
A 26,000-Year Astronomical Monument Hidden in Plain Sight - andyjohnson0
http://blog.longnow.org/02019/01/29/the-26000-year-astronomical-monument-hidden-in-plain-sight/
======
wyck
Great article but I found this one easier to understand including quotes from
the artist about how it works, [https://www.quora.com/At-the-Hoover-Dam-what-
is-the-meaning-...](https://www.quora.com/At-the-Hoover-Dam-what-is-the-
meaning-of-this-memorial-inlay-with-the-word-Alcyone)

For some reason the author doesn't even mention
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcyone_(star)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcyone_\(star\))
which is written into the map.

What better place to preserve a star map than an indestructible cement dam in
the desert.

~~~
oska
> What better place to preserve a star map than an indestructible cement dam
> in the desert.

I'd suggest away from the base of a substantial cliff face might improve your
preservation odds.

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tectonic
I always find articles interesting that are about how the sky would have
looked at different points in time. For example, how the current
constellations looked 10,000 years ago, or will look in the future.
[https://www.wired.com/2015/03/gifs-show-constellations-
trans...](https://www.wired.com/2015/03/gifs-show-constellations-
transforming-150000-years)

~~~
TravHatesMe
Interesting indeed! I suppose this is a sound argument against astrology -- a
few thousand years ago you'd be looking at a different sky, how can you have a
well-defined set of astrological symbols when their respective skies are
changing, albeit slowly.

~~~
kens
Astrology does take the Earth's precession into account; as the vernal equinox
precesses from one zodiac constellation to another every 2150 years, it
becomes a different age. You might know the 60's song "Age of Aquarius";
that's what the song is referencing. (I'm not saying there's any validity to
astrology, just pointing out an interesting connection.)

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oska
I appreciate that this monument is in the northern hemisphere and so the
discussion of Polaris is entirely appropriate. But still some universal
statements are made which are simply false when we remember there is one half
of the world that looks to _the other_ celestial centre in the night sky. One
example:

> The reason we have historically paid so much attention to this celestial
> center, or North Star, is because it is the star that stays put all through
> the course of the night. Having this one fixed point in the sky is the
> foundation of all celestial navigation.

The Polynesian navigators, who achieved amazing feats of open water
navigation, managed to sail deep into the southern hemisphere (as far south as
New Zealand) where Polaris is simply not ever visible. But they still
practiced celestial navigation without this 'foundation'. [1] The European
explorers, who sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and through the Strait of
Magellan and across the Southern Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, also
likewise had to do without this 'foundation'.

When you come from the southern hemisphere you notice this casual, unthinking
"northern hemispherism" all the time.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation#Navigati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation#Navigation_by_the_stars)

~~~
jessriedel
Emphasis on the Northern Hemisphere is not arbitrary. 90% of humans live
there.

~~~
oska
Emphasis is fine. What I am referring to is when people generalise things that
are specific or local to the northern hemisphere onto the whole world.

~~~
jessriedel
At some point these just become exceptions. 10% of people are left-handed, but
we don't constantly re-write all instructions for that small minority, and
left-handers don't waste time constantly pointing out that right-handers are
making overly broad generalizations.

No one reasonably interprets "Having this one fixed point in the sky is the
foundation of all celestial navigation" to mean "All celestial navigation in
all circumstances requires a view of Polaris". For instance, people still do
celestial navigation in the Northern Hemisphere when Polaris is obscured by
terrain. But no one would use that fact to point out that the author's
statement was wrong, and that when you're from a low-latitude mountainous area
you notice this "high-latitude/non-mountainous-ism" all the time.

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emptybits
In the very first sentence, I appreciate what I _think_ is an intentional use
of _five_ digit year formatting.

The Long Now Foundation isn’t getting caught with its pants down in an amateur
Y10K bug!

“YYYYY” FTW

~~~
hannasanarion
Disappointing that they would go for a 5 digit year, and not use the HE
calendar, in which the current year is 12019

~~~
cmroanirgo
From Wikipedia:

"The Holocene calendar, also known as the Holocene Era or Human Era (HE), is a
year numbering system that adds exactly 10,000 years to the currently dominant
(AD/BC or CE/BCE) numbering scheme"

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar)

To me, it seems a little redundant to add a fixed 10,000 even if t0 is "near
the beginning of the Holocene geological epoch and the Neolithic Revolution".
So, so me using 02019 is just as arbitrarily as good.

~~~
MorganVR
The reason for the 10000 years is to make explicit the real magnitud of our
history, you would be surprised to learn the number of people that believe it
all really started just 2000 years ago.

