Folk memory could have guided archaeologists: "But the astronomical mysteries of Newgrange run much deeper than all this. In 1958, in his book about primitive mythology, Joseph Campbell recounted a folk tale from the Boyne Valley in which a local had told him the light of the Morning Star, Venus, shone into the chamber of Newgrange at dawn on one day every eight years and cast a beam upon a stone on the floor of the chamber containing two worn sockets. This might seem like an incredible suggestion, except for the fact that it is astronomically accurate. Venus follows an eight-year cycle and on one year out of every eight, it rises in the pre-dawn sky of winter solstice and its light would be able to be seen from within the chamber. Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, authors of Uriel’s Machine, suggest that a series of eight x-shaped markings on the lintel stone of the aperture above the entrance of Newgrange – the so-called ‘roof box’ which allows light into the chamber – represent the eight-year cycle of Venus. However, they were not aware when writing their wonderful book of the story that had been told to Joseph Campbell about the Morning Star shining into the chamber. How did local people living in the Boyne Valley in the 1950s come into the possession of knowledge describing an astronomical phenomenon that was likely to have taken place at Newgrange in the ancient past? This is a question not easily answered by archaeologists. No-one could have witnessed Venus in the chamber of Newgrange in the middle of the twentieth century because not only had the passage roof subsided, but the whole roof box aperture was completely blocked up with soil and grass, as is evidenced from photographs of the time. Indeed, it is unlikely that anybody had seen light from either the sun or Venus shining into the chamber of Newgrange since entrance was rediscovered in 1699. It would have been impossible, given the structural condition of the monument, to view such an occurrence." 2012indyinfo/2013/09/04/newgrange-and-the-boyne- valley-monuments-advanced-lunar-calculations-and-observation-of-the-effects-of-precession-of-equinoxes-in-neolithic-ireland-part-1-ancient-origins/ rmic
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 21:38:33 +0000
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