telling me?

I think perhaps Jacob was headed to a different Haran.

Of all the posts and all the allegations you've brought to this forum, I would say that this is the only one which you have proven irrevocably and beyond the shadow of a doubt.

The Isle of Britain was still part of mainland Europe not that long ago...history gets closer everyday...forget the huge expanse of time you were taught at school and bring it right up close....read up on the Storegga underwater Slides.
Northern Europe Shorelines circa 15-12000 BC. Britain was part of Europe - no sea separating Britain from France, Germany, Denmark.... The Thames and the Rhine were tributaries of a single river that flowed through what would someday be the English Channel... flowed out to the edge of the continental shelf and the Atlantic Ocean. What's now the North Sea was dry land - Doggerland, named after the undersea rise known as the Dogger Banks. It was a landscape of grasslands and light forest; hills with streams and rivers that eroded valleys over centuries. It was land that was roamed by herds of bison, deer and horses.

Northern Europe Shorelines circa 15-12000 BC.

I cannot do it for the same reason you cannot do it. Because:

1] You don't give any sensible observer position, often called the backsight. A window in the Tour d'Alchemie with about a 90 degree angle of vision won't do - you might as well say it was anywhere.

2] You don't give the declination to your sun position.

3] You don't give the azimuth to your sun position.

4] You don't give the average humidity at your place on the horizon around the dates of the year you might be interested in, or any atmospheric correction factor whatsoever.

5] You are unable to give or assess any date in history for the events you describe, to allow adjustments for precession to be made.

6] You cannot give any indication as to which distant horizon feature anchors this foresight.

7] You cannot give any indication as to which part of the sunrise event is meant to be taken, first flash, sitting on the horizon or some other place in between.

I am also unable to do it personally because past experience has taught me that every single fact you have given in the past has been flawed in some major way and the personal effort is not worthwhile. Your latest Beer Sheba to Harran idea is the latest example - a distance of 40 kms being out by a whole 695.5 km. Classic stuff.

From THe Secret by Henry Lincoln and Erling Haagensen

Plan of Oesterlas church Bornholn. The line represents the expected angle of the sunrise on the Summer Solstice. The angle will be 23.5 degrees north of due west. 23.5 degrees is the angle used within the Celtic Cross. read Golden Thread of Time

21st June is in the zodiac sign of Cancer.


Henry Lincoln shows a recess in the inner wall of the church opposite the slits in the two outer walls where he expects the sunbeam to appear.


Sunrise on 21st June - Summer Solstice.


The sun beam appears through the outer slit.


The sun beam, after going through two slits, appears over the predicted point where there an object now missing from the hole had previously been hung.

This only occurs on the Summer solstice. The point where the sun is overhead the Tropic of Cancer.
An Octopus represents the Constellation of Cancer in the early Greek Zodiac.




Le Serpent Rouge


The light from the Equinox falls on Le Poulpe.

See The Viking Serpent

Sheila wrote - ....i think you need to factor in that these sites are way older than we are led to believe...a whole other lifetime/civilisation ago, when the sea levels and land masses where not as we see them today.

whoops_john wrote - "Which you can state unequivocally is... what exactly?

"The Times History of the World; New Edition" 1999, page 38 quote - "The earliest changes visible in the archaeological records relate not to food production but to social relations." With more "...investment of labour in more substantial and more permanent structures, but also in the growth of ritual, an important factor in social cohesion. Indeed it is possible that this "symbolic revolution" [my emphasis] was of greater immediate significance than the economic changes we associate with the origins of agriculture."

Genesis 12:5
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.

A good place to start to understand the factors necessary to measure alignment angles is this book:

Tombs, Temples and their Orientations: A New Perspective on Mediterranean Prehistory
http://www.archaeoastronomy.co/ocarinabooks/tto.html

It discusses the methods of surveying and measurement and the degree of accuracy he used to measure alignments at over 2,500 prehistoric stone tombs and sanctuaries across Southern France, Spain, Portugal, the Balearics, Malta & Gozo, Corsica, Sardinia, Pantelleria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco., with descriptions of the sites, and general trends in orientation.

A corpus Mensarum at the end gives exact Azimuth, Altitude, Latitude and Declination for each site.

It's not too dry a book to read and is a good introduction to serious research in the areas we have been discussing.

whoops_john wrote - A good place to start to understand the factors necessary to measure alignment angles is this book:
Tombs, Temples and their Orientations: A New Perspective on Mediterranean Prehistory
http://www.archaeoastronomy.co/ocarinabooks/tto.html
It discusses the methods of surveying and measurement and the degree of accuracy he used to measure alignments at over 2,500 prehistoric stone tombs and sanctuaries across Southern France, Spain, Portugal, the Balearics, Malta & Gozo, Corsica, Sardinia, Pantelleria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco., with descriptions of the sites, and general trends in orientation.
A corpus Mensarum at the end gives exact Azimuth, Altitude, Latitude and Declination for each site.
It's not too dry a book to read and is a good introduction to serious research in the areas we have been discussing.