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SAO PAULO, BRAZIL, June 27, 2006: Anthropologists are sitting up and taking notice of a recent find in Brazil. Called the “Tropical Stonehenge,” an astronomical observatory estimated at 2,000 years old has been discovered on an Amazon hilltop. The news report explains, “A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory — a find archaeologists say indicates early rainforest inhabitants were more sophisticated than previously believed. The 127 blocks, some as high as 9 feet tall, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill, like a crown 100 feet in diameter. On the shortest day of the year — Dec. 21 — the shadow of one of the blocks, which is set at an angle, disappears.” Mariana Petry Cabral, an archaeologist at the Amapa State Scientific and Technical Research Institute, says, “It is this block’s alignment with the winter solstice that leads us to believe the site was once an astronomical observatory. We may be also looking at the remnants of a sophisticated culture. Transforming this kind of knowledge into a monument; the transformation of something ephemeral into something concrete, could indicate the existence of a larger population and of a more complex social organization.” Richard Callaghan, a professor of geography, anthropology and archaeology at the University of Calgary, adds, “Given that astronomical objects, stars, constellations etc., have a major importance in much of Amazonian mythology and cosmology, it does not in any way surprise me that such an observatory exists.” Carbon dating of the site near the village of Calcoene, north of the equator in northern Brazil by Brazilian archaeologists in August after the rainy season, will establish a more accurate timeline.

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