How to Precisely Measure Astronomic Periods of Time by Means of Stone Age Geometry

Georg Glaeser ()
Additional contact information
Georg Glaeser: University of Applied Arts Vienna

A chapter in The Visual Language of Technique, 2015, pp 125-138 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Astronomy always used to be a typical application field of geometry. Monumental structures like Stonehenge and the Egyptian or Central American pyramids were also giant observatories for the evidently strange motions in the sky. The author will show that the alignments of those structures not only had to do with sun positions, but might also have been influenced by hard-to-comprehend extreme moon positions (lunar standstills) and special positions of the Pleiades. Some special constellations allowed different archaic societies on three continents to precisely determine long periods of time with Stone Age methods, e.g., the length of a year or the time in-between lunar standstills.

Keywords: Elevation Angle; Ecliptic Plane; Summer Solstice; Ancient Egyptian; Precession Movement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-05350-9_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319053509

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-05350-9_10

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().