World’s oldest calendar monument found in Scotland
JUL 15, 2013
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.027172
BBC : An arrangement of pits excavated in a field at Crathes Castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, appears to be a 10 000-year-old lunar calendar. The pits were found by aerial surveys of the Scottish countryside, and excavations began in 2004. The series of 12 pits, analyzed by Vince Gaffney of Birmingham University, UK, and his colleagues, is arranged to mimic the phases of the Moon and to track lunar months. The team determined that the pits are also aligned with the midwinter sunrise, potentially to help track the seasons and reset the yearly lunar calendar. The age of the calendar is 5000 years older than the previous earliest known calendar monuments from Mesopotamia.
© 2013 American Institute of Physics
