As enduring as the mighty dinosaurs were, they couldn’t survive the catastrophic climate disaster set off by the crash of a large asteroid into the ocean off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in...
Archaeologists in Bolivia have discovered 135 ancient hilltop sites including an enormous circular structure where they say members of ancient Andean cults would have once worshipped the sun. The...
Precisely oriented to the rising sun of the winter solstice, researchers have found a tomb in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa ( Aswan ) that registered the entire solar cycle related to rebirth...
Amber, or succinite as a mineralogist might call it, hails from simple beginnings. It is simply fossilized tree sap. For something so humble, it has managed to captivate the human imagination for...
Chased across the sky by a pair of wolves, the Norse sun and moon gods were tasked with a heavy burden. The Sol and Mani were responsible for pulling a chariot across the sky every day and night...
An unpunished second-generation Titan of Greek mythology, Helios was a deity who was important, but not always recognized for his powers. Until his role was usurped by a newer god, Helios was the...
Near the entrance to Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, USA is an imposing butte that had sacred significance to the ancestral Pueblo culture, who inhabited Chaco Canyon up until about 1150 AD. On Fajada...
Si is an androgenous moon god chosen as the leader of the major South American Chimú and Moche culture pantheon, bucking the trend in world mythology where the moon god is both feminine and inferior...
The famous Trundholm Sun Chariot is a bronze and gold artifact pulled out of a bog in Denmark in 1902. Said to belong to the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 1700 to 500 BC), the so-called chariot consists of a...
A team of scientists has mapped the alignments and orientations of hundreds of ancient Japanese Kofun keyhole-shaped burials, only to discover that not some of them, but all of them, face towards the...
During 536 the world was beset by a long winter. Dubbed “the year of darkness” in the New Scientist , temperatures plummeted and the sun was dimmed by a vast fog which blocked its rays from hitting...
Located in the Peruvian coastal desert at the Casma-Sechin Oasis stands the incredible monumental complex of Chankillo. The archaeological site consists of a fort located on a hilltop and thirteen...
This year, as dusk gives way to darkness on the night of the Winter Solstice (December 21 st 2020), residents of the United States, the United Kingdom, and other nations across the Northern...
The technical sophistication of the Middle Ages tends to be underestimated. Near the end of the High Middle Ages, mechanical technology such as clocks and water mills, for example, were becoming...
Until today, the Nebra Sky Disk was known as the oldest concrete depiction of cosmic phenomena worldwide. Scholars believed it was a 3,600-year-old artifact depicting a sun or full moon, a lunar...
In the northern hemisphere, when the summer solstice occurs around June 21, the North Pole is tilted about 23°27´ toward the Sun, which itself is traveling its longest path through the sky, and that...
In 2020, as we begin a new decade, Dr Sam Osmanagich and The Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation is celebrating its 15 th year since multidisciplinary investigations of the Bosnian Pyramids began...
A team of scientists in Turin, Italy , have claimed the alignment of one of the city streets marks the day Roman Emperor Octavian (“Augustus”) was titled “father of the country” - but not everyone...
The Histories by Herodotus (484BC to 425BC) offers a remarkable window into the world as it was known by ancient Greek astronomy in the mid fifth century BC. Almost as interesting as what they knew,...
The Korean peninsula is known for many things. One thing that may be less well known about Korean culture is its contribution to world astronomy. One particularly visible contribution is the oldest...
A huge icy space rock, comet ‘Atlas’, is currently in the constellation Ursa Major in the northern sky passing through the orbit of Mars , but it’s on a trajectory with our Sun and it will get...
Easter corresponds with the first Sunday following the full moon after the March equinox and as such the holy day occurs on different dates around the Christian world. However, the story of the...
By Michelle Langley , Adam Brumm , Adhi Oktaviana & Basran Burhan / The Conversation Archaeologists have unearthed two miniature stone engravings in Indonesia. These depict an anoa (dwarf buffalo...
An ancient and deeply spiritualized wooden idol of the Andean ‘Earth Maker’, Pachacamac ( Quechua: Pachakamaq ), was once worshiped at the Temple of the Sun; a 30,000-square-meter step pyramid at the...