10 World’s Oldest Things From Armenia – Sky Observatory – 7,500 years old
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10 World’s Oldest Things From Armenia – Sky Observatory – 7,500 years old
“Carahunge” or “Zorats Karer” (also known as the Armenian Stonehenge) is a megalithic stone circle located some 200km from the Armenian capital Yerevan, not far from the town of Sisian. The name derives from “Car” for “stone” and “hunge” for “sound” or “voice”, meaning “singing stones”.
The structure is believed to be a sky observatory due to the enigmatic holes drilled in the stone pointing at the cosmic bodies like the sun, the moon and the stars. It is specifically aligned with the Cygnus constellation and its brightest star Deneb. Being over 2000 years older than the Stonehenge it is believed to be the oldest known sky observatory.
However, only since the middle of the 80ies, Carahunge was first interpreted as an archaeoastronomical monument and was studied by Prof. E.S. Parsamian (1999) and Prof. P.M. Herouni (1998) who have dated the structure to around 5,500 BCE. There are 222 stones with a total extent exceeding 250 metres, including 84 with holes (with 4-5 cm diameters).
Source: http://www.aras.am/Archaeoastronomy/astronomyancientarmenia.html
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