Monday, September 23, 2013

Göbekli Tepe marked dog star's appearance in Anatolian sky


The circular stone enclosures known as the temple at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey remain the oldest of its kind, dating back to around the 10th millennium B.C.

But Göbekli Tepe may also be the world's oldest science building.

Giulio Magli of the Polytechnic University of Milan hypothesizes it may have been built due to the “birth” of a “new” star; the brightest star and fourth brightest object of the sky, what we call Sirius (Greek for "glowing"). . . .

Precession at the latitude of Göbekli Tepe would have sent Sirius under the viewing horizon of those in ancient Turkey around 15,000 BC, where it remained unseen again until around 9,300 B.C. To those residents it was a new star appearing for the first time. . . .

"The extrapolated mean azimuths of the structures (taken as the mid-lines between the two central monoliths) are estimated as follows":

Structure D 172°
Structure C 165°
Structure B 159°

Those azimuths match the rising azimuths of Sirius: 
Structure D 172° 9,100 BC
Structure C 165° 8,750 BC
Structure B 159° 8,300 BC
From here.

The case that this pre-Neolithic structure was built to track a newly appeared star described above is quite convincing.

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