North America
Colorado Plateau
Flagstaff, Arizona 2010

STARHENGE

The vision of S. Nelson and C.Luginbuhl
will become a reality in the next few years.

Starhenge will be an interactive artwork and observatory consisting of a 72 foot diameter series of standing stones with a 23 foot Portal Monolith at the center. Surrounding the standing stones will be a 300 foot Henge and Spiral earthwork to connect Colorado Plateau to the sun, moon, and stars for daily and seasonal alignments.

Keep checking back for the latest
progress reports on this exciting project.

North America
Ohio Valley - Circa 200 CE

MOUNDBUILDERS

Some 3,000 years ago, the Adena people of the Ohio valley began building conical grave mounds. The tradition continued with the Hopewell people, and around 200 CE they built mounds of such precision and of such size that they are best viewed from the sky. These gigantic geometric earthworks were usually built in pairs and connected by parallel walls.In Newark, there is a typical prehistoric monument consisting of an octagon and a circle whose diameter is over 3000 feet. The method used to calculate and create such precise geometric shapes on such a large scale can be found by studying the heavens.

As the Hopewell charted the path of the moon throughout the year, they saw that it didn’t rise and set in the same place each night. They also kept track of the moon’s risings and settings that occurred at different points along the horizon over a period of 18.61 years. Eight of the rising and setting points marked the necessary lines that created coordinates for mapping out the geometric design of the Newark earthworks. Thus, the monumental creation became a lunar calendar that marked the progress of the moon and the passage of time. Once again, human beings had forged a link between the earth, the heavens and themselves.

North America
Ohio Valley - Circa 200 CE

SERPENT MOUND

One of the most interesting earthworks lies next to Bush Creek, Adams County, Ohio. It is the Great Serpent mound and it is the most famous earthwork in North America and the largest serpent image in the world.

It measures 1,254 feet in length along its curves, and it was built on the edge of an inner crater, within an outer crater four miles wide that was created by the impact of a meteorite. The area contains a magnetic anomaly that was produced by the impact and to this day, a compass won’t work around the site.

The astronomical significance of this site is that it is aligned with the sun and the seasons. There is place on each coil of the serpent at which a point of celestial illumination occurred throughout the year. Each point represented the equinoxes and the solstices and the coming seasons. It has also been suggested that the seven loops of its body and tightly winding tail represent the seven stars of Ursa Minor and their annual rotation around the pole star.

North America
Southwest - Circa 850 and 1250 CE

CHACO CANYON

Besides the monumental earthworks, the ancient peoples of North America created other remarkable sites such as Pueblo Bonito, in northwest New Mexico. The pueblo sits at the west end of Chaco Canyon and is a five story D-shaped complex that is accurately oriented with the cardinal directions. It is the largest prehistoric dwelling in the Southwest and once sheltered six thousand people. Within its walls sits a clan house, or kiva. It was a ceremonial house where a sunwatcher kept track of light that shined through a small slit in the wall.

The shaman would watch a ray of sunlight shine through the slot and strike a place on the wall opposite to the entry point. As the sun traveled across the sky changing positions each day, the ray of light traced the yearly path of the sun.

At the south entrance of the canyon sits another site near the top of Fajada Butte. It is there that three large slabs of rock stand upright next to a wall. On this wall is a large spiral carved into the stone. As the sun moves across the sky, a slit between the slabs of rock create a dagger of light that moves straight down the cliff wall and intersects the spiral on the summer solstice.

At the equinoxes, the dagger of light moves to the right of center. At the winter solstice, two daggers appear - one to the left of the spiral, and one to the right.

New Theory on Ancient Star Cities of the American Southwest

North America
Mid West - Circa 1600 CE

MEDICINE WHEEL

There are many medicine wheels of stone and wood, from America to Canada, designed to measure the sun’s passage and certain stars risings. One of these well-known astronomically oriented wheels is one top of Medicine Mountain in the Bighorn Mountains west of Sheridan, Wyoming. This wheel is a crude construction of sandstone fragments whose rocks are aligned to the sunrise and sunset at the summer solstice. It has been suggested that some alignments were directed at particularly bright stars at the time of its estimated construction between 1500 and 1700 CE.

