What's the meaning of an ibex in rockart in the Negev Desert, Israel? - LexiLine Journal 432

Yehuda wrote:

A rockart with drawn ibex is very common here in the Negev Desert. It appears in about 60% of the petroglyphs so it must be important symbol, but why? Sometimes it is drawn alone and at other times it appears with a dog to the left or right of it. Some experts here are claiming that it the symbol of an ibex is the representation of the God Sin ( the moon ). I think there is more to this, especially when it appears with a dog and other symbols in the rockart. I'm looking for additional meaning and would appriciate any thoughts you have about it.
_______________

Andis Kaulins replied:

See the article by Kristina Berggren at http://www.svenska-institutet-rom.org/pecus/berggren.pdf titled "When the rest of the world thought male ibex, why did the people of San Giovenale think female sheep?" PECUS . Man and animal in antiquity. Proceedings of the conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome, September 9-12, 2002. Ed. Barbro Santillo Frizell (The Swedish Institute in Rome. Projects and Seminars, 1), Rome 2004, where she relates a mainstream archaeologic theory that the ibex marked Sin, the Moon, which I sincerely doubt, because the many figures of the Ibex found in the Middle East are never found together with a depiction of the Moon at all. This common interpretation by mainstream archaeologists derives from a lack of knowledge about ancient astronomy.

As written by Richard Hinckley Allen in Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning (p. 88):

"[I]n Akkadian times the commencement of the year was determined by the position of this star [Capella in Auriga] in relation to the moon at the vernal equinox".

Hence, the Moon, if significant for the Ibex, was significant only in terms of the stars at the start of season (in the instant case, the Spring viz. Vernal Equinox. The Ibex thus more likely marks stars and not the Moon.

Berggren notes in footnote 13:

"The Hebrew word ayil – used twice more (Gen.15.9 and Ex.29.32) – can mean either male sheep, male goat or ibex."

It has nothing to do with the Moon.

In fact, Berggren writes about the "duality" of the horned ibex in Eastern civilizations and the sheep in Western civilizations.

Elsewhere the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica writes that:

"The ibex is found in the Sinaitic peninsula and the hills between the Nile and the Red Sea, and the mouflon, or maned sheep, is occasionally seen in the same regions. "

The discussion of goats and sheep contains the following observations:

"In many languages, such as Chinese the word for sheep, goat and ram is the same. And most city folk generally are not aware of the distinctions.

This is further complicated by the fact that some species of sheep are quite goatish in appearance, such as the Jacob's sheep. This kind of sheep with its characteristically spotted or variably coloured fleece, is descended from an ancient Syrian breed, and it can have as many as 6 horns.

The confusion of terms is increased further by the fact that in sheep, the females, or ewes, are often larger than males and can have horns -- that is, they may appear to be rams [male sheep. ] "

Ultimately, the ram or mouflon came down to us as meaning the constellation of Aries (where it marked the Spring Equinox) and the ibex (viz. goat) was seen anciently as the region of Capricorn at the Winter Solstice. However, we may have a shift of positions from Capricorn to Aries over time due to precession of the stars, equinoxes and solstices.

The Journal of Near Eastern Studies (January-April 1965, Volume XXIV, Numbers 1 and 2, 82nd year), has an article by Willy Hartner titled "The Earliest History of the Constellations in the Near East and the Motif of the Lion-Bull Combat", where he affiliates the ibex with the region of Capricorn and Aquarius.

Similar thoughts are found at http://www.tagnet.org/huntsville/stars.pdf#search=%22ibex%20astronomy%20aries%22

See the following link for a discussion of the horned animals in the early Zodiacs:
http://www.whitestag.org/history/sumerian.html

Gary D. Thompson in Essays Relating To The History Of Occidental Constellations and Star Names to the Classical Period engages in a general discussion of ancient stellar constellations, including the ibex.

See the following LexiLine files for decipherments involving horned-animal-type symbols at the stellar positions of Orion and Aries:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/Russia%2C%20Karelia%20and%20Eastern%20Europe/Kurgan%20planisphere/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/Russia%2C%20Karelia%20and%20Eastern%20Europe/Karelia%20%20-%20Staraya%20Zalavruga/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/Russia%2C%20Karelia%20and%20Eastern%20Europe/Danube%20Scripts%20Deciphered/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/Egypt/HierakonpolisEgypt/

Add to this the observation that the constellation Auriga above Taurus also came down to us to mean a "flock of goats". See http://www.winshop.com.au/annew/aurigaw.htm . However, Auriga was originally also connected with the shepherd and the not sheep (or the goats) alone.

