Download or read book Ancient Astronomy written by Clive L.N. Ruggles and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-10-21 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative introduction to the fascinating topic of archaeoastronomy—ancient peoples' understanding and use of the skies. Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth draws on archaeological evidence and oral traditions to reveal how prehistoric humans perceived the skies and celestial phenomena. With over 200 entries, it offers a number of ways to approach ancient astronomy, from key examples and case studies worldwide (Stonehenge; Mexican and Egyptian pyramids; Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; the Nazca lines in Peru) to general themes (cosmologies, calendars, ancient ideas of space and time, origin myths), to fundamental concepts and methods (how the sky has changed over the centuries, how to survey a site), and to the field's most frequently asked questions (How did ancient peoples navigate the ocean using the stars? How does astrology relate to ancient astronomy? Can ancient sites be dated astronomically?) By revealing the astronomical significance of some of the world's most famous ancient landmarks and enduring myths and by showing how different themes and concepts are connected, Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth brings a unique authoritative perspective to an area too often left to speculation and sensationalism.
Download or read book Exploring Ancient Skies written by David H. Kelley and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2005-12-06 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring Ancient Skies brings together the methods of archaeology and the insights of modern astronomy to explore the science of astronomy as it was practiced in various cultures prior to the invention of the telescope. The book reviews an enormous and growing body of literature on the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, the Far East, and the New World (particularly Mesoamerica), putting the ancient astronomical materials into their archaeological and cultural contexts. The authors begin with an overview of the field and proceed to essential aspects of naked-eye astronomy, followed by an examination of specific cultures. The book concludes by taking into account the purposes of ancient astronomy: astrology, navigation, calendar regulation, and (not least) the understanding of our place and role in the universe. Skies are recreated to display critical events as they would have appeared to ancient observers - events such as the supernova of 1054, the 'lion horoscope' or the 'Star of Bethlehem.' Exploring Ancient Skies provides a comprehensive overview of the relationships between astronomy and other areas of human investigation. It will be useful as a reference for scholars and students in both astronomy and archaeology, and will be of compelling interest to readers who seek a broad understanding of our collective intellectual history.
Download or read book The Prehistory of Rapa Nui Easter Island written by Valentí Rull and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-11 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the main enigmas of Easter Island’s (Rapa Nui, in the Polynesian language) prehistory from the time of initial settlement to European contact with a multidisciplinary perspective. The main topics include: (i) the time of first settlement and the origin of the first settlers; (ii) the main features of prehistoric Rapanui culture and their changes; (iii) the deforestation of the island and its timing and causes; (iv) the extinction of the indigenous biota, (v) the occurrence of climatic shifts and their potential effects on socioecological trends; (vi) the evidence for a cultural and demographic collapse before European contact; and (vii) the influence of Europeans on prehistoric Rapanui society. The book is subdivided into thematic sections and each chapter is written by renowned specialists in disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, paleoecology, ethnography, linguistics, ethnobotany, phylogenetics/phylogeography and history. Contributors have been invited to provide an open and objective vision that includes as many views as possible on the topics considered. In this way, the readers may be able to compare different of points of view and make their own interpretations on each of the subjects considered. The book is intended for a wide audience including graduate students, advanced undergraduate students, university teachers and researchers interested in the subject. Given its multidisciplinary character and the topics included, the book is suitable for students and researchers from a wide range of disciplines and interests.
