Canada's Stonehenge: scientist says Alberta sun temple has 5,000-year-old calendar

It may be that this isn't more important than other medicine wheels.

It could be that many medicine wheels have been underappreciated for what is information is actually being captured by them. Particularly if some of the knowledge as to WHY they were constructed a certain way became lost along the way.

That would still be very interesting. Something right in front of your face being missed would not be new.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by Portugoal

 

This is an interesting story, thanks for posting it. I agree with Byrd that it's a maybe. I looked for more information and was surprised to find little supporting evidence. I noticed this pretty quick though...

An academic maverick is challenging conventional wisdom on Canada's prehistory by claiming an archeological site in southern Alberta

Copy and paste it into Google and see what you get

Professor Freeman is for real. His ideas are genuine, but at this point there's little evidence to suggest that the Alberta Stonehenge is more extraordinary than the familiar Medicine Wheels.

There's a good article here that describes the Oxbow People and the Medicine Wheels of Alberta.

Maybe someone will post something more substantial to support his ideas? It seems to have more potential than the African Stonehenge, 'Adam's Calendar' in a recent thread.

[edit on 2009/1/30 by Aeons]

Originally posted by Portugoal


Cool stuff. Never knew about contact with the Japanese and NW Natives.

Hans: just a note that sea travel between Asia and NW Canada was possible and was probably one of the ways of movement

In response to a previous post, he does seem to be too in love with his theory. But obviously there is something behind his thoery, looking beyond the fact that he's making amazing stretches in search of "truth".

Hans: This is a common occurance amongst scientists, going out of their area of expertise and getting overly protective on an idea. Once objectivity is lost, belief takes over and science takes a back seat.

If it was actually thought that Canada's ancient past was of any importance, wouldn't it be well-documented?

Hans: if it was known, if its unique and there money to do it.

What's so special about South American and Egyptian civilizations, while any possible Ancient Native civilization in the North gets no attention?

Hans: The cultures in the Meso and south America have a fair greater density of 'culture' versus the nomadic tribes of the far north.

Can anyone give a specific set of people that settled in Western Canada at this time?

Hans: they might be an off shoot of the pre-Dorset but I'm outside my area of knowledge when it comes to pre-historic Canada.

The reason is that the Mayans and Aztecs etc were urban/agriculture based.

That's it.

reply to post by Aeons

This is what makes this period of history so fascinating. It encourages speculation without quite being conclusive. Stonehenge, UK had origins that pre-dated the erection of the sarcen stones. These medicine wheels have been expanded and added to over the years...

Only a few medicine wheels have been excavated , but the central cairns of the largest are layered with artifacts – trade goods, projectile points and obsidian – the earliest belonging to the Oxbow people. Over the millennia, other cultures added to their size and importance, Medicine Wheels in Alberta, adding dart points, stone ornaments and other treasures under each new layer of stone. But not every culture used the stone circles.

In at least one case – the Majorville medicine wheel – it seems the monument sat unused for 1,200 years, until about 1,800 years ago. Then there seems to have been a renewal of interest (and additions to the cairn), lasting until Europeans arrived. When the south half of the enormous cairn, (nine metres or 30 feet in diameter and 1.6 metres or just over five feet tall) was excavated, 17,000 artifacts were recovered.

Source

I'm only an interested reader, others have expertise in this area and their opinions carry more weight. Has Professor Freeman dated any artifacts to support the early date given to the Canadian Stonehenge? If the radial points of the wheel are aligned to constellations from 5000 years ago, it would suggest a settled culture. As the link explains, they'd leave waste, animal bones, burials etc.

Originally posted by Kandinsky

I'm only an interested reader, others have expertise in this area and their opinions carry more weight. Has Professor Freeman dated any artifacts to support the early date given to the Canadian Stonehenge? If the radial points of the wheel are aligned to constellations from 5000 years ago, it would suggest a settled culture. As the link explains, they'd leave waste, animal bones, burials etc.

This Professor is pretty reputable. Not sure he would bother putting in 30 years of research and his name behind something he truly doesn't believe in. This just could be his claim to fame. Who knows? I might be curious to buy the book and look over his evidence.

The thing is, we never hear of ancient-Native Americans. If there really are structures like this, don't you think it would be talked about (us Canadians are very proud of anything that glorifies or puts us in top spot in our country, such as hockey).

This Professor is pretty reputable. Not sure he would bother putting in 30 years of research and his name behind something he truly doesn't believe in. This just could be his claim to fame. Who knows? I might be curious to buy the book and look over his evidence.

The thing is, we never hear of ancient-Native Americans. If there really are structures like this, don't you think it would be talked about (us Canadians are very proud of anything that glorifies or puts us in top spot in our country, such as hockey).

Buy his book by all means, there's an article I think forms part of that book called Ketip Sacred Rock in Alberta Moon, Morning Star and Blood Sacrifice by Gordon R. Freeman. You can read it here and see what you think. It's only a brief account with four pages of article, several photographs and the references.