The presence of a dog (sheep dog) near the Ibex may speak for Aries as the Ibex in Negev. Indeed, in ancient China, Aries was marked by both the Dog (Heang Low) as well as by the White Sheep (Pih Yang).

Also significant is the direction in which the ibex or ram is facing. Aries faces right, Capricorn faces left.

Lastly, one must view other figures which surround the Ibex. A male figure above the Ibex will most likely mark Perseus (with the phallic pulsating star Algol, the demon), which together with Taurus, the Bull, often marks male fertility in the heavens (again, as a sign of the Spring Equinox).

See e.g. http://www.winshop.com.au/annew/Perseus.html , http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:_YMfeGfcweMJ:www.us.oup.com/us/ppt/classmyth/myths_of_creation_gods.ppt+perseus+male+fertility&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=13
and
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/bigmyth303/Outline15-Perseus.html

Questions of Proof - LexiLine Journal 431

I just posted the following posting to my LawPundit and Hand Proof blogs and include it here because the subjects discussed bear directly on the area of cognitive psychology which deals with how we view things. It is especially the "entrenched" view of things in mainstream science which is a major problem in getting mainstream scholars to comprehend and accept many of the ideas which we present at LexiLine, and indeed, we generally do not care much whether the mainstream comprehends and/or accepts what we write anyway, for the reasons given below.

Psychoanalysis, Socratic Education, Evidence and Hand Proofs

There are advantages, disadvantages and pitfalls both in the exercise of judgment as well as in the exercise of intuition. Socratic education - in our view - is one method to make students aware of the complexities of thought and to inculcate the ability (viz. habit) to engage in critical thinking in analyzing evidence and in formulating proofs.

In the Abstract to Psychoanalysis and Socratic Education*** by Trevor Pateman (article available as an .rtf document), it is written that:

"A range of concepts are introduced to argue similarities between Socratic Education and Freudian psychoanalysis. The concepts are these: the talking cure; floating attention; knowledge and acknowledgment; judgment and intuition; (prior) theoretical understanding; attending for truth; acting in role; play; negative dialectics; the training of the self ... "

What interests us particularly is Bateman's discussion of judgment and intuition, the former - in his definition - involving what we know or think to to know in an appeal to shared knowledge and the latter - in his definition - involving the subjective expression of how things look or feel to us as individuals. Bateman writes:

"The exercise of judgment involves appeal to what I know or think I know at some articulate level of consciousness. Typically, judgment appeals to shared knowledge: what everyone knows or thinks. So rationalization and self-deception find ready-made support in all kinds of conventional wisdom...."

In contrast, intuition is the expression of a personally experienced connection, drawing on a reservoir of inarticulate consciousness. Intuition is the expression of how things look or feel to me.... [I]ntuition will get us to a (correct) result well before we have the means to judge its correctness ... [M]athematicians have the concept of a hand proof. In a hand proof, there is no (real) proof, just a lot of handwaving. But it gestures to an intuition that if we set out in the general direction indicated by the hand proof, we will get to the proof we want to reach. Intuition is then like a compass. [emphasis added]

But intuition does not always work like this; sometimes it leads us astray. Shown the Muller-Lyer lines, I may intuit that one is longer than the other, but I am actually wrong; judgment is against me. But it still remains that the lines look that way. (The Muller-Lyer lines are the ones placed parallel to each other, but with arrow-heads pointing in opposite directions)...."

To see a graphic of Muller-Lyer lines, see the Epistemology of Perception at The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

*** "Website version 2004. A first version appeared, under the same title, in a 1993 issue of Aspects of Education (University of Hull, England), number 49, pages 76 - 80. A second version, again under the same title, appeared in S.Appel, editor, Psychoanalysis and Pedagogy (Bergin and Garvey: Westport, Connecticut), pages 45 - 51. Copyright material used by permission."

