{"id":11608,"date":"2006-06-30T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-30T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/06\/30\/astronomy-in-the-rainforest-of-brazil\/"},"modified":"2006-06-30T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-30T12:00:00","slug":"astronomy-in-the-rainforest-of-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/06\/30\/astronomy-in-the-rainforest-of-brazil\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomy in the Rainforest of Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/aponline\/world\/AP-Brazil-Tropical-Stonehenge.html\">www.nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">SAO PAULO, BRAZIL, June 27, 2006: Anthropologists are sitting up and taking notice of a recent find in Brazil.  Called the &#8220;Tropical Stonehenge,&#8221; an astronomical observatory estimated at 2,000 years old has been discovered on an Amazon hilltop.  The news report explains, &#8220;A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory &#8212; 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 &#8212; Dec. 21 &#8212; the shadow of one of the blocks, which is set at an angle, disappears.&#8221; Mariana Petry Cabral, an archaeologist at the Amapa State Scientific and Technical Research Institute, says, &#8220;It is this block&#8217;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.&#8221; Richard Callaghan, a professor of geography, anthropology and archaeology at the University of Calgary, adds, &#8220;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.&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.nytimes.com SAO PAULO, BRAZIL, June 27, 2006: Anthropologists are sitting up and taking notice of a recent find in Brazil.,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}