Ancient solar observatory discovered in Peru

[IGBT]

Text

By Sara Goudarzi, Space.com
The oldest solar observatory in the Americas has been discovered in coastal Peru, archeologists announced Thursday.
The 2,300-year-old ceremonial complex featured the Towers of Chankillo, 13 towers running north to south along a low ridge and spread across 980 feet (300 meters) to form a toothed horizon that was used for solar observations.

Researchers excavated the solar observatory between 2000 and 2003. They found buildings?in exact mirror position of each other?to the east and west of the towers with observation points for watching the Sun rise and set over the toothed horizon.

 

[Accipiter22]

wow....they had just found another 'oldest solar observatory' recently. Guess that one didn't have the distinction for very long!

 

[dennilfloss]

Saw this last night on space.com. Pretty neat.

 

[Jeff7]

I just find this stuff impressive; I wonder if all of this was done for religious reasons, or if any of it was done for purely scientific exploration. Religion is often a powerful motivator, which was needed in ancient times, simply because of the enormous amount of labor required to construct these observatories. I would be quite impressed to know of ancients that constructed such things for the sake of pure science.

Pure science is difficult for people to get behind because it doesn't always produce tangible results immediately. Particle accelerators are one example of this today - they're smashing particles into each other at incredible speeds to see what lies within the subatomic. What use is it? Maybe none, other than gaining knowledge. Or maybe something learned at an accelerator could be applied to make fusion technology more workable, which in my opinion is something that everyone, save the fossil fuel suppliers, should be behind. Fusion power means virtually unlimited fuel and minimal pollution.

But back to the observatories - the people of the time were also able to do calculations from their gathered data, without the aid of modern calculus, and without calculators. Even that long ago, we sought, on some level, to understand what was going on beyond this little planet.

 

[Vic]

They didn't just understand "on some level." Some of those ancient observations rival what modern scientists are just finding out today. Science has its earliest origins in religions, and religions in science. The difference being that religions became dogmatic whereas science retained (by definition) objectivity.

 

[meltdown75]

It is just fascinating to me that we discover things like this to this day. Makes you wonder just how much is undiscovered. Maybe even the most amazing ancient ruins haven't even been found yet. Awesome.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Vic
They didn't just understand "on some level." Some of those ancient observations rival what modern scientists are just finding out today. Science has its earliest origins in religions, and religions in science. The difference being that religions became dogmatic whereas science retained (by definition) objectivity.

What did they understand that we don't? One thing?

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: Vic
They didn't just understand "on some level." Some of those ancient observations rival what modern scientists are just finding out today. Science has its earliest origins in religions, and religions in science. The difference being that religions became dogmatic whereas science retained (by definition) objectivity.

What did they understand that we don't? One thing?

I can't say about the Incas, but (as just one thing) the Mayans had tremendous astronomical knowledge, including predicting the Great Convergence in 2012 (where our solar system will cross the elliptical plane of the Milky Way, doomsayers believe this will be the end of the world). (Another thing), they also knew about the wobble of the earth's axis and its 26k year precession. Modern science only discovered both of those in just the last century.