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Ancient burial place turns out to be lunar calendar as well

Denyse O'Leary
October 12, 2011
Human evolution, Intelligent Design, News
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General plan of the early Celtic burial mound with sky constellations.

From “Early Celtic ‘Stonehenge’ Discovered in Germany’s Black Forest” (ScienceDaily, Oct. 11, 2011), we learn:

A huge early Celtic calendar construction has been discovered in the royal tomb of Magdalenenberg, nearby Villingen-Schwenningen in Germany’s Black Forest. … The order of the burials around the central royal tomb fits exactly with the sky constellations of the Northern hemisphere.

With the help of special computer programs, Dr. Allard Mees, researcher at the Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseum, could reconstruct the position of the sky constellations in the early Celtic period and following from that those which were visible at Midsummer. This archaeo-astronomic research resulted in a date of Midsummer 618 BC, which makes it the earliest and most complete example of a Celtic calendar focused on the moon.

Apparently, after the Romans took over, they replaced the moon-based calendar with their sun-based one, and these calendar stone circles fell into disuse.

See also: National Geographic: Site shows religion, not agriculture, prehistoric organizing force

and

Antikythera – an ancient mechanical instrument

It’s sobering to reflect on the many instances of progress of one kind or another just getting buried. Maybe there’s something in PayPal CEO Peter Thiel’s concern for today: “Is technological progress slowly winding down?” The main thing to see is that numerous times in history that did happen, and doubtless there were symptoms.

Comments
Evidence for Neolithic people in Germany with an interest in such matters was reported 8 years ago here: Circles for Space German "Stonehenge" marks oldest observatory By Madhusree Mukerjee Scientific American, December 08, 2003 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=circles-for-space In the UK, there has always been resistance to the idea that the Neolithic communities were capable of recording anything of an astronomical nature, partly because of a presumption that culture evolves gradually and partly because getting convincing proof after 5 or 6 thousand years of wear and tear is hard. However, the evidences are not just in structures like this - but in evidences of trade, sophisticated construction, mining, sea-faring skills, and so on. I hope one day, archaeologists will abandon a Darwinian approach to cultural development and address the evidence with more open minds.David Tyler
October 12, 2011
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As to accuracy of calenders, it may surprise some to learn that the ancient biblical ‘prophetic’ calender of 360 days, when taking into account it's fairly simple system of 'leap months', is more accurate than our modern day calender that uses 'leap days':
Bible Prophecy Year of 360 Days Excerpt: Is the Biblical 'prophetic' calender more accurate than our modern calender? Surprisingly yes! Excerpt: The first series of articles will show the 360-day (Prophetic) calendar to be at least as simple and as accurate as is our modern (Gregorian) calendar. In the second part of our discussion we will demonstrate how that the 360-day calendar is perfectly exact (as far as our 'scientific' measurements will allow). http://www.360calendar.com/
bornagain77
October 12, 2011
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Truly fascinating. Discoveries like this offer a refreshing perspective on human history and progress. Of course, our atheistic evolutionist friends will tell us that if stone circles like this were a product of self-replication with variation then they obviously made themselves. The only thing obvious about such claims is that they are missing the bleedin' obvious!Chris Doyle
October 12, 2011
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