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List Of Archaeoastronomical Sites By Country
This is a list of sites where claims for the use of archaeoastronomy have been made, sorted by country. The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) jointly published a thematic study on heritage sites of astronomy and archaeoastronomy to be used as a guide to UNESCO in its evaluation of the cultural importance of archaeoastronomical sites around the world, which discussed sample sites and provided categories for the classification of archaeoastronomical sites. The editors, Clive Ruggles and Michel Cotte, proposed that archaeoastronomical sites be considered in four categories: 1) Generally accepted; 2) Debated among specialists; 3) Unproven; and 4) Completely refuted. Armenia * Godedzor * Zorats Karer (aka Carahunge), archeological site claimed to have astronomical significance although this is disputed. it is often referred to in international tourist lore as the "Armenian Stonehenge". Australia * Ngaut Ngaut oral t ...
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Archaeoastronomy
Archaeoastronomy (also spelled archeoastronomy) is the interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary study of how people in the past "have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used these phenomena and what role the sky played in their cultures". Clive Ruggles argues it is misleading to consider archaeoastronomy to be the study of ancient astronomy, as modern astronomy is a scientific discipline, while archaeoastronomy considers symbolically rich cultural interpretations of phenomena in the sky by other cultures. It is often twinned with ''ethnoastronomy'', the anthropological study of skywatching in contemporary societies. Archaeoastronomy is also closely associated with historical astronomy, the use of historical records of heavenly events to answer astronomical problems and the history of astronomy, which uses written records to evaluate past astronomical practice. Archaeoastronomy uses a variety of methods to uncover evidence of past practices including archaeology, an ...
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Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat (; , "City/Capital of Wat, Temples") is a Buddhism and Hinduism, Hindu-Buddhist temple complex in Cambodia. Located on a site measuring within the ancient Khmer Empire, Khmer capital city of Angkor, it was originally constructed in 1150 CE as a Hindu temple dedicated to the deity Vishnu. It was later gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the century. Considered by some experts to be the List of largest Hindu temples, largest religious structure in the world, it is regarded as one of the best examples of Khmer architecture and a symbol of Cambodia, depicted as a part of the Flag of Cambodia, Cambodian national flag. Angkor Wat was built at the behest of the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the Khmer architecture#Temple mountain, temple-moun ...
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Menhir
A menhir (; from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large upright stone, emplaced in the ground by humans, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be found individually as monoliths, or as part of a group of similar stones. Menhirs' size can vary considerably, but they often taper toward the top. Menhirs are found across Europe, Africa, and Asia, with a concentration in Western Europe, notably in Ireland, Great Britain, and Brittany. Theories concerning their purpose remain speculative, with hypotheses ranging from druidic rituals to territorial markers or elements of an ideological system. Some menhirs feature engravings, including anthropomorphic figures and symbols, and are often associated with ancient religious ceremonies and burial chambers. Etymology The word ''menhir'' was adopted from French by 19th-century archaeologists. The introduction of the ...
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Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuela to the east and northeast, Brazil to the southeast, Peru and Ecuador to the south and southwest, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and Panama to the northwest. Colombia is divided into 32 Departments of Colombia, departments. The Capital District of Bogotá is also the List of cities in Colombia by population, country's largest city hosting the main financial and cultural hub. Other major urban areas include Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Colombia, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Cúcuta, Ibagué, Villavicencio and Bucaramanga. It covers an area of 1,141,748 square kilometers (440,831 sq mi) and has a population of around 52 million. Its rich cultural heritage—including language, religion, cuisine, and art—reflects its history as a co ...
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Boyacá Department
Boyacá () is one of the thirty-two departments of Colombia, and the remnant of Boyacá State, one of the original nine states of the "United States of Colombia". Boyacá is centrally located within Colombia, almost entirely within the mountains of the Cordillera Oriental, Colombia, Eastern Cordillera to the border with Venezuela, although the western end of the department extends to the Magdalena River at the town of Puerto Boyacá, Boyacá, Puerto Boyacá. Boyacá borders to the north with the Department of Santander Department, Santander, to the northeast with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Norte de Santander, to the east with the departments of Arauca Department, Arauca and Casanare Department, Casanare. To the south, Boyacá borders the department of Cundinamarca Department, Cundinamarca and to the west with the Department of Antioquia Department, Antioquia covering a total area of . The capital of Boyacá is the city of Tunja. Boyacá is known as "The Land of ...
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Villa De Leyva
Villa de Leyva, also called Villa de Leiva, is a touristic colonial town and municipality, in the Ricaurte Province, part of the Boyacá Department of Colombia. The town is a Colombian National Heritage Town and is on the tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Villa de Leyva is located west of the departmental capital Tunja. It is about three hours by car or bus from Bogotá. Located away from major trade routes in a high altitude valley of semi-desert terrain, and with no mineral deposits nearby to exploit, the town has undergone little development in the last 400 years. As a consequence, it is one of the few towns in Colombia to have preserved completely its original colonial style and architecture: the streets and large central plaza are still paved with cobblestones, and many buildings date from the sixteenth century. This has resulted in Villa de Leyva becoming one of Colombia's principal tourist attractions, and it was declared a National Monument on December 1 ...
