22 January 2012 by Tristan Gooley
Last night I caught a few minutes of a programme on BBC4, called ‘Unnatural Histories.’
As so often seems to be the case, a short stroll from the mainstream channels uncovered rough diamonds.
In the programme, an aerial shot showed us clearly visible patterns in the earth, patterns that were partly concealed at ground level by dense undergrowth. The narrator explained that we were looking at ‘geoglyphs’ in the Amazon rainforest. Geoglyphs are shapes that have been deliberately formed in the land by the hand of man.
Like many pilots, I have come to love the way it is possible in the air to spot patterns in the earth that are hard to notice on the ground. Lines that are lost in their surroundings on terra firma, stand out luminously from 3000 feet. But my experience has been restricted to European Iron Age Hill Forts and the like. This was…
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Tags: alignment, amazon, BBC, chile, east, geoglyphs, lines in the earth, north, pilots, south, stars, sun, west |
23 December 2010 by Tristan Gooley
There is a wonderful article on the orientation of churches here, from a 2007 issue of Archaeology magazine. My thanks to Doug for making me aware of it.
“Armed with a Silva compass fixed to a piece of wood with brass screws, over 10 years Ian Hinton surveyed almost 1,750 churches in England and Wales. He resolved an old belief – but uncovered a new mystery.”
For those who do not have the time to immerse themselves… the answer is yes, churches do face east , but not perfectly and the discrepancy varies with location. The average ‘error’ is only 4 degrees, which is pretty good.
There are some tendencies that are very interesting: mainly that a church is more likely to be aligned north of east if the church itself is situated in the west of the country. This is a trend that the author, Ian Hinton, says…
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Tags: alignment, churches, declination, east, Ian Hinton, variation |
Last night I caught a few minutes of a programme on BBC4, called ‘Unnatural Histories.’