~~~
cmroanirgo
Aboriginal Australians have been documented from 50,000-60,000 [0]

[0] [https://theconversation.com/when-did-aboriginal-people-
first...](https://theconversation.com/when-did-aboriginal-people-first-arrive-
in-australia-100830)

When you begin to look into their stories (dreamtime) and the way they've
always lived and more importantly, the way they have passed down information
generation to generation, it's utterly remarkable. Yet this 10,000 value would
belittle that rich living history imho.

Admittedly 10,000 years ago is roughly the Younger Dryas era, so yes, most
history has been lost since before that time, but it _does_ exist
nevertheless.

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1024core
Author mentions "axial precession" repeatedly without explaining it. 2/3 of
the way down comes this gem:

> it is worth explaining what exactly axial precession is.

This kind of writing just irritates me.

~~~
HillaryBriss
i'm bothered a bit by the fact that in the cartoon animation the earth appears
to rotate only two or three times during an entire 25,000+ year axial
precession cycle.

~~~
noisy_boy
I didn't know about axial precession and that visualization was what made it
clear for me. Literally a picture that is worth hundreds, if not thousands, of
words.

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dalbasal
Interesting. I like it.

The monument isn't 26000 years old, but the themes _are_ incredibly old. The
astronomical alignments, mysterious guardian sphinxes. This does seem like a
1930s contribution to artsy ideas going back through bronze age Egypt,
Mesopotamia and lots of other places.

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rblion
Wow. I love the Art Deco style. My absolute favorite aesthetic right now,
maybe ever. I haven't found anything I like more to be honest except
Classical.

~~~
jpatokal
I was at the Hoover Dam recently, and I was struck by how Socialist Realist
(read: Soviet) much of the original art looks:

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/GTQxcVtVKhgTURsG9](https://photos.app.goo.gl/GTQxcVtVKhgTURsG9)

My favorite structure is probably the improbably Star Wars/Tatooine flavored
parking garage though!

~~~
pathseeker
That's how a lot of stuff from that era looked in the US. The roaring 20s and
the bummer-30s had lots of stuff like that. Maybe you just have an incorrect
mental 1:1 mapping between stuff popular 100 years ago everywhere and the
Soviets?

~~~
russfink
Well, me, too. Apparently the Soviets adopted the blocky, "science is the
progress of mankind toward a brighter future for you!" theme from us and used
it so well, that I attribute such design elements to the Soviets exclusively.

~~~
jrochkind1
Or maybe it was a global design language, that the Soviets just kept using
longer and/or used more because they were building a _lot_ of things during
the period of it's heyday.

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anonu
Great article - a bit wordy - but great sleuthing. I've been the Hoover dam
and it is pretty amazing to behold. Always nice to see that certain people
will dig a little deeper and question their surroundings a bit more.

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DoreenMichele
I assumed this was some _really old_ , maybe Egyptian or African, site that
was finally understood to be an astronomical map or something. I'm stunned
that this is some kind of secret American history.

Makes we wish I could see Hoover Dam someday, a thing I have never had any
desire to do before. But this is cool.

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tempodox
That monument is so wonderfully art déco. I love it.

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buckminster
This is wonderful. It's a brilliant way to mark the date, beautifully
executed.

> The view that you really want to have of the plaza is directly from above.
> You would need a crane to get this view of the real thing,

This is what drones were invented for. I'd love to see a picture of the whole
clock.

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mnemotronic
Nice article. Some people, like Hansen, think outside the box into which many
of us have placed ourselves.

~~~
itronitron
people that like Hansen's work will probably be interested in James Turrell as
well >>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Turrell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Turrell)

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SiempreViernes
It wasn't well described, but do people really not get the idea that it's
about astronomy somehow?

I'm was dissapointed that the statues seem to play no role at all, no nifty
alignment of shadows seems like a wasted oportunity if you are making an
astronomy monument.

~~~
ourmandave
They have an Ozymandias from _The Watchmen_ aesthetic to them.

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planktonite
When is Jeff Bezos going to finish the 10k clock?

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sfopdxnonstop
It is a 26k-year monument not a 26k-year-old monument. I clicked guessing that
was a typo in the headline and was disappointed to be right.

~~~
sctb
Thanks! We've fixed the headline.

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wrs
Title fix: delete “old”. (The monument depicts a 26k-year cycle; it isn’t 26k
years old.)

~~~
andyjohnson0
The article's title had 'old' in it at the time I posted, and I didn't notice.
Looks like it's been edited since.

Mods: can you edit the title, as I no-longer can.

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AngryData
Website could use some like half inch borders or something. That is painful to
read and view.

~~~
ajkjk
Looks fine to me.

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interfixus
Funny - or sad, actually - how even The Long Now can't be bothered to run a
website which will function without third party calls. Bootstrap, Fontawesome,
Cloudfront, and Google are not necessarily expected to stay in business for
the next 10.000 years.

