Designs on the Forsyth Petroglyph in Georgia may include astronomical representations of stars, the constellation Draco, the Pleiades asterism, a comet, and meteors or comet fragments and may be a record of a comet impact event that caused a severe weather event in 536 AD.
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A mysterious stone wall constructed atop Fort Mountain in north Georgia around 400 AD could represent an astronomical observatory built by people from Mexico.
Read MoreResearch at a 4,200-year-old temple in Peru yields clues to an ancient people who may have clocked the heavens
Read MoreAs archaeologists evaluate whether an ancient temple in Buena Vista, Peru, functioned as a calendar, a different research team is preserving the remains of an unusually elaborate astronomical complex just north, in Chankillo. This solar observatory is considered the oldest in the Americas, dating back to the 4th century B.C., and it offers unique physical evidence that a sun cult inhabited Peru at least 1,500 years before the Incas.
Read MoreA rock carving discovered in Arizona might depict an ancient star explosion
seen by Native Americans a thousand years ago, scientists announced today.
If confirmed, the rock carving, or “petroglyph” would be the only known
record in the Americas of the well-known supernova of the year 1006.
The discovery in Peru of a 4,200-year-old temple and observatory
pushes back estimates of the rise of an advanced culture in the
Americas.
Before the advent of calendars, the only way to mark the changing of the seasons was through direct observation. Ancient peoples observed the passage of the sun north from the Winter Solstice, and then south from the Summer Solstice. In Mesoamerica the people observed the sun passing directly overhead twice a year by using special tubes in the temples that pointed at the zenith.
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Brazilian archaeologists have found an ancient stone structure in a
remote corner of the Amazon that may cast new light on the region’s
past.
The site, thought to be an observatory or place of worship, pre-dates
European colonisation and is said to suggest a sophisticated
knowledge of astronomy.
Its appearance is being compared to the English site of Stonehenge.
Ocmulgee Mounds located in Macon, Geogia consists of seven mounds and associated plazas. The Great Temple Mound at Ocmulgee was built atop the Macon Plateau and rises 56 feet high from the surface of the plateau.
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