Professor Freeman is reputable yet his conclusions aren’t widely supported in Academia. His research into the medicine wheels and especially the marked boulders that are a feature is objective and scientific. His speculation from that evidence is less objective. When I asked if he'd recovered and dated any artifacts, I wasn't aiming criticism. It was a genuine question. I was reminded of a point Hanslune made recently about the Sphynx being thousands of years older. If there's no evidence that anyone was at a site 12,000 years ago, it begs the question about he accuracy of the date.

In his paper he makes several personal comments about ‘white man’s theft’ of sacred Native American stones. He then suggests Professor Barry Fell for further reading and adds him as a reference. Fellbelieved that America was visited by 6th Century Irish monks who carved the Nativity into rocks in Ogham script. Reading the biography of Fell, I see parallels with Freeman. They have both dedicated years to research their subject and have mined a great deal of information. It's at the point they draw their conclusions where the disagreements arise.

It'll be great if his ideas are found to be right. The more we know about the past, the better and threads like yours are a good way of going about it. I've learned a lot (again) by looking into all this. I'm going to flag it Thanks.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Gordon Freeman????? When did Halflife do a crossover with archaelogy and linguistics???

Just kidding!!

Mention Fell.....and Harte wont be too far.

Originally posted by coredrill
reply to post by Kandinsky

 

Mention Fell.....and Harte wont be too far.

I'd be interested in an opinion on Fell. He has a dubious reputation but areas of his research are also supported. Like I mention above, there's seems to be some good work that is defeated by unsupported conclusions and speculation.

Heard him on the radio tonight. Seems like a pretty down to earth guy. He claims the whoever build this thing had better knoledge of the Universe than the mayans. He actually gave up trying to publish book do to it contradicting mainstream science. Years later,someone suggested reformating the book so that it would be accepted by a mainstream publisher. Im looking forward to the read.

Well I have been to visit may medicine wheels, including the Majorville one, I live only a hour away. I have also see Sundial Butte, Rumsey, BigHorn, and others. There are also Stone Circles in other locations in the Canadian Shield. All have a Calendricla component all are sacred sites. Freeman's conclusions are intriguing, I have read them some time ago and I likely will be buying the book. There is no evidence of advanced civilizations near by. I have many pictures to illustrate this. Some are on my website www.shrinesandsacredsites.com/mmw.htm

Roger

Originally posted by Kandinsky

Originally posted by coredrill
reply to post by Kandinsky

 

Mention Fell.....and Harte wont be too far.

I'd be interested in an opinion on Fell. He has a dubious reputation but areas of his research are also supported. Like I mention above, there's seems to be some good work that is defeated by unsupported conclusions and speculation.

He was a good biologist, but (speaking as an anthropologist and as someone who is doing research that involves linguistics) his linguistic methods are really, really, really, really bad. There are HUGE problems with the "this word sounds like this one so the languages MUST be related" scenario... one of the founding anthropologists of the linguistics field, Franz Boas, talked about this very clearly in one of the earliest papers on linguistics: depending on which language you speak as your "native tongue", words may (or may not) sound similar to you. "Night" and the German word "nacht" (meaning "no" or "not") may sound exactly alike to someone whose first language is Japanese and sound totally different to someone whose first language is Norwegian.

Fell neglects this completely. If two words "sound the same" to him then the languages must be related. Modern linguists look at the word, the root words of the languages, the grammar (how many tenses do the verbs have and how things like position (is that object "on a table" or "above the table" (something sitting on a table is actually "above" the table in Japanese)) are used as well as comparing how sentences are created in each language (in German, for example, the verb usually comes at or near the end.) Only when there is a match on a number of those points do we say that the language is related.

Thirty words that "sound the same to your ear" (some of which may mean something similar) do not make two different languages into related languages.

There is a more eye-rolling variant of that in which the "researcher" looks at how a word is spelled using the Roman alphabet (our alphabet) and decides words are similar. The two languages may have different alphabets, (Arabic, for instance) and a different range of sounds and the person that typed down "how that foreign word sounds" may be trying to approximate things in the Roman alphabet... but to the "researcher" the fact that someone spelled those things in a similar way means they mean the same thing.

A prime example of this is "Tutmoses" has "Moses" in it so "Tutmoses" is actually "Moses." I have a whole long rant on that one.... but I'll spare you.

Howdy Byrd

really, really, really, really bad

You left out two repeats of really, and %$#$% between really and bad

Originally posted by Portugoal

As for the pyramids being older than this structure, that is false. The pyramids are about 3000 years old

actually recent study, or not so recent, has shown that the pyramids have water erosion, which would have been impossible for the time of 3000 years ago,

the actual amount of time would have to be closer from 7000 - 10 000 years

the only reason they hold on to the 3000 year old idea is because anthropologists say that 7000 - 10 000 years ago it would be "mpossible" for the primitive civilization living there at the time, to create these structures with their limited understanding and simple tools.

