The sun and the Rösaring ceremonial road

2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-67
Author(s):  
Emília Pásztor ◽  
Curt Roslund ◽  
Britt-Mari Näsström ◽  
Heather Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Milky Way ◽  
Landscape Archaeology ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The South ◽  
The Road

A well-built roadway from the early Viking Age at the Rösaring archaeological site in central Sweden is assumed by archaeologists to have been used for processions. The road is here examined in relation to its environment, the sun and the moon, the Milky Way and the rainbow. The aim was to extend landscape archaeology to include natural phenomena and their impact on prehistoric monuments as an aid to conventional archaeology. The play of sunlight over the road at noon was found to be particularly spectacular at midwinter and well-suited for enhancing the performance of rites which could have taken place at a large mound at the south end of the road, possibly in connection with the cult of the Norse fertility god Freyr.

BATTLE DESCRIPTION IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIANS, PART I: STRUCTURE, ARRAY, AND FIGHTING

2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon E. Lendon
Keyword(s):  
Milky Way ◽  
Solar Array ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Spider Web ◽  
The Right ◽  
Structure Array

When Endymion, king of the Moon, devised war upon Phaethon, king of the Sun, he decreed that a race of spiders as big as the Cyclades should weave a web between Venus and his lunar dominion, to serve as the battlefield for their regal rumble. And in that region of the heavens he arrayed his army: the king himself led his elite Hippo-vultures in the clouds on the right wing, 80,000 strong; his other cavalry, mounted on giant birds with wings like lettuce leaves, held the left. The Moon's stalwart infantry held the centre, posted on the spider web: Millet-launchers and Garlic-fighters, and his light-armed Flea-archers and Wind-runners, whose long tunics carried them about like sailboats in the fierce winds of the celestial realm. To Endymion's Hippo-vultures, Phaethon opposed the Sun's Hippo-ants (and near two hundred feet long were the insects that bore these cavalry). On the opposite flank of the solar array came the Air-mosquitoes and the formidable radish-flinging Air-dancers. The spears of Phaethon's phalanx, in the centre, were stalks of asparagus, and their round shields were mushrooms. Phaethon's allies, the Cloud-centaurs, expected at any moment from the Milky Way, had not arrived in time for battle.

scholarly journals The Manichaean Attitude to Natural Phenomena as Reflected in the Berlin Kephalaia

Open Theology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gábor Kósa
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Physical World ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe relationship between religion and science is a hotly debated issue, which has triggered new approaches and redefinitions of fundamental notions worldwide. This paper presents a preliminary sketch of the Manichaean attitude towards natural phenomena, thus exploring the question of the relation of religion to science—even if these notions are not necessarily applicable for early, non-European phenomena—in a historical context. In my survey, I use the Coptic Kephalaia, a fourth-century Manichaean text from Egypt, to highlight some instances (the Sun and the Moon, clouds, vegetation and animals, the salty sea, shadow, and earthquake) that characteristically reflect the unique, early Manichaean attitude to the physical world.

How Dung Beetles Steer Straight

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-256
Author(s):  
Marie Dacke ◽  
Emily Baird ◽  
Basil el Jundi ◽  
Eric J. Warrant ◽  
Marcus Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Milky Way ◽  
Dung Beetles ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Fixed Bearing ◽  
Polarization Pattern ◽  
Straight Path ◽  
Ball Rolling ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Night Sky

Distant and predictable features in the environment make ideal compass cues to allow movement along a straight path. Ball-rolling dung beetles use a wide range of different signals in the day or night sky to steer themselves along a fixed bearing. These include the sun, the Milky Way, and the polarization pattern generated by the moon. Almost two decades of research into these remarkable creatures have shown that the dung beetle's compass is flexible and readily adapts to the cues available in its current surroundings. In the morning and afternoon, dung beetles use the sun to orient, but at midday, they prefer to use the wind, and at night or in a forest, they rely primarily on polarized skylight to maintain straight paths. We are just starting to understand the neuronal substrate underlying the dung beetle's compass and the mystery of why these beetles start each journey with a dance.

scholarly journals Exploration of Galactic Structures beyond the Sun toward the anti-center of the Milky Way

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (S298) ◽  
pp. 450-450
Author(s):  
Yan Xu ◽  
Heidi Newberg
Keyword(s):  
Milky Way ◽  
Galactic Plane ◽  
Wave Structure ◽  
Thin Disk ◽  
Thick Disk ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Metallicity Distribution ◽  
Kinematic Distribution

AbstractWe map the stellar distribution on Hess diagram in the Anti-Center roughly in the boxes 130<l<230, −30<b<−10 and 10<b<30. There are ‘extra components’ associated with the anti-center structures of figure 1 of Newberg et al. (2002). The turnoff point of the structure in the North sky is at 16m.5 and the turnoff point in the South is at 17m.5. In our work, these structures can be found in all of the longitude in our box that can't be explained by standard thin or thick disk models. The distance of the North structure is about 2 kpc (we call it the North near structure) and the galactic height is about 0.7 kpc, the distance of the South structure is about 4 – 6 kpc (we call it the South middle structure). The Vgsr distribution of stars selected along the North near structure has a kinematic distribution similar to that of thick disk stars. But the metallicities of these stars are quite similar to the metallicity distribution of thin disk stars. We try to explain these structures with wave structure of the Galactic plane.

