The Winter Solstice and Maeshowe
As you know, the occasion of the Winter Solstice is important for several reasons, not the least of which is that the days which have been getting shorter and shorter for the past several months, will now begin to get longer! Yay!
This will be a slow and incremental increase, of course, in the length of each day, culminating eventually in the longest day of the year each year at the Summer Solstice.
But, today, we are thinking of the Winter Solstice and the shortest day of the year!
And, we are not the only folks who have found this to be an interesting and important time to determine.
The ‘ancients’, (who supposedly were ‘ignorant’, knuckle dragging entities, according to those with the evolutionary glasses), knew about the Winter Solstice and even erected structures (monoliths, buildings, carins, etc.) to help them know exactly ‘when’ the Winter Solstice occurred.
Those 'ancients' likely did not have the telephone poles, stoplights, and vehicles like the ones in the picture above, but they likely did have a lot of snow and ice and also wondered when the Winter Solstice would happen so they could anticipate longer days and more sunlight.
So, to help determine 'when', they built structures ...
One of these structures is known as Maes Howe (also known as Maeshowe). I have visited this site and other similar sites such as the Chambered tomb of Newgrange. These and the other sites are famous for their midwinter (Winter Solstice) alignments.
Many of these sites today have cameras set up so we can sit at our computers and see what the ‘ancients’ saw millennia ago. One of these cameras is at the Maeshowe site.
To see that camera's pictures, HERE’S THE LINK.
And to learn even more, here are several links that you can peruse to your heart’s content:
For more on this work of Neolithic engineering
And, of course, Wikipedia has things to say about Maeshowe
And still more information about Maeshowe is here
More re a webcam and the sun alignment etc here... verrrry interesting!
And here is another link but still verrrrrry interesting
And if you want to know a little big more about the Winter Solstice, check out this interesting article on the National Geographic website. But, as always, remember that National Geographic wears ‘evolutionary world view glasses.’ Also, their comments on several topics including when Christ was born are not accurate and we addressed that in a short Bible study on our BibleStudies.Net website. If you would like to check that study out and find out what really happened on Christmas day, HERE'S THE LINK.
So, with that said, to view the article about the Winter Solstice, HERE’S THE LINK
And, one more thing -- Since we have referred to Newgrange a few times, here is a brief National Geographic video about Newgrange. You will enjoy this. CLICK HERE.
Well, there you have it! A wonderful collection of links about the Winter Solstice and to very old structures used to determine WHEN the Winter Solstice occurred.
The people who built Maeshowe and Newgrange were not ignorant. Indeed, they were likely among those folks who went north after the Tower of Babel Dispersion. Wow. Interesting.
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