Download or read book Archaeo Astronometria written by Dean Clarke and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2008-10-23 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have been many books on the origin of astronomy some good and some very poorly address the issues of ancient mans interests in the stars. The ancient Sumer and Egyptian notions of music mostly confirms how ancient this notion is in their chorded progressions of tone. This notion is more an Upper Paleolithic celestial idea. In a sense man during this time man was beginning to have a concept of north, south, east and west in spatial terms. It involves the curvature of the ribs of Nut the Egyptian Sky Goddess as a ribbed vaulted sky, and sometimes in a horizon sense of a bowing arch of a stars path, or the curve of a bone in the stars moving path. The half way point of this fall for say our Nut, Adam and Eve would thus be about 27,000 BC which falls in a significant period Ice Age re-emergence and a deserts expanding in equator regions. These are only a small part of what had to addressed in origins of night sky studies. The point being this piece as fake or not is that the components of the animals, man, plants and mans artifacts were very early on displayed. We might ask in such a condition what was their night sky? If we look at all of these constellations they fall below the Celestial Equator in the South Pole region mostly. It would seem that all these birds to them being placed in the night sky like the stars and as they watched what directions the birds along with stars as to where they went in order to ascertain their relations to dusk or dawn night sky. What caused the South Africa plight of 80,000 BC? The Antarctica had been growing ice forms from 170,000 BC to 80,000 BC towards the north, and then around 70,000 BC there seemed to be a melting trend back south. In an astronomy sense we can thank him for larger game entering in the pantheon of the constellations, or the leaf, otter, and some constellations lost to time like the mammoths. What does this have to do with constellations, taboos, or the advent of Cro-Magnon man well in the depictions of constellation images? Slowly from east to west the stars move, but then it did not take man not long after 70,000 BC to note that some planets or stars seemed to move retrograde in the night sky? This book address what ideas did they show or have before or after these earth changes. As ideas such as: "Maybe, it was a lasso constellation for some animals capture as a God of Capture." And, "Somewhere around the time of 50,000 BC in the region of northern England to the region above the Black Sea there occurred a melting phase between the ice ages and cultures began to spread". The evidence of this is found by different locations in Europe and Central Europe of the use of rock shadows, stars noted by hands in movement, and certain hand symbols by star images or dots as stars not just stab marks. Ironic again that Man beside Woman on the pole treetop does not have strong reminders of the Adam-Eve Tree and the Serpent as maybe Draco? The symbol anciently always shows the snake at the foot of the tree or ascended the tree at the apex of the trunk which if astronomy wise would mean an ascended constellation to the Zenith or the Pole! Draco thus deposed Adam and Eve from their own constellation garden and domain by it ascending as an ancient Pole Axis Mundi? Thus the smoke screen really is a tied between this local area of France and Late Paleolithic Mans ideas of that region in the night sky of a certain year or month period of hunting. Although we have jumped forward in the time of ancient astronomy beginnings in a way really in this sense we have not. To the real beginnings of little known ancient astronomy.
Download or read book Rapa Nui Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Petroglyphs of Mu written by Carole Nervig and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Shows how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures throughout the world • Provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol • Includes hundreds of Pohnpaid petroglyphs and stone circle photos, many never before seen While residing on the small Pacific island of Pohnpei in the 1990s, Carole Nervig discovered that a recent brush fire had exposed hundreds of previously unknown petroglyphs carved on gigantic boulders. This portion of the megalithic site called Pohnpaid was unknown even to Pohnpei’s state historic preservation officer. The petroglyphs were unlike others from Oceania, so Nervig began investigating and comparing them with petroglyphs and symbols from around the world. In this fully illustrated exploration, Nervig documents her discoveries on Pohnpei, revealing how the archetypal symbols of the Pohnpaid petroglyphs have exact counterparts in other ancient cultures and universal motifs throughout the world, including the Australian Aborigines, the Inca in Peru, the Vedic civilization of India, early Norse runes, and Japanese symbols. She provides evidence that Pohnpaid is closely related to--yet predates--neighboring Nan Madol and shows how Pohnpaid was an outpost of the sunken Kahnihmueiso, a city of the now-vanished civilization of Mu, or Lemuria. Discussing the archaeoastronomical function of the Pohnpaid stones, the author examines how many of the glyphs symbolize celestial phenomena and clearly reveal how their creators were sky watchers with a sophisticated understanding of astronomy, geophysics, geomancy, and engineering. She shows how the scientific concepts depicted in the petroglyphs reveal how the citizens of Mu had a much deeper understanding of the living Earth than we do, which gave them the ability to manipulate natural forces both physically and energetically. Combining archaeological evidence with traditional oral accounts, Nervig reveals Pohnpaid not only as a part of a geodetic network of ancient sacred sites and portals but also as a remnant of the now submerged but once enlightened Motherland of Mu.
Download or read book Global Rhetorics of Science written by Lynda C. Olman and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this volume, the field of rhetoric of science joins its sister disciplines in history and philosophy in challenging the dominance of Euro-American science as a global epistemology. The discipline of rhetoric understands world-making and community-building as interdependent activities: that is, if we practice science differently, we do politics differently, and vice versa. This wider aperture seems crucial at a time when we are confronted with the limitations of Euro-American science and politics in managing global risks such as pandemics and climate change—particularly in our most vulnerable communities. The contributors to this volume draw on their familiarity with a wide range of global scientific traditions—from Australian Aboriginal ecology to West African medicine to Polynesian navigation science—to suggest possibilities for reconfiguring the relationship between science and politics to better manage global risks. These possibilities should not only inspire scholars in rhetoric and technical communication but should also introduce readers from science and technology studies to some useful new approaches to the problem of decolonizing scenes of scientific practice around the world.