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Muisca People
The Muisca (also called the Chibcha) are indigenous peoples in Colombia and were a Pre-Columbian culture of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense that formed the Muisca Confederation before the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Muisca speak Muysccubun, a language of the Chibchan language family, also called ''Muysca'' and ''Mosca''. The first known contact with Europeans in the region was in 1537 during the Spanish conquest of New Granada. In New Spain, Spanish clerics and civil officials had a major impact on the Muisca, attempting to Christianize and incorporate them into the Spanish Empire as subjects. Postconquest Muisca culture underwent significant changes due to the establishment of the New Kingdom of Granada. Sources for the Muisca are far less abundant than for the Aztec Empire of Mesoamerica or the Inca Empire and their incorporation to the Spanish Empire during the colonial era. In the New Kingdom of Granada and into the colonial era, the Muisca became " ...
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El Infiernito
''El Infiernito'' ( Spanish for "The Little Hell"), is a pre-Columbian archaeoastronomical site located on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in the outskirts of Villa de Leyva, Boyacá, Colombia. It is composed of several earthworks surrounding a setting of menhirs (upright standing stones); several burial mounds are also present. The site was a center of religious ceremonies and spiritual purification rites, and also served as an astronomical observatory. History The area was known by this name long before the discovery of the archaeological site. Spanish Conquistadors called it ''infiernito'', or "little hell," because they thought it was diabolical and labeled it as a site of Pagan worship. The first description of the site was made in 1847 by the Colombian army geographer Joaquin Acosta, who reported 25 stone columns, half-buried in the Monquirá Valley. The findings were studied by Alexander von Humboldt who believed that the site could be used to anticipate astronomical ...
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Medicine Wheel
Medicine wheels are petroforms or circular formations of rocks on the land. Historically, most medicine wheels followed a similar pattern of a central circle or cluster of stones, surrounded by an outer ring of stones, along with spokes radiating from the center out to the surrounding ring. Often, but not always, the spokes may be aligned to the cardinal directions (East, South, West, and North). In other cases, some stones may be aligned with astronomical phenomena. These stone structures may be called "medicine wheels" by the Indigenous nation which built them, or by more specific names in that nation's language. Physical medicine wheels made of stone have been constructed by many different Indigenous cultures in North America, notably many of the Plains nations. The structures are associated with Native American and Indigenous Canadian religious ceremonies. Nomenclature The Royal Alberta Museum (2005) holds that the term "medicine wheel" was first applied to the Medi ...
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Solar Calendar
A solar calendar is a calendar whose dates indicates the season or almost equivalently the apparent position of the Sun relative to the stars. The Gregorian calendar, widely accepted as a standard in the world, is an example of a solar calendar. The main other types of calendar are lunar calendar and lunisolar calendar, whose months correspond to cycles of Moon phases. The months of the Gregorian calendar do not correspond to cycles of the Moon phase. The Egyptians appear to have been the first to develop a solar calendar, using as a fixed point the annual sunrise reappearance of the Dog Star— Sirius, or Sothis—in the eastern sky, which coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile River. They constructed a calendar of 365 days, consisting of 12 months of 30 days each, with 5 days added at the year’s end. The Egyptians’ failure to account for the extra fraction of a day, however, caused their calendar to drift gradually into error. Examples The oldest solar calendar ...
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First Nations In Canada
''First Nations'' () is a term used to identify Indigenous peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. Traditionally, First Nations in Canada were peoples who lived south of the tree line, and mainly south of the Arctic Circle. There are 634 recognized List of First Nations band governments, First Nations governments or bands across Canada. Roughly half are located in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. Under Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Charter jurisprudence, First Nations are a "designated group", along with women, Visible minority, visible minorities, and people with physical or mental disabilities. First Nations are not defined as a visible minority by the criteria of Statistics Canada. North American indigenous peoples have cultures spanning thousands of years. Many of their oral traditions accurately describe historical events, such as the 1700 Cascadia earthquake, Cascadia earthquake of 1700 and the 18th-century Tseax Cone eruption. Writ ...
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Indigenous Peoples In Canada
Indigenous peoples in Canada (also known as Aboriginals) are the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples within the boundaries of Canada. They comprise the First Nations in Canada, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis#Métis people in Canada, Métis, representing roughly 5.0% of the total Population of Canada, Canadian population. There are over 600 recognized List of First Nations peoples in Canada, First Nations governments or Band government, bands with distinctive cultures, languages, art, and music. Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are some of the earliest known sites of human habitation in Canada. The characteristics of Indigenous cultures in Canada prior to European colonization included permanent settlements, agriculture, civic and ceremonial architecture, complex Hierarchy, societal hierarchies, and Trade, trading networks. Métis nations of mixed ancestry originated in the mid-17th century when First Nations and Inuit people married Europeans, primarily the ...
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