Peter Harris (as in the Harris-Stockdale Megalithic Yard) has put the call out for information on (and preferably archaeological works that include measurements) stone circles occurring outside the UK. If readers have information or links any they would like to share, please feel free to post a reply.
His request calls attention to how such sites often tend to be overlooked, even by many alternative researchers including myself. To be honest, wrestling with the numbers for the best known Megalithic sites while attempting to get to know hundreds of ancient Mayan sites is probably enough of a juggling act, but still it’s unfortunate how obscure and neglected many archaeological sites of many types remain.
Recently on GHMB, someone brought up Damascus and soon readers were treated to some good looks at “wheelhouses” and “keyhole pendants” and I was reminded by the “keyhole” structures of other keyhole shaped architecture from various places, but the kofun mounds of Japan as well.
Case in point, no matter how many books or websites on “Ancient Monuments” and “Mystic Sites of the World” on peruses, the existence of many of these structures becomes known to me only recently (and some have only recently been discovered or rediscovered courtesy of satellite imagery).
When “Our Founder” Carl Munck introduced his readers to the keyhole mounds of Japan, I was awestruck – and just as much by the fact that I’d never heard of them before, as the fact that they existed.
In some ways, access to information on some of these unusual ancient sites has improved considerably since the last time I occupied myself with the subject. It seems to be only recently that I am finding out just how many kofunen there may be.
Some of the keyhole mounds of Sakai, Japan
Somehow, for all my youthful curiosity, I still managed to be completely blindsided only later in life by the existence of Asian pyramids, North American earthworks, and numerous other ancient monuments.
Did you know there were pyramids like these in Asia in addition to China’s plentiful massive earthworks pyramids? (Shanchengxia area by the Tonggou River.)
The Portsmouth, Ohio earthworks, from Squier and Davis
The “Hannukiah” earthworks, from Squier and Davis
This very day I am still surprised at some of the stone circles I still didn’t know about after more hours Googling than I would like to admit to 15 years ago.
I know of little if any successful interpretive work done on some of the more unusual monuments, regarding the geometry and mathematics underlying their design. The spectrum of keyhole monuments strike me as being suggestive of either treatises on circular geometry, or statements of solar system functions, and quite possibly both.
Considering how many times I’ve seen the terms “archaeoastronomy” and “observatory” during today’s Googling, apparently we’ve managed to get the archaeologists to admit that the ancients were astronomers. Perhaps some day more archaeologists will admit that the ancients were also mathematicians, since it may be somewhat of a package deal.
There are a few nice pictures of some out of the way stone circles here.
Today I think I’ve begun to be smitten with some of the Japanese stone circles that I hadn’t know about before like Kamaishi and the Oshoro circle.
I was also reminded that years ago, I spent some time getting to know a few of the “stone ships” or “ship settings” that can be found in some northern European countries, something else I was blindsided by even after years of reading about Megalithic sites.
Did you know there were miniature Mayan temples at Quiahuitzlan in Mexico?
The world has a great many fascinating ancient monuments, many of which we still know far too little about even as we race to save many of them from destruction.
What was their purpose, and what their purpose is staring us in the face – what if they shared a common purpose as repositories of ancient astronomical and mathematical knowledge?
I feel almost a little too normal somehow posting nothing but pictures of and links to far away places to a blog post, but it’s a positive step for me on the heels of being a bit down after some of the things I read the other day while looking for good links on the Nubian pyramids, as to why even now the Nubian pyramids remain almost tragically obscure.
I think there was a little too much of “at the time, nobody thought ___ were capable of such a thing” in it – that’s a sometimes uncomfortable direction for someone devoted to the idea that the ancients might have been capable of a few things, such as sophisticated mathematics and geometry in addition to some rather complex astronomy.
It occurs to me though that we can easily be pro-active about the obscurity of ancient monuments just by talking them up a bit now and then.
–Luke Piwalker
Luke Piwalker 