Due to sever winter weather in this part of Wyoming, this site is accessible only in the summer. No matter how difficult or remote, humankind has always sought the counsel of the skies.

Central America
Yucatan - Circa 1100 CE

CHICHEN ITZA

This large Toltec/Mayan pyramid combines atronomical numerology; four sides and stairways, 52 sunken panels on each side, 91 steps to stairway plus the top level for a toal of 365, and nine levels. An hour before sunset on the equinox, a light show begins as a shadow forms of the west-facing wall of the north stairway. It is a shape resembling a fire serpent. As the sun moves so does the shadow. It simulates the movement of a serpent which was a sacred animal to the people of this region.

This serpent of sunlight correlates with the legendary feathered serpents and the diamondback rattlesnakes of the traditional stories. These creatures symbolize the passage of time, seasons, and the idea of renewal.

CHICHEN ITZA

Caracol is a cylindrical tower that contains windows specifically for the viewing of certain portions of the sky. Since the Maya had no telescopes to view the cycles of Venus, certain stars and constellations, they used naked eye observing and kept records of the movements in the heavens through the openings in the tower. The winter and summer solstices were also important celestial events that were tracked.

Central America
Mexico - Circa 600 CE

PYRAMID OF THE MOON

From 300 BCE to 300 CE, Mesoamerica conducted its affairs from its ceremonial and political capitol of Teotihuacan. It covers more than seven square miles and includes one of the largest known structures of early America, the Pyramid of the Sun. It was built in four steps rising on a base 689 feet square to a flat top some 210 feet high. At the northern end of the avenue is a smaller pyramid dedicated to the Moon, and at the southern end is a rectangular court enclosing a temple. All around were palace buildings, thousands of domestic structures and the population has been estimated at tens of thousands.

South America
Andes - Circa 1300 CE

MACHU PICCHU

Within the Urubamba Valley sits world famous Machu Picchu, the “Lost City” of the Inca or “Children of the Sun.” It lies on a saddle between two mountain peaks, 3000 feet above the Urubamba River, which winds around its base like a moat around a castle. This mysterious city that was constructed sometime in the fifteenth century CE and its most striking astronomical feature is the intihuatana, or “hitching post of the sun.” It is an upright standing stone that was carved out of a single piece of gray and crystalline granite, and it is part of an altar about the size of an automobile. Many theories have been put forth in explanation of its exact purpose and function. It may have been used to cast shadows as a way to keep time and measure the daily passages of the sun throughout the year.

It may have been used in conjunction with a companion device to calculate the equinoxes and solstices. Though there were more than one of these “hitching posts,” the Spanish authorities and the clergy, during the conquest of the sixteenth century, decided that the intihuatana were of a competing religious nature and therefore had to be destroyed.
They must have never reached Machu Picchu because its “Hitching Post” never sustained the damage other sites suffered from religious persecution.

Recently, a beer company was given permission to shoot a commercial in the area and a crane fell on the hitching post and damaged it. Just shows how the Peruvian government will do anything for a little money.

There is another structure at the “Lost City” that indicates it was also used for celestial observations. It is known as the Torreon and is a rectangular building that has one wall that curves into a semicircle. It resembles the design of the “Temple of the Sun” in Cuzco. It even has an altar carved from the rock and a window that was apparently used to observe the summer solstice rising and the Pleiades open cluster. Another window could have been used to view the stars in the tail of Scorpius. This would be important because its setting point is opposite of the rising point of the Pleiades. Even today these stars and asterisms are important to Indians near Cuzco as a means of seasonal time keeping. Machu Picchu was an important ceremonial center that connected the Inca with the heavens themselves.

WORLD MAP