questionmark Posted June 30, 2016 #1 Share Posted June 30, 2016 Quote Telescopes as we know them today trace their origins back to the Enlightenment. The earliest such devices emerged about 400 years ago. But humankind has fashioned environments for stargazing for far longer than that. Scholars have long speculated about the astronomical orientation of the Pyramids at Giza, for instance, and the possibility that Stonehenge was built to be a celestial observatory. Read more on The Atlantic I posted this because the conclusions are a curiosity, not because I concur. Still interesting. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PersonFromPorlock Posted July 1, 2016 #2 Share Posted July 1, 2016 Assuming dolmens were built to limit the field of view to a small area of the sky, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to build them of, say, vegetation? Amerindian long houses were produced from wood with stone tools, after all. Even if the wood part needed replacing over time, a stone 'doorframe' and a rock to position the observer's eye is all that a 'permanent' observatory would need. Well, maybe they thought the extra effort pleased the gods. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozfactor Posted July 3, 2016 #3 Share Posted July 3, 2016 On 01/07/2016 at 10:49 AM, PersonFromPorlock said: Assuming dolmens were built to limit the field of view to a small area of the sky, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to build them of, say, vegetation? Amerindian long houses were produced from wood with stone tools, after all. Even if the wood part needed replacing over time, a stone 'doorframe' and a rock to position the observer's eye is all that a 'permanent' observatory would need. Well, maybe they thought the extra effort pleased the gods. I thought the same, but maybe these dolmens were constructed to have multiple purposes, they would have been perfect for also taking shelter in from the weather and for storing things . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hanslune Posted July 3, 2016 #4 Share Posted July 3, 2016 Hmmm why would you us a tomb for 'observations'. I think they might be stretching this one a bit. The sky is full of dots - anything pointed towards said sky will always point to certain number of dots. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightly Posted July 4, 2016 #5 Share Posted July 4, 2016 On June 30, 2016 at 8:44 AM, questionmark said: I posted this because the conclusions are a curiosity, not because I concur. Still interesting. ok, not exactly a "telescope" but they're saying the structures function as optical aids in star gazing. That is interesting. Researchers are focusing on the alignment of the stars with megalithic tombs—stone structures known as dolmens that feature long narrow entrances that act as apertures, essentially zooming in on stars and planets that wouldn’t always be visible from the outside. “These structures could therefore have been the first astronomical tools to support the watching of the skies, millennia before telescopes were invented,” the Royal Astronomical Society wrote in an statement announcing the research on Wednesday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
questionmark Posted July 4, 2016 Author #6 Share Posted July 4, 2016 1 minute ago, lightly said: ok, not exactly a "telescope" but they're saying the structures function as optical aids in star gazing. That is interesting. Researchers are focusing on the alignment of the stars with megalithic tombs—stone structures known as dolmens that feature long narrow entrances that act as apertures, essentially zooming in on stars and planets that wouldn’t always be visible from the outside. “These structures could therefore have been the first astronomical tools to support the watching of the skies, millennia before telescopes were invented,” the Royal Astronomical Society wrote in an statement announcing the research on Wednesday. That would neither be new nor a revolutionary discovery but a fact established at least a century ago. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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