One of the primary obstacles that we face in our megalithic research -- an obstacle that is greater than the difficulty of astronomical decipherment of standing stones themselves -- is the lack of a wide, knowledgeable audience.
Many contemporary archaeologists and people in related professions erroneously seem to assume that e.g. megaliths or earthwork mounds erected by prehistoric societies are properly the realm of study of Archaeology, even though most archaeologists seem to know little about megaliths, and even less about astronomy. The sky above is exactly the opposite of their chosen "geo-bound" interest. Who cares about the far distant stars above them? Pots rule.
Similarly, those few researchers who call themselves archaeoastronomers or astroarchaeologists, often do not go beyond elementary solar and lunar considerations, virtually ignoring the starry night of stars -- thus suggesting to us that their understanding of ancient mankind is very limited. We expect little help from their ranks.
We have found, contrary to flawed prevailing directions of research -- research is an area in academics that we taught at the university level -- that the starry night of stars and the ever-present band of the Milky Way DOMINATED ancient society as the domicile of their gods.
As we have written at Megaliths.net
"Megaliths.net is a systematic graphic-supported analysis of
megaliths and megalithic sites around the world which shows that
ancient megalithic sites are land survey sites located by prehistoric
astronomy. As observed by Alice
Cunningham Fletcher (Alice C. Fletcher) in her 1902 publication in
the American
Anthropologist, there is ample evidence that some ancient
cultures, e.g. the Pawnee
in Nebraska, geographically
located their villages according to patterns
seen in stars of the heavens. FLETCHER, A. C. (1902),
STAR
CULT AMONG THE PAWNEE —A PRELIMINARY REPORT. American Anthropologist,
4: 730–736. doi: 10.1525/aa.1902.4.4.02a00050."
However, that knowledge has not seeped into so-called mainstream science. Unless one is shooting rockets into the sky for war or putting new satellites into orbit, the stars are ignored. Indeed, even the Zodiac of stellar groupings has been relegated to the realm of esoteric Astrology. Any hermetic "as above, so below" explanation for prehistoric mankind's cultural focus is not taken seriously.
Sadly, the profession of astronomy itself has not persevered where Archaeology and related professions have dismally failed, thus leaving a "black hole" in science as regards serious research regarding the megaliths and similar constructions.
Paradoxically, so-called modern astronomers and people in related professions spend a lot of resources studying "black holes" in far distant space that bear little relation to human life on Planet Earth, now or ever. A stellar connection for ancient human technology is of no interest to them. Indeed, your average academic astronomer seems no longer to know much about the visible stars -- those that we humans see above with the naked eye. How ancient mankind viewed the wide expanse of the starry sky above them is not a scientific question for modern skywatchers. That is "below them". Their eyes are focused on distant space, where billions are spent on NASA, planetary visits (mostly by machines), and the search for extraterrestrials.
Those same dedicated people, however, seem to consider it lunacy to allege that ancient mankind ALSO had an overriding interest in the stars.
You figure it out, we can't.
Perhaps mainstream scientists just find this entire field to be too difficult for them. Just two months ago we posted Landmarks by the Stars in Ancient Days: Amazonian Pre-Columbian Earthworks & Geoglyphs Represent Stars in the Sky in a Cosmic Geo-Hermetic Stellar Map "As Above, So Below", which contains an explanatory map for perusal by contemporary archaeologist and/or modern astronomer. That posting at our Ancient World Blog has 27 hits thus far. It should be hundreds of times more than that.
Too tough? We post an elementary explanatory visual update below:
and here is how we explained it in the previous posting:
"Why would the ancients have used stars of the starry night to "map" their Earth?
Just imagine trying to make your way in a tropical climate in ancient days. How did you get around and know where you were?
We think stars and landmarks based on stars are the answer.
West
& SW Amazonian Pre-Columbian village mounds viz. earthworks,
geoglyphs and "enclosures" identified by archaeologists are shown here
in our independent decipherment -- not related in any way to the
publications of the archaeologists -- as having been located by the
ancients to represent the Milky Way and corresponding stars in the
stellar constellations Aquila, Sagittarius, [Scorpio perhaps via a
natural mountain formation], Lupus, Centaurus, Crux, Musca, Carina,
Vela, Pyxis, & Puppis. Note that the ancients may have grouped and
designated the respective stars somewhat differently, but the principal
star locations in the sky remain the same nevertheless, concentrating on
the sky's brightest stars by magnitude, which form the "shape" of
artificial star groupings.
The
star correspondences shown below were discovered in December 2020 by
Andis Kaulins after reading an article in Smithsonian magazine about
Amazonian Pre-Columbian mound villages and other earthwork and similar
constructions. See the article by Livia Gershon in Smithsonian
magazine at These Amazonian Villages Were Laid Out Like Clock Faces https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-find-clock-face-layout-amazon-villages-180976553/.
As retained down to this day, we find that the ancients placed their religious "gods" in the heavens, i.e. stellar locations which provided a natural, fixed easily accessible map, which was mirrored geographically on Earth "as above, so below".
Please note that our decipherment star maps -- shown below -- were created using our clips of star maps produced via Starry Night Pro astronomy software, to which we have added explanatory texts, labels, and figures, as necessary.
See http://www.starrynight.com/
In the image below, the upper section shows a geographic map clip by us from
-- a geographic map at Iriarte, J., Robinson, M., de Souza, J., Damasceno, A., da Silva, F., Nakahara, F., Ranzi, A. and Aragao, L., 2020. Geometry by Design: Contribution of Lidar to the Understanding of Settlement Patterns of the Mound Villages in SW Amazonia. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 3(1), pp.151–169. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jcaa.45 --
which
shows the locations of the Amazonian archaeological sites in question,
together with our added star labels and the appropriate Milky Way
section of stars. These identifications were made independently by Andis
Kaulins, Traben-Trarbach, Germany, who is not affiliated in any way
with any of the authors of the article cited above. We use the
geographic map as fair use for research purposes.
In the article cited above, Iriarte et al. mention a possible "cosmic" meaning to the locations, as follows:
"Arranged in symbolically significant ways with no clear hierarchy, the villages' circular layouts may reflect their Indigenous inhabitants' conceptions of the cosmos (Iriarte et al., Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, under CC BY 4.0)".
To that we can
independently add: YES ... the
COSMOS ... We find that the cosmos referred to is comprised of specific
"landmark" stars and sections of the Milky Way of stars visible from
the identified Amazonian locations.
Still too difficult?
-- given the map update further above in this posting???
Take another look at the updated explanatory map.
You want to go contra? Forget it.
It is time for you all to bring your "science" up into the modern age.