Modelling Lunar Extremes

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fisher ◽  
Lionel Sims
Keyword(s):  
High Precision ◽  
Celestial Mechanics ◽  
Computer Modelling ◽  
Landscape Context ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon

Claims first made over half a century ago that certain prehistoric monuments utilised high-precision alignments on the horizon risings and settings of the Sun and the Moon have recently resurfaced. While archaeoastronomy early on retreated from these claims, as a way to preserve the discipline in an academic boundary dispute, it did so without a rigorous examination of Thom’s concept of a “lunar standstill”. Gough’s uncritical resurrection of Thom’s usage of the term provides a long-overdue opportunity for the discipline to correct this slippage. Gough (2013), in keeping with Thom (1971), claims that certain standing stones and short stone rows point to distant horizon features which allow high-precision alignments on the risings and settings of the Sun and the Moon dating from about 1700 BC. To assist archaeoastronomy in breaking out of its interpretive rut and from “going round in circles” (Ruggles 2011), this paper evaluates the validity of this claim. Through computer modelling, the celestial mechanics of horizon alignments are here explored in their landscape context with a view to testing the very possibility of high-precision alignments to the lunar extremes. It is found that, due to the motion of the Moon on the horizon, only low-precision alignments are feasible, which would seem to indicate that the properties of lunar standstills could not have included high-precision markers for prehistoric megalith builders.

scholarly journals The Ballistic Particle Model

1983 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 133-134
Author(s):  
Frank N. Bash
Keyword(s):  
Radial Velocity ◽  
Gravitational Potential ◽  
Molecular Clouds ◽  
Milky Way ◽  
Terminal Velocity ◽  
Particle Model ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Giant Molecular Clouds ◽  
Spiral Pattern ◽  
Armed Spiral

Bash and Peters (1976) suggested that giant molecular clouds (GMC's) can be viewed as ballistic particles launched from the two-armed spiral-shock (TASS) wave with orbits influenced only by the overall galactic gravitational potential perturbed by the spiral gravitational potential in the arms. For GMC's in the Milky Way, the model predicts that the radial velocity observed from the Sun increases with age (time since launch). We showed that the terminal velocity of CO observed from l ≃ 30° to l ≃ 60° can be understood if all GMC's are born in the spiral pattern given by Yuan (1969) and live 30 × 106 yrs. Older GMC's were predicted to have radial velocities which exceed observed terminal velocities.

Matronianus, Comes Isauriae: an Inscription from an Early Byzantine Basilica at Yanıkhan, Rough Cilicia

1985 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 93-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Hill
Keyword(s):  
The South ◽  
Late Professor ◽  
The Road ◽  
Scrub Oak ◽  
The North ◽  
Wild Olive ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Olive Trees ◽  
The Village ◽  
Early Byzantine

The ruins at Yanıkhan form the remains of a Late Roman village in the interior of Rough Cilicia some 8 kilometres inland from the village of Limonlu on the road to Canbazlı (see Fig. 1). The site has not been frequently visited by scholars, and the first certain reference to its existence was made by the late Professor Michael Gough after his visit on 2 September 1959. Yanıkhan is now occupied only by the Yürüks who for years have wintered on the southern slopes of Sandal Dağ. The ancient settlement at Yanıkhan consisted of a village covering several acres. The remains are still extensive, and some, especially the North Basilica, are very well preserved, but there has been considerable disturbance in recent years as stone and rubble have been removed in order to create small arable clearings. The visible remains include many domestic buildings constructed both from polygonal masonry without mortar and from mortar and rubble with coursed smallstone facing. There are several underground cisterns and a range of olive presses. The countryside around the settlement has been terraced for agricultural purposes in antiquity, and is, like the settlement itself, densely covered with scrub oak and wild olive trees. The most impressive remains are those of the two basilical churches which are of little artistic pretension, but considerable architectural interest. The inscription which forms the substance of this article was found on the lintel block of the main west entrance of the South Basilica.

scholarly journals Evidence for coherent spicule oscillations from correcting Hinode/SOT Ca ii H in the south-east limb of the Sun

2017 ◽  
Vol 467 (3) ◽  
pp. 3393-3398
Author(s):  
A. R. Ahangarzadeh Maralani ◽  
E. Tavabi ◽  
A. Ajabshirizadeh
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  
The South ◽  
East Limb
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