91–100 of 104 posts
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
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.
The UK wasn’t permanently settled until the mesolithic either. There are older artifacts like axes, but no monuments.
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
Try making it through a few northern European winters as a pre-modern farmer. I'm sure you will develop a keener interest in measuring these things.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With your app, it seems daylight today in Chicago is the same length as yesterday's solstice, although it starts and ends 30 seconds later. today - 07:18:59 → 16:24:29 = 9:5:30. yesterday - 7:18:23 → 16:23:53 = 9:5:30
Sunrise and sunset aren't in phase (or exactly out of phase). The latest sunrise and the earliest sunset don't happen on the same day and neither happens on the solstice. Not at this northern latitude anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
ha ha ha!, we state the same thing, I think, maybe, but it's the "10's of milliseconds" of inconsistancy that I am refering to, we can measure things in as you well state, a "breathtaking" way, but are then reduced to bieng reality's mad, overworkered, note keepers, and ALL of the clocks are still ALWAYS wrong, with the very definition of time becoming something that we must descibe as "realitys ongoing mistake, that…
Frankly there is nothing woo about it. Even without venturing into the realms of Quantam Mechanics or Chaotic Dynamics, all measurements are, by physical definition, upto the resolution of the measuring instrument. So it always come with inherent +/- error bars. Sometimes these error bars are made explicit, at other times they are elided, often with the assumption that it's obvious. Models are always simplifications.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone from a place that is less than a century old this sounds incredible!
It is until you try to build something! (Nothing quite like watching an archeologist go 'Oooh, that's interesting!' during a dig to establish whether you can go ahead building on your chosen spot...)
Something like that is happening right now here in Brno:
https://www.novinky.cz/clanek/veda-skoly-po-prioru-zbyla-brn...
A massive construction project & equally massive archaeology operation - mapping the remains of old textile factories, an old channel and rail line, fish storage tanks, a mill, a villa and even a cemetery or two.
The archaeology work is wrapping up in a month or two & then the construction crews will take over the site (they already work in the areas that have been fully searched) to finish the construction project (which includes a 13 meter deep water tight "tub" due to a very shallow water table for the basement levels or 200 meter deep geothermal energy piles, etc.).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly there is nothing woo about it. Even without venturing into the realms of Quantam Mechanics or Chaotic Dynamics, all measurements are, by physical definition, upto the resolution of the measuring instrument. So it always come with inherent +/- error bars. Sometimes these error bars are made explicit, at other times they are elided, often with the assumption that it's obvious. Models are always simplifications.…
I am thinking more about time, and the ability to sincronise two signals, and say with an analog signal, and a digital time stamps, simply combining the signals 180° out of phase and getting zero verifies the accuracy of both, which is I assume is my crude beginings on modern encryption, and that gives our data the power to resist,entropy. So can we then reverse entropy by encoding information into everything? woooo!
When an aperture is aligned to the winter solstice, it is also aligned to avoid light the rest of the year. An early attempt at air conditioning? Keep the heat out. We jump so quickly to religious significance.
The article talks extensively about how these monuments were used for timekeeping. Marking the seasons allowed people to predict animal migrations and plan agricultural activities.
It seems that you are the one who has forgotten the practical uses of these artifacts.