{"id":61760,"date":"2017-01-05T16:23:03","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T16:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scotclans.com\/?p=61760"},"modified":"2022-03-11T13:27:17","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T13:27:17","slug":"worlds-oldest-lunar-calendar-discovered-in-scottish-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/project1-m9gb2xku8.live-website.com\/?p=61760","title":{"rendered":"World’s oldest lunar calendar discovered in Scottish field"},"content":{"rendered":"
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12 pits were found<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Archaeologists excavating Warren Field, an area next to Crathes Castle in Aberdeenshire from 2004-06 uncovered 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar months. \u00a0Unusual crop marks had been spotted from the air by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) which led to the dig being started.<\/p>\n

Dave Cowley, aerial survey projects manager at RCAHMS, said: “We have been taking photographs of the Scottish landscape for nearly 40 years, recording thousands of archaeological sites that would never have been detected from the ground…Warren Field stands out as something special, however. It is remarkable to think that our aerial survey may have helped to find the place where time itself was invented.”<\/p>\n

Archaeologists believe now they have discovered the world’s oldest lunar “calendar” in the world.<\/p>\n

A team led by the University of Birmingham suggests the ancient monument was created by hunter-gatherers about 10,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

Vince Gaffney, Professor of Landscape Archaeology at Birmingham, led the analysis project.<\/p>\n

He said: “The evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer societies in Scotland had both the need and sophistication to track time across the years, to correct for seasonal drift of the lunar year and that this occurred nearly 5,000 years before the first formal calendars known in the Near East …In doing so, this illustrates one important step towards the formal construction of time and therefore history itself.”<\/p>\n

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An artist’s impression of warren field about 10000 years ago showing burning material in one of the pits.<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The experts who analysed the pits said they may have contained a wooden post.<\/p>\n

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The pits were placed to copy the positions of the moon – identifying the time of the year.<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Mesolithic “calendar” is thousands of years older than previous known formal time-measuring monuments created in Mesopotamia.<\/p>\n

The pit alignment also aligns on the Midwinter sunrise to provided the hunter-gatherers with an annual “astronomic correction” in order to better follow the passage of time and changing seasons.<\/p>\n