The basic problem with "hand" proofs as opposed to "mechanical" proofs is that, as noted by Neeraj Suri, Michelle M. Hugue, and Chris J. Walter in Synchronization Issues in Real-Time Systems:

"As hand proofs are sensitive to the skills of the prover, mechanical proofs are sensitive to the correctness of the theorem prover and its underlying logic. "

In other words, to employ a phrase used by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, if the paradigms (viz. "mechanical" proofs) underlying a given view of "shared knowledge" are wrong, then that knowledge is likely also wrong. What this means is that someone along the way has done an intuitive "hand proof" which does not conform to the judgmental mechanical proofs in vogue. A hand proof made by a skilled prover is thus always at the root of progress - in any field.

Another example of "hand proofs" is the method by which our legal system relies upon the opinions of judges, rather than on computer-produced verdicts applying fixed mechanical theorems. Here, "skilled" provers are viewed as superior to a computer theorem.

As concerns the progress of science (and law), Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions is thus in our view more accurate than Karl Popper's ideas concerning scientific thought as the falsifiability of mainstream statements because "hand proofs" - also in fields other than mathematics - are generally made to conform to the observations at hand, often initially ignorning completely any presumed attempt to "falsify" existing mainstream ideas.

In law, precedents may in fact have to be overturned, but that is not the main purpose of an opinion which overrules prior judicial decisionmaking. Rather, new rules are being made to conform to new observations and events.

Only after an observation-fitting hand proof is made and then compared with the mechanical proofs in vogue does the battle with the inertia of existing paradigms begin.

Mainstream scientists want the ensuing discussion to proceed under their terms and thus demand that their theories be proven false. This, however, does not accurately describe the process of scientific discovery, nor does it describe the primary motivation for overturning precedents in law - and this constitutes Popper's main error in analysis. Popper, by concentrating on mainstream science, does not actually describe the actual process of scientific (or legal) advance - rather, he describes the process of mainstream resistance to advance and the inefficient mechanisms by which that resistance is or can be broken.

The true pioneers in science (or law), on the other hand, and this is where Kuhn's analysis is the more accuracte, have no interest to waste their time on developing proofs to falsify the erroneous theories in vogue, but rather, prefer to be busy building up their own systems which correspond to the evidence at hand. The falsification process of the erroneous prevailing theories is then later carried out by others, i.e. the innovators and early adopters of new theories.

A good example here are the "hand proof" works of Isaac Newton, which present new interpretations of observed phenomena and spend as little time as possible wasting time in disproving the erroneous ideas of others.

Another example of new paradigms and hand proofs is the Constitution of the United States, which is a "new discovery" that concentrates on new things to be achieved, rather than on old things to be "disproven". This in fact is still the genius of America, several hundred years later. America is a "Kuhnian" world of new paradigms and "hand proofs", whereas the Old World (Europe, Middle East) is in part still caught in a maelstrom of Popperian inertia of resistance to change, functioning by antiquated and long outdated mechanical solutions (unreformed social systems, entrenched social classes, overemphasis on tradition, no longer state-of-the-art customs, deference to nobility at the cost of modern social innovation, and in the Middle East, totally outdated religious dogma, etc.)

As the "hand proof" says, "go for it". That's the American way which is sorely lacking in the Old World.

Cahokia Mounds Earth Sky Map - Updated Decipherment - LexiLine Journal 430

To the LexiLine files at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/ in the directory North America - USA Canada at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/North%20America%20-%20USA%20Canada/ I have uploaded a new graphic cahokiamounds1.png (the graphic below)


presenting my revised decipherment of the Cahokia mounds as an Earth Sky Map based on a new map of the mounds sent to me by Steve Burdic (the old decipherment is here).

The maroon, purple and green elements (mounds and lines) are from Burdic's original map. I have added the blue (arrows), red (constellation lines) and black (text explanatory) materials.

The basic decipherment has remained the same, although there are some small additions, and this map will be much easier for most of you to read and understand than the previous one.

There is now no doubt in my mind that this decipherment is correct, since it fits in a number of new elements from Burdic's new map which I was not familiar with before, but which integrate without problem into the previous decipherment.

Steve Burdic suggests that there may also be solar alignments present, and I do not doubt this, but this is not my major scope of interest and I thus leave that research to others.

The Cahokia mounds are seen as being relatively recent by the archaeologists (ca. 800 to 1400 A.D.), but there is no question that the cardinal stellar positions used for the stars must date back much further in time.

