Winter Solstice

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Kirbstone
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Winter Solstice

Post by Kirbstone »

Some 5,200 years ago the residents of the Boyne Valley, some 30 miles N. of Dublin built the largest passage grave in Ireland. This grassed-over domed structure is older than the Pyramids or Stonehenge and the inner burial chamber is connected to the outside by a narrow stone passage. The natural uncut quarried stones in the vaulting have not leaked in all that time.

The passage was aligned and built to allow the Dawn rising Sun at the Winter Solstice to penetrate through the upper half of the opening right in to illuminate the back of the chamber at the other end of the passage.

Ca 5000 years ago the first rays at 08.42AM found the back end of the passage. Due to precessing of the Earth's orbit since then the first rays to penetrate are now some four minutes later, at 08.46AM.

At that time the average lifespan for people was just 29 years. There is no modern record of how they wrote information down. Quite how they managed in such short lifetimes to accumulate and transmit such accurate astronomical information and the means to build such an edifice defies the imagination, but there it is, and it has been tarted up in modern times for public enjoyment and wonder. It predates the use of metals, so all their tools were either stone or antlers or bone.

They would have worn skirts, too !

But this year, today, the Sun was obscured and didn't oblige the assembled crowd.

Tom
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crfriend
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by crfriend »

"Even" without the modern technology that we lot "enjoy", it's always worth recalling just how prodigious or forebears were with their powers of observation and intuition.

First and foremost, the Winter Solstice marked the turning point from plunging into darkness to emerging from it. It offered a hope for a "new day" and continued survival. This is why it is quite possibly the most powerful day in the Northern Hemisphere and why so many so-called "religions" piggy-backed onto it and have tried to usurp it. Four days -- short ones at that -- represents about the threshold of which that the very sensitive types will notice the change in length-of-day, even in the absence of timekeepers; so it's quite natural that they would endeavour to construct experiments designed to identify the precise moment of the reversal of things from shortening to lengthening -- and the heavens are quite up to providing the raw data, even if it does wobble around on long time-scales.

Also, never discount what can be done with extremely basic tools, e.g. wood, bone, and stone. One can do quite a lot with those. Bone is reasonably good at not having a huge coefficient of expansion with either heat or moisture, so makes for a good substrate to inscribe marks for measuring on. It's also light enough to be portable. This makes possible the fabrication of primitive rulers that whilst not directly correlateable to modern scales were "good enough" for doing remarkable things in a unit-less realm. Humans are also remarkably adept at picking out halves of things, so if one takes a length of bone and inscribes a mark at each end, finding the mid-point and inscribing another there, and then the midpoints between the ends and the middle, and so on, can yield a remarkably accurate -- if uncalibrated to anything else -- device.

Moreover, anything that was so important that it would take the work of generations to complete it meant that the next generation was immersed in it virtually since birth and would be intimately familiar with all the nuances of the task. So what if there was no writing; experience and verbal teaching can carry that over.

I don't find such structures amazing at all. One just needs to contemplate how it likely worked. At least these structures are more understandable than the moon landings in the late 1960s and early 1970s which are now recognised by more than not as to all have taken place on a sound-stage likely in the US south-west. Go figure.
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Kirbstone
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Kirbstone »

C.R.Friend,

You've got to be joking !

Tom
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beachlion
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by beachlion »

You may use your preferred means to see when you have your winter solstice, I stick to my calendar and the newspaper.

The good news is: the days are getting longer. The bad news is: the full blast of the winter is around the corner.

In a few weeks, you may already notice the longer days. Summer is coming. One of the nice things of the warmer period is to walk in and out of the house without putting on or off some layers of clothing.
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Daryl
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Daryl »

I always find real and enormous physical happenings in our world more imbued with a sense of wonder and more worthy of communion than arbitrary dates chosen by religious authorities, though I do appreciate how the Church calendar harmonises with the seasons and thusly connects our spiritual senses with the world and each other.

Structures such as these demonstrate how the sense of communion with each other and the rhythms of the world have been important to us for a very long time. They are amazing, sometimes as feats of ancient engineering but mostly as feats of human collective organisation and effort towards such communion. Big bonfires, drumming, dancing and drink seem appropriate to celebrating these big events. Nowadays these don't happen without a permit.
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Daryl
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Daryl »

Kirbstone wrote:At that time the average lifespan for people was just 29 years.
Yabbut the distribution was probably quite wide, meaning there would have been enough old people to keep certain kinds of knowledge and planning across generations.
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Kirbstone
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Kirbstone »

Correct, Daryl.