Download or read book Easter Island Earth Island written by Paul Bahn and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Easter Island, isolated deep in the South Pacific and now a World Heritage Site, was home to a fascinating prehistoric culture—one that produced massive stone effigies (the moai) and the birdman cult—and yet much of the island’s past remains shrouded in mystery. Where did the islanders come from, and when? How did Rapa Nui culture evolve over the centuries? How, and why, did their natural environment change over time? Paul Bahn and John Flenley guide readers through the mysteries and enigmas of Rapa Nui, incorporating the records of early explorers, folk legends, and archaeological evidence along the way. They cover the island’s geological and environmental history and explore its flora and fauna, illustrating how human actions affected the natural environment of the island. This fourth edition draws in: recent DNA studies of ancient human and animal bones as well as plant remains; evolving understandings of how the moai were transported; and current efforts to reforest the island.
Download or read book Astronomy Across Cultures written by Helaine Selin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astronomy Across Cultures: A History of Non-Western Astronomy consists of essays dealing with the astronomical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Polynesian, Egyptian and Tibetan astronomy, among others, the book includes essays on Sky Tales and Why We Tell Them and Astronomy and Prehistory, and Astronomy and Astrology. The essays address the connections between science and culture and relate astronomical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.
Download or read book South Pacific Handbook written by David Stanley and published by David Stanley. This book was released on 2000 with total page 996 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides historical and travel information for visitors to Polynesia and Melanesia, including Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji Islands, New Caledonia, and Solomon Islands
Download or read book Moon Handbooks Tahiti written by David Stanley and published by David Stanley. This book was released on 2003-08-26 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the volcanic peaks of the Marquesas or shop in Papeete's vibrant marketplace. All the essentials to discovering this tropical paradise are presented in an easy-to-use format. Photos & illustrations. Maps.
Download or read book Archaeoastronomy in Archaeology and Ethnography written by European Society for Astronomy in Culture. Meeting and published by British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited. This book was released on 2007 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers from the annual meeting of SEAC (European Society for Astronomy in Culture) held in Kecskemet in Hungary in 2004. The essays are concerned with the influence which celestial phonemena have had on ancient cultures.
Download or read book Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy written by Clive L.N. Ruggles and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-08-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How human communities interpret what they perceive in the sky is vital in fulfilling humankind’s most basic need to comprehend the universe it inhabits, both from a modern scientific perspective and from countless other cultural standpoints, extending right back to early prehistory. Archaeoastronomy, which is concerned with cultural perceptions and understandings of astronomical phenomena, is a rich cross-disciplinary field. The central aim of “Handbook of Archaeoastronomy” is to provide a reliable source for theory, method, interpretation and best practices that will give a definitive picture of the state of the art research in this field for serious scholars regardless of the discipline(s) in which they are qualified. It will be equally suitable for those already contributing to the field and those interested in entering it. Also included are studies in ethnoastronomy, which is concerned with contemporary practices related to astronomy, particularly among modern indigenous societies. A major part of this MRW is comprised of a set of wide-ranging archaeoastronomical case studies both geographically and through time, stretching right back to Palaeolithic days, and also in terms of the types of human society and nature of their astronomical ideas and practices. However, these are chosen in order to best illuminate broader issues and themes, rather than to attempt, for example, to provide systematic coverage of recent ‘discoveries.’ Thematic articles cover general themes such as cosmologies, calendars, navigation, orientations and alignments, and ancient perceptions of space and time. They also highlight various aspects of the social context of astronomy (its relationship to social power, warfare, etc) and how we interpret astronomical practices within the framework of conceptual approaches. There are also discussions of broad issues such as ethnocentrism, nationalism, and astronomical dating. The “methods and practices” articles cover topics from field methodology and survey procedures to social theory, as well as providing broad definitions and explanations of key concepts. We are also including a number of “disciplinary perspectives” on approaches to archaeoastronomy written by leading figures in the constituent fields. These articles cover material that, generally speaking, would be familiar to graduates in the relevant discipline but, critically, not so to those with different backgrounds.
Download or read book Archaeoastronomy written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hawaiian Hula and Body Ornamentation 1778 to 1858 written by Caroline K. Klarr and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Collapse written by Jared Diamond and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times
Download or read book Space Encyclopedia written by David A. Aguilar and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tour of outer space explores the solar system as well as stars, galaxies, and the birth of planets, and speculates on whether other intelligent beings exist in the universe.