New Evidence Proves that the Santorini Eruption was a Blockbuster and Bigger than Currently Assumed - LexiLine Journal 429

As we reported in LexiLine at
33 LexiLine Newsletter 2006 IMPORTANT New Chronology of the Ancient World
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1464
mainstream science has erred significantly in the chronology
of the explosion of the volcano Santorini (Santorin) on the island of Thera (Thira).

Thera is the ancient name for the island whereas Santorini is the modern name for that same island, naming it after the volcano. I have often thought that Thera as a name for this volcanic island is related to the heavenly smithy Thor, since prior to Thera, the island is said to have been called Kalliste and Kalejs is "smithy" in Latvian, i.e. it has the equivalent meaning to Thor.

If the explosion of Santorini is currently misdated, as it clearly is by the available PROBATIVE evidence, then this also means that the chronology of the entire Mediterranean area is flawed, including that of Egypt and the ancient Near East, and also including Biblical chronology.

Egyptologists have matched their view of the chronology of Egypt with the presumed - now provenly erroneous - date of explosion of Santorini. Egyptian chronology for that period will have to be moved backward in time. We conlcuded that already years ago, based on other overwhelming evidence in the same direction of argument.

See
http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi760.htm - Our Revised Chronological Timeline
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/974 - Chronological Errors of Flinders Petrie
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1019 - Our Challenges on Chronology to Mainstream Scientists
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1440 - The Tomb of Moses, The Chronology of Exodus

Via StonePages Archaeo News
http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/002034.html
we now read an August 23, 2006 press release from the University of Rhode Island, Department of Communications, News Bureau, titled
"Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed "
http://www.uri.edu/news/releases/?id=3654
which demonstrates additionally that mainstream science has also significantly erred in assessing the size of that explosion and its impact on the Mediterranean area, including Egypt and the ancient Near East, and also including the Biblical world of that region.

To put it bluntly, what the scholars have been publishing about that era as the history of Egypt, the history of the ancient Near East, and the history of Biblical regions, is tantamount to a fairy tale.

Obviously, if the Santorini eruption was massive then of course the ancient written records of that period in Egypt and the ancient Near East, including Biblical regions, will have clear reference to this gigantic happening - of course, not in the scientific terms that we use today, since in those regions they could not know that a volcano in the Mediterranean had exploded, nor could they draw a causal connection to the catastrophic events that they witnessed far from that exploded volcano.

Rather, the ancients wrote about the observed effects of the explosion in the only terms that they knew in that period of time - referring to the calamities and events which were experienced as the acts of God. But of course they specifically DESCRIBE what they observed, without knowing its cause - the River Nile running red, frogs and burning coal falling from the skies, the sea parting, etc.

Instructive in this regard are
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1439 - Egypt (Thebes) and Judah, Where was Judah? (Giza)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1431 - Judah and Judea are NOT the same, Judah was NOT Israel
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1207 - Egypt, the Jews and Exodus

The reader quoted in an e-mail which led to that last posting wrote:

"The things you have said have made a lot of sense. I hope someday you are proven correct !"

Well, exactly that is happening ... sooner than expected.

IAU (International Astronomical Union) Zaps Pluto as a Planet - LexiLine Journal 428

In a decision which in our opinion is difficult to support, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and its 26th General Assembly have just zapped the status of Pluto as a planet.

THE IAU

The International Astronomical Union (see IAU.org ) was founded in 1919 and regards itself to be the naming authority for astronomical bodies .

STARRY CONSTELLATIONS

In addition, in 1930 the IAU fixed the present boundaries of the stellar (starry) constellations by adopting a system devised by Joseph Delporte, which fixed those boundaries along lines of right ascension and declination for the epoch B1875.0 , a so-called Besselian epoch (365.242198781 days), which has since been superseded in mainstream astronomy by Julian epochs (based on Julian years of 365.25 days and calculated by the formula
J = 2000.0 + (Julian date - 2451545.0)/365.25.

The fixing of starry constellations at its present number of 88 had the drawback that not all ancient constellations are included in this system, nor did the ancients necessarily use the exact same stars for a given constellation as used by more ancient astronomers.

See generally in this regard, Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Dover, N.Y. 1963, see StarPath (the book online) or Amazon.

Moreover, different cultures saw the stars somewhat differently in terms of their representations, even if there are substantial overlaps among cultures in the way they saw the sky.

Finally, the present "fixed" constellations give the appearance that the stellar constellations were always viewed the same way we view them today, which is simply false.