Some 10 years ago a cairn grave in Co. Sligo was carefully excavated and analysed using the latest methods, including DNA samples. Underneath the cairn was a perfectly undisturbed tablet dolmen grave dated 5.800 years old, older than Newgrange by about 600 years. This is orientated towards the Dawn over the nearby hills at the Winter quarter days, i.e. Nov.30th and Feb.8th.

Underneath the massive square tablet there were the remains of 7 people, 2 of them children. The oldest remains were shown to be those of a 59-yr.-old lady, who must have been a local Grand Dame in her time.

Further, as part of a PhD thesis, cheek swabs were taken of the schoolchildren in several surrounding villages and similar DNA was found in about 15% of those swabbed, indicating that they are the direct descendants of those interred under that capstone 5,800 years before!

Tom
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Daryl
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Daryl »

Kirbstone wrote:Correct, Daryl.

Some 10 years ago a cairn grave in Co. Sligo was carefully excavated and analysed using the latest methods, including DNA samples. Underneath the cairn was a perfectly undisturbed tablet dolmen grave dated 5.800 years old, older than Newgrange by about 600 years. This is orientated towards the Dawn over the nearby hills at the Winter quarter days, i.e. Nov.30th and Feb.8th.

Underneath the massive square tablet there were the remains of 7 people, 2 of them children. The oldest remains were shown to be those of a 59-yr.-old lady, who must have been a local Grand Dame in her time.

Further, as part of a PhD thesis, cheek swabs were taken of the schoolchildren in several surrounding villages and similar DNA was found in about 15% of those swabbed, indicating that they are the direct descendants of those interred under that capstone 5,800 years before!
Tom
Wow, just imagine knowing that about your genetic heritage, and that bits of you lie under such a thing. Awesome.
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Ralph »

beachlion wrote:One of the nice things of the warmer period is to walk in and out of the house without putting on or off some layers of clothing.
I don't even have to go out of the house to engage in that whirlwind of wardrobe changes. Over the course of a waking day the inside temperature can vary by as much as 25 degrees (F), depending on whether sunlight hits the thermostat to raise the temperature on the wall and turn off the heat, or the sun goes behind clouds, etc. So throughout the day I may be all layered up with an outer shell of heavy velvet from neck to toe or down to one of the few summer dresses I kept in the closet when I made room for winter gear, or a light camisole and short(ish) skirt.

Ironically I am at my warmest when it is coldest outside, because that's when the heater comes on and stays on nonstop. I suspect Mrs. Ralph has reprogrammed the thermostat because in years past I was still chilly even with the heater on -- she was trying to save money by keeping the thermostat set lower. I'll probably get upset (causing another rise in temperature!) if I look at how much she's paying for the utility bill.
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Rokje »

Oh yes , the days are getting longer. I can wait to feel the warm wind around my legs and under my skirt. :thumleft: :dance:
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Daryl
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Daryl »

Rokje wrote:Oh yes , the days are getting longer. I can wait to feel the warm wind around my legs and under my skirt. :thumleft: :dance:
You can? I can't. I'm counting the days now...
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beachlion
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by beachlion »

Daryl wrote:
Rokje wrote:Oh yes , the days are getting longer. I can wait to feel the warm wind around my legs and under my skirt. :thumleft: :dance:
You can? I can't. I'm counting the days now...
Rokje has English as a second language and probably meant can't. That makes sense to me.
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Daryl
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Daryl »

beachlion wrote:
Daryl wrote:
Rokje wrote:Oh yes , the days are getting longer. I can wait to feel the warm wind around my legs and under my skirt. :thumleft: :dance:
You can? I can't. I'm counting the days now...
Rokje has English as a second language and probably meant can't. That makes sense to me.
You know this kind of thing happens even to those of us who speak it as a first language.

"I could care less" is probably the best example. I think that's now more common than what people actually mean to say when they say it.
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beachlion
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by beachlion »

Since I heard years ago Oliver Hardy say: "I couldn't care less" in one of his slapsticks, it is one my standard remarks, here but also in the Netherlands. :wink:
I also try to copy the facial expression of Olly but that is quite difficult.
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Gregg1100
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Re: Winter Solstice

Post by Gregg1100 »

Couldn't in Wales and prob most of uk
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