Ring of Goseck

General information

A astronomical observatory is a place intended for the astronomical observation . According to NASA, the 5 oldest observatories are:

Abu Simbel, High Egypt;
Stonehenge, County of Wiltshire, England;
Angkor Wat, Kampuchea;
Kokino, Macedonia;
the Circle of Goseck, Germany.

But quite as old are the observatories of the Externsteine in Saxony Germany or of Nabta Playa in High Egypt.

The circle of Goseck

The “circle of Goseck”, is in Saxony-Anhalt (Land of Sachsen-Anhalt), in Germany. Air discovery of August 2003, it is an enormous tumulary circle 75 m in diameter, resting in a emblavée plain.

Work of Dr. Schlosser

The pr. Wolfhard Schlosser of the University from the Ruhr in Bochum, astronomer specialized in astro-archeology, is since with work to reconstitute a temple of the Sun set up by a European civilization overlapping the Stone Age and final Bronze Age. Gone back to: 4800 before the Christian era, it would be thus slightly former to the similar sites found in Mésopotamie or High-Egypt Nabta Playa.

Wolfhard Schlosser thinks that the remarkable fitting of the site indicates that one is, in fact, in front of one of the first examples of astronomical observatory; astronomical certainly but especially used at astrological and agricultural ends. For Schlosser, one of the three gates, the south, marked to raise it and lay down it heliacal with the summer and winter solstices. It allowed the priests but also with the first European farmers to determine with precision the calendar of their work but also to protect themselves from the various inherent aggressions at that time (wild beasts, hostile tribes,…).

Always according to Schlosser, " Goseck is not simply a “calendar construction”, but, rather, and clearly a construction sacrée". In its demonstration, Schlosser establishes with address that the site was built for the observation of the astronomical phenomena such as the movements of the closest stars (the moon and sun, stars and planets), but also to follow the course of time. These celestial cycles were important for the achievement of the rites but also for the sowing and the harvests of this very first worthy human organization to be named Civilization.

Corroborating this, Pr François Bertemes of the University of Market-Wittenberg indicates that it is rather usual that such astronomical observatories were also places of worship and the centers of the social life.

Description of the site

It includes/understands a series of three concentric ground circles and wood spears (undoubtedly at the time reinforced thorn-bush) with each one 3 openings which coincide with the rising and couchers of the sun to the summer and winter solstices.

The existence of a fourth external circle, which would have disappeared with the wire from the ages, is strongly discussed.

Additional activities

In fact, all the activities crowned, profane, scientific were so strongly overlapping that to separate from/to each other raises almost of the artifice. One can however put forward:

agricultural activities: the excavations of the close wood-clay houses provided a variety of grains and the proof of a very first domestication of the goats, sheep, pigs and cows. The farmers reached this part of the world approximately 500 years before they built the solar observatory. Although the very first Neolithic farmers most probably measured only the movements of their turgescent sexes, they would have come from there quantitatively to evaluate the lunar cycle (the Goddess-Moon) and the positions of the constellations. The Pleiads, which disappear from the sky of north in spring and which reappears with the autumn, always mark the cycles of harvest for much of farmers in the Northern hemisphere. But owing to the fact that their reference marks of plantation shifted in time because of nonagreement of the lunar cycle and the solar cycle (seasons), they came from there through observations to understand that the winter solstice allowed calendar retiming on the solar cycle the exact moment of the " new soleil" , Neu Sounds German (wire of the God-Sun).
artisanal activities: stone remainders cut, ceramic, foundry, weaving, etc are largely present on the site.

Close elements

Other monumental sites

Goseck, fact part of a unit of more than 200 sites monumental, observed plane and divided into Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Czech Republic. But these various European sites of prehistoric hillocks include/understand usually four concentric circles of ground and wood, their openings being probably connected to the rising and to lay down sun with the winter solstice. Whereas Goseck, does not comprise (currently) only 3 concentric circle-gates to him. Does this characteristic concern astronomy or Crowned (signing for example the faith in a Trinité)?

On the same parallel: the sites of Stonehenge, (county of Wiltshire, England), the Externsteine close to Paderborn in Saxony and Goseck are all on the parallel 51ème. However, the Circle of Goseck is former of: 3000 years with the last phase of construction of Stonehenge.

The Disc of Nebra

The experts bring closer the hillocks to Goseck of another spectacular discovery made with less than 30 km: the Disc of Nebra . Indeed, although this disc was created: 2400 years later, the conformation of the site of Goseck, its orientation and the marking of the Solstice S of winter and summer offers similarities with the “disc of Nebra”.

Although no similar disc was found in Goseck, Bertemes and Schlosser are persuaded of the existence of such a disc on the site of Goseck. As much of other old objects, it could have been remelted or quite simply plundered.

Moreover, for Bertemes the third arc of the disc confirms the mythological use of it. The old ones did not seem to have included/understood how the sun, whereas it `lay down' in the west, could rise to the east the next morning. The representations, multi-secular of a solar disk in a boat, with the Bronze Age are found as well in Egypt as in Scandinavia. They translate the conviction of these people into the existence of a vessel transporting the solar star, makes God of it, through the night sky. The disc of Nebra is the first proof of such a Dogme in Central Europe.

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