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Ur and Harran Latitudes, and Göbekli Tepe |
NEWS: "... latitude at Harran equals 3/4 atan and at Ur 3/5 atan ..." 2008.04.25 - When is a "moon temple" an observatory? Recent press reports called my attention to Göbekli Tepe in Turkey (Göbekli Tepe - An Introduction). A flurry of news and media has followed the Jan. 18 article in Science, 319:5861. I particularly enjoyed a blog with good photos and critical attention to interpretation: My Visit to Paradise. Location = 37.224 N., 38.922 E. Since 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt has excavated at the Göbekli Tepe stone circles, circles 7,000 years older than Stonehenge. Schmidt reported, "Gobekli changes everything. It's elaborate, it's complex, and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time." The German Archaeological Institute presents information about their Göbekli Tepe activity online. I include several videos and the links above for more imagery. The videos, German televison reports, contributed immensely to visualizing the site. I confess ignorance of the dialogue or the validity of any interpretaions they present.
None of us, not even archaeos, needs an excuse for being unfamiliar with such early Neolithic megalithic monuments; their existence is still big news. Nonetheless, interpretations about religion and even Adam and Eve have appeared. In researching the exact location, I read more of the regional archaeological context, with which I'm also rather unfamiliar. Literally and professionally, I live in the "New World," the Americas. One interpretation I encountered online called Harran's inhabitants "Septimite idolators." Okay then! It was more explicit associations with astromony that caught my attention with reference to Harran, an ancient center on the great plain south of Göbekli Tepe. Harran is renowned as a Sabaean center associated with a moon "temple" and as an earlier Sumerian center. Harran was an important, once-populous prehistoric crossroad. I noticed Harran's latitude is 36.87 degrees, the acute angle of a 3:4:5 geodetic triangle (3/4 arc tangent = 36.8699°). Was knowledge of the latitude considered in locating a moon temple at Harran? When is a "moon temple" an observatory? When is idolatry exact science? At this point the Old World had captured my attention once again, distracting from great pueblo geometry near the same latitude. The history/myth of Mesopotamia holds that Ur and Harran are two important, related Sumerian centers, both associated with the moon. I checked the Ur ziggurat, at 30.963 degrees. At first I did not notice colatitude equals 5/3 arctangent (atan). Colatitude is the distance to the nearest pole, a geodetic reference point. Latitude references the equator, the mid-pole plane perpendicular to the rotation axis. The local level plane at Harran intersects the rotation axis at a 4/3 atan angle, forming a 3:4:5 right triangle, as does latitude, the relation to the equator. Summarizing, colatitude at Harran equals 4/3 atan and at Ur 5/3 atan, latitude at Harran equals 3/4 atan and at Ur 3/5 atan. Perhaps these "idolators" were doing astronomy? Lucky me, astronomy is not punishable idolatry anymore.
Getting to why I did not notice the Ur colatitude right off, I checked latitude first because the precise value for pi caught my eye in the conversion table. We live in a 360 degree world, probably due to ancient astronomers in this region. Cultures also invent 365 degree worlds, as known from the history of astronomy in China. Divide earth's circumference by days per solar orbit (0.98561° = SO), multiply by 10 pi, and the result is the latitude of the Ur ziggurat, 30.9638° = 31.4159 SO. This 10x version of pi caught my eye, distracting from the latitude tangents. But, I digress with this precise pi coincidence in a 365.25 degree world. I turned next back to Göbekli Tepe and Harran. The sites are apparently intervisible, just over 40 km apart. The difference in latitude from Harran to Göbekli Tepe equals precisely 1/1,000 of earth's circumference. This is where we enter a twilight zone in ancient astronomy. Of course, the opposite metaphor is the proper one regarding the inference, the dawn of ancient astronomy. Even non-archaeos understand stratification and deposition basics—deeper is older. Göbekli Tepe is 12,000 years old. Harran is equated with Abraham of biblical fame, and with Ur of Sumeria, the "Civilized Land" and a "cradle of civilization." That cradle and astronomy is presumed to be 4,000 to 5,000 years old, not 12,000. Harran is located at 3/4 atan latitude, a fixed parameter, and Göbekli Tepe is at a specific latitude difference north. Because the fixed parameter must come first, the conundrum, of course, is that this precise 1/1,000 of circumference latitude difference is either coincidence, or ancient astronomy just took a leap back to 12,000 years ago. Anyway, that's how I came to notice the latitudes and colatitudes of Ur and Harran, excitement enough without entering twilight zones of inference and interpretation. But if I must, I might argue the Ur and Harran "moon temples" evidence a relationship to astronomy and precise knowledge of geodesy. In other words, what we call exact sciences. Here is one more video of Göbekli Tepe, where carved stones speak well enough for themselves and for their makers 12,000 years ago.
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