PLANETS

The IAU has now dimply redefined what a "planet" is and in the process has eliminated Pluto from its previous classification as a planet. See the CNN article, Pluto gets the boot

As reported there by Associated Press:

"For now, membership will be restricted to the eight "classical" planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun -- "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites."

The idea that sheer "size" (i.e. mass) and gravitational effect rather than "orbit" should be the determining factor for defining a planet shows in our opinion a serious lack of insight into the nature of the universe, which seems to us to be defined more by principles of "distribution" of matter, rather than by the "mass" of the matter per se. Indeed, the ancient Greeks (as in our opinion also ancient man) saw the stellar constellations as consisting not only of stars of the heavens but also of the spaces inbetween. Modern astronomers have often lost sight of the "spaces" inbetween, also as far as the planets are concerned.

Not only the Titius-Bode Law (more correctly called a "rule of the distribution of planetary mass by orbits""), but also an analysis of other known orbital systems such as the moons of Jupiter, shows that there is always an orderly "spacing" of "planetary" bodies around an orbited object.

In fact, according to the orderly spacing of objects around the Sun in our own Solar System, it is not only the Asteroid Belt (including Ceres) - which appears to us to be a disintegrated planet at that location - but also the "brothers" Neptune and Pluto (whose orbits overlap) should be regarded as planetary orbits, because their astronomical spacing around the Sun follows an orderly orbital system- in the case of Pluto, it is Pluto and not Neptune which actually occupies the orbital position predicted by the Titius-Bode Law. Keeping Neptune but throwing Pluto out of this system is just ludicrous.

As written at the Wikipedia :

"One plausible explanation other than chance is that orbital resonance from major orbiting bodies creates regions around the Sun that are free of long-term stable orbits. Results from simulation of planetary formation seem to support the idea that laws like the Titius-Bode law are a natural consequence of planetary formation, according to the current theories in this area.

Dubrulle and Graner have shown that power-law distance rules are a natural consequence of collapsing-cloud models of planetary systems possessing two symmetries: rotational invariance (the cloud and its contents are axially symmetric) and scale invariance (the cloud and its contents look the same on all length scales), the latter being a feature of many phenomena considered to play a role in planetary formation, such as inverse-square force fields and turbulence."

The elimination of Pluto as a "planet" by the IAU does not take orbitals of heavenly bodies into account, which in our view is a grievous mistake, since it is not size (mass) which should be determinative of planetary status, but rather the orbital location of the orbiting body, regardless of its size.

We think the IAU has made a serious mistake.

Decipherment of Cahokia as a hermetic Sky Map (planisphere) of the Heavens - LexiLine Journal 427

Cahokia Mounds (see photo gallery) in Collinsville, Illinois comprise a UNESCO World Heritage Site and as written there:

" Cahokia Mounds, some 13 km north-east of St. Louis, Missouri,
is the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. "

To our LexiLine Files at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/ in the file North America - USA Canada (Megalithic Sites Rock Art Earthworks)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/North%20America%20-%20USA%20Canada/
under the heading
Cahokia Decipherment as the Heavens by Andis Kaulins
I have added my just-made decipherment of the Cahokia Mounds as
cahokiadecipherment.png (the graphic below)


This decipherment was made possible through the map recently sent to me by Steve Burdic as
Cahokia12Circles.pdf, which was presented in the previous LexiLine posting and is also found in our LexiLine files.

My alleged decipherment shows that the Cahokia Mounds were intended as hermetic representations of the stars of the heavens, including stars from the following modern constellations: those marking the four seasons in the heaven of stars - Aquila (Winter), Scorpio (Autumn), Perseus (Spring) and Leo (Summer).

In addition, Cahokia shows the Pole Star position as well as the position of the North Ecliptic Pole.

Lastly, stars of Ursa Major, Draco, Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Ophiuchus, Bootes, Virgo, Coma Berenices, and Leo Minor are shown.

There may be solar lines here, but that is not my interest at the moment. The major "architectural" features are intended to represent the starry constellations at night.

The correspondences are not always perfect, but the relationship is clear when one views the whole. The Ursa Major equivalence, e.g. is very well represented. Cepheus and Cassiopeia are both excellently reproduced. Scorpio on the other hand is missing one star at the head, the left one - although this was the first group of stars identified nevertheless due to Antares - do we have traces of a mound there? Some of the other alleged star positions show too few stars to be certain. Nevertheless, that the mounds represent the stellar heavens is clear, and the principle used is the same as we previously have found throughout the world, also e.g. at Tikal (see http://www.megaliths.net/mesoamerica.htm).