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
Heard him on the radio tonight. Seems like a pretty down to earth guy. He claims the whoever build this thing had better knoledge of the Universe than the mayans.

Right there is where folks would begin to dismiss him. He points to alignments that he has discovered but without any real proof that this is what the ancients intended. I could (for example) point to the alignment of any three cars along my street and declare that these people had knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes and were parking to align their cars with the solstice that will take place in 2214.

There is written proof that the Mayans had good knowledge of the solar system, because there are charts of the movement of Mercury and Venus as well as solstice markers and cycle markers. The glyphs on these and elsewhere shows that they intend these for astronomical use.

He actually gave up trying to publish book do to it contradicting mainstream science. Years later,someone suggested reformating the book so that it would be accepted by a mainstream publisher. Im looking forward to the read.

I can see why it wouldn't be accepted as a paper since his methodology is flawed. He could probably find some publisher or another if the book is formatted right.

A shame, really. Those circles deserve study and mapping and categorizing... but not with some pre-ordained opinion in mind (such as they represent drawings of ancient spaceships or galaxy placements.) Someone said they were multicultural sites -- that they had been used for a long time and continued to be used. These traditions and stories telling what the people know are more enlightening and worthy of study than a theory based on a scientist's personal knowledge and ideas.

Or, at least, that's what scientists called Anthropologists think!

Originally posted by tankthinker

Originally posted by Portugoal

As for the pyramids being older than this structure, that is false. The pyramids are about 3000 years old

actually recent study, or not so recent, has shown that the pyramids have water erosion, which would have been impossible for the time of 3000 years ago,

the actual amount of time would have to be closer from 7000 - 10 000 years

the only reason they hold on to the 3000 year old idea is because anthropologists say that 7000 - 10 000 years ago it would be "mpossible" for the primitive civilization living there at the time, to create these structures with their limited understanding and simple tools.

The problem with your theory is that the Pharoah's who ordered the Pyramids to be built weren't around 10000 years ago. Or did they suffer water erosion too


And as for him stating that whoever built them had better knowledge of the universe than the Mayans, it's his theory and I really don't think he would risk putting his name behind it if he really didn't think that way. Or maybe he's just trying to get some good PR for his book with comments like these.

Anyone have any idea yet who could've been around to build this? If they were nomads would they not have other large structures like this- not just any other medicine wheel?

Originally posted by Portugoal
The problem with your theory is that the Pharoah's who ordered the Pyramids to be built weren't around 10000 years ago. Or did they suffer water erosion too

but even the idea on who ordered the pyramids to be built has a lot of controversy

just because the name of a pharaoh is on one part of the pyramid doesnt mean he had ordered it to be made

oh very nice find there. I personally believe that Americas prehistory has alot more depth to it so this definitely goes on my to watch threads

Anyone else with any info on North American ancient people and their belief system?

I can't find anything on the subject.

Originally posted by Portugoal
Anyone else with any info on North American ancient people and their belief system?

I can't find anything on the subject.

You won't find much in the academic papers because scientists are (nowadays) reluctant to go making announcements about what long-vanished people thought. There were a number of cases (Budge on Egyptian religion comes immediately to mind) where one of them came out pontificating and was later proved to be very wrong about some parts of it.

The best sources are records of beliefs at the time the first Europeans encounter a tribe. So, among the Mayan Codexes (there are a number) is some good information about their beliefs. Several researchers were very careful in collecting tales -- Franz Boas did some wonderful work with several tribes. He collected the authentic stories, wrote about the languages, and wrote about some of the ceremonies (the Wolf ceremony of the Salish... not practiced now) that he was privileged to see.

I really like the fieldwork that Boas and his students did. There's some flaws to it, but they tried to faithfully preserve what they saw without (too much) viewing it through the eyes of their own culture.

Some books by some Native Americans also exist from the 1800's. In general, you have to realize that they were frequently treated as little more than vermin.

Paleo records include things like rock art (which may be, like the medicine wheels, used over generations or centuries.) Some sites (Painted Rocks near San Angelo, Texas) have been preserved and have had modern tribes interpret the paintings.

Originally posted by Portugoal
Anyone else with any info on North American ancient people and their belief system?

I can't find anything on the subject.

Hiya Portugoal, there's some information on the North American natives from the area. It's a glossary of terms and explanations that you can use as a basis to search further. Here's an explanation of Medicine Wheels and and the Oxbow People that are credited with their creation. There's archaeological and anthropological information and images here.

There's an excellent archive here. The Blackfoots had territory in what is now Canada, some of their mythology is here.

The Blackfoot site reminds me of an Native American anthropology book published in the 30s. It's in storage with many other of my books. It has an account that parallels the Ark flood myth. In this case, the survivors remained safe in a mountain cave as the flood waters covered the land. They sent out a bird that didn't return. They then sent out a clever Jay and he returned with the leaf from a tree.

I've always been curious about how honestly the accounts were recorded.

The links were found within ten minutes using Google. You should try it sometime, it's quite popular