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How did ancient cultures know when the solstice was? If you didn't tell me it was the 21st, I don't know how I'd be able to tell you other than by carefully measuring the sunrise and sunset times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice#Solstice_determinatio...
my modern equivalent(I needed last year for surfing (after i needed to cut a surf trip short as it became night)) https://daylight.franzai.com/
For a modern equivalent, the first thing that came to my mind was Manhattanhenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanhenge
How did ancient cultures know when the solstice was? If you didn't tell me it was the 21st, I don't know how I'd be able to tell you other than by carefully measuring the sunrise and sunset times
You and I personally may not have kept track, but our local religious leader did, and maybe the even staged a ceremony at the winter solstice to ask the sun to make the days longer.
These are all over the place in Norway (as are they everywhere else, presumably!) When we moved to the island we currently live on, our address was in a road called 'Solsteinen' (The Sun Stone), but I didn't think anything of it until I realized that the roughly hewn stone serving as the property limit marker was juuu-uuust touched by the sun on Winter Solstice. Aha. A quick call to the local archaeologist confirmed…
> as are they everywhere else, presumably! They aren't "all over the place" in the US, and I certainly don't have a local archaeologist that I can just call up. FWIW: The Northeastern US is quite recent with human presence. It wasn't settled until after the last ice age. Pretty much anything old is celebrated because there is so little of anything old.
Don't take the above as a sign that the natives were uninteresting or stupid. Just that they didn't leave much for us to learn from, both because they couldn't and because what they did was destroyed.
How did ancient cultures know when the solstice was? If you didn't tell me it was the 21st, I don't know how I'd be able to tell you other than by carefully measuring the sunrise and sunset times
It seems unintuitive today because people living in cities and towns don’t usually see sunrises and sunsets from where they live. If you had a way to easily reference the sunrise and sunset points against known horizon, it’d be very easy to tell.
How did ancient cultures know when the solstice was? If you didn't tell me it was the 21st, I don't know how I'd be able to tell you other than by carefully measuring the sunrise and sunset times
1. Go out every morning to work in your field. 2. When the Sun rises, make a note on the same fixed piece of wood, e.g., a fence. 3. Observe the leftmost and rightmost positions, these are your solstices. 4 You can now use your fence to identify and predict solstices.
Also fun fact: date of latest sunrise is slightly out of phase with seasons https://xkcd.com/2792/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ohio was populated with numerous earthworks, the Hopewell Earthworks finally being recognized as a UNESCO world heritage spot after being preserved for years by being used as a golf course. Unfortunately many of these have been lost as European settlers destroyed many of them. This continues to this day as Google is building a data center in central Ohio a top of land that was home to numerous native american burial…
Has no one on Google's datacenter leadership team so much as SEEN a horror movie before?
How did ancient cultures know when the solstice was? If you didn't tell me it was the 21st, I don't know how I'd be able to tell you other than by carefully measuring the sunrise and sunset times
After you notice that, if you want more precision, it's the day the Sun rises and sets most on the North/South. It's also the day things cast the largest shadow at noon. You will need some special device to get very precise on the sun raising position (like a pair of stones or something with a hole), and you won't be able to get precision on the shadow thing.
For more modern people, starting about only half a dozen millennia ago, it's the hour the Sun stops moving North/South within the stars and starts moving the other way around. You will need to look at it and take notes many times, and average things out to get any precision. Even more because you can't see the Sun and the stars at the same time, so you have to model them.
These are all over the place in Norway (as are they everywhere else, presumably!) When we moved to the island we currently live on, our address was in a road called 'Solsteinen' (The Sun Stone), but I didn't think anything of it until I realized that the roughly hewn stone serving as the property limit marker was juuu-uuust touched by the sun on Winter Solstice. Aha. A quick call to the local archaeologist confirmed…
These are all over the place in Norway (as are they everywhere else, presumably!) When we moved to the island we currently live on, our address was in a road called 'Solsteinen' (The Sun Stone), but I didn't think anything of it until I realized that the roughly hewn stone serving as the property limit marker was juuu-uuust touched by the sun on Winter Solstice. Aha. A quick call to the local archaeologist confirmed…
> as are they everywhere else, presumably! They aren't "all over the place" in the US, and I certainly don't have a local archaeologist that I can just call up. FWIW: The Northeastern US is quite recent with human presence. It wasn't settled until after the last ice age. Pretty much anything old is celebrated because there is so little of anything old.
Your "local archeologist" is one of the staff at the state historic preservation society [0], though you'll likely have more luck contacting a local university archeologist if you find anything.
[0] https://www.ohiohistory.org/preserving-ohio/state-historic-p...