Using the positions of the stars as obtained, the original plan of Cahokia must be substantially older than currently dated by the scholars - or - their builders relied on long outdated stellar parameters.

[The above decipherment has been amended here.]

Some other sites of interest in this regard are:

Cahokia Mounds Topography - Maps of Cahokia - http://www.museum.state.il.us/vrmuseum/jshape/cahokia2.html
Cahokia Site Map and Virtual Tour - http://www.cahokiamounds.com/virtual_tour.html
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency - http://www.illinoishistory.gov/hs/cahokia_mounds.htm
Archaeological Sites - Cahokia - http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/northamerica/cahokia.html
Cahokia Mound 72 - http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/2001augustmound72excavation1.htm
National Park Service - Cahokia - http://www.cr.nps.gov/worldheritage/cahokia.htm
Mississippian Civilization - http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/up/upi.html
Mississippi Artifacts - http://www.mississippian-artifacts.com/
Gottschall Site - http://www.tcinternet.net/users/cbailey/Gottsiteoverview.html
Indian Mounds of Mississippi - http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/mounds/
FAMSI - http://www.famsi.org/

Map of Cahokia Mounds - LexiLine Journal 426

To the LexiLines Files at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/ in the file
North America - USA Canada (Megalithic Sites Rock Art Earthworks) at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/North%20America%20-%20USA%20Canada/
under the heading Map of Cahokia Mounds from Steve Burdic I have added a map of the Cahokia Mounds sent to me by Steve Burdic as Cahokia12Circles.pdf (the map is too large to present here) accompanied by the following message from Steve:

"The map attachment is my latest attempt to bring order (design) to the 100 plus Indian mounds at Cahokia. The base map is made up of the blue mounds. The scale is approximately 1 mile high by 2 miles wide. The base map is in an arc view file furnished by the University of Southern Illinois. This map is a new approach using circles of 3049 meters centered on the top and bottom mounds. The two center points of the circles form a north/ south line and the intersections of the circles form and east west line. Diagonals from the north point to the east and west intersections and from the south to the east/west intersections form a diamond made up of two equilateral triangles. These diagonals form fairly accurate solstice lines.

I believe the solstices and equinox were sighted on the sides of the mounds as well as from the top of the mounds. This belief comes from the way the mounds are aligned with each other and from pottery designs showing mound type structures with circles next to them. Mounds are often aligned so that solstice events have mounds on either side of the line giving extreme accuracy. In some cases five or more mounds line up this way. The archeologists believe there are solstice alignments at Cahokia and they call it the city of the sun. There are many solstice/equinox alignments in the mounds. That is obvious with a little work with a ruler.

The overall design however is elusive. Starting points, units of measure and angles or other geometrical designs are rampant with this many data points. One of my biggest problems is determining statistical proof of figures like circles and three, four, five, six and up to twelve sided figures. I believe there are multiple designs overlapping each other. The whole thing is like a geometrical exercise relating astronomy to earth based mapping. The site is at W 38 39 27 N 90 03 42. This is one of the Latitudes on the planet that give solstice diagonals equal to equilateral triangles. The nearly 90 degree north figure ties the site in with Giza and Stonehenge.

There are Indian mounds as you move up the Missouri River that have similar relationships. I am sure they are tied in with Cahokia and the rest of the world. The design will remind you of the Phaistos Disc design I sent you years ago. I have been trying to find organizational or design regimes ever since. I keep coming up with that basic diamond shape however. Cahokia is now thought of as a religious center that dominated the eastern and central United States from 800 to 1200 An D. It was not a trade center or political empire. I believe it was a geodetic center that brought the geometry, astronomy and mapping together in this special place and that is acted like a university to teach these disciplines.

There is complexity here. The equilateral triangles can be scaled up or down and moved over the map of the mounds giving many solstice and equinox alignments. http://www.cahokiamounds.com/mystery_04.html has a graphic of the birdman tablet with a cross hatch design said to be reminiscent of rattlesnake skin. To me it is the same design of the mounds and the reason for the importance of the area. Post this message and graphic if you like.

Steve Burdic"