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Comment by icambron | Hacker News Reader

> Some of the sites are oriented to align to the sunrise on certain dates in Mesoamerican calendars, suggesting the ritual processes involved cosmological concepts tied to the movements of the seasons

I always wonder how justified these inferences are. If future archeologists discover the ruins of, say, MIT's Infinite Corridor, will they conclude that it was a ceremonial site for the winter solstice? Obviously archeologists have additional historic context to feed these inferences, but you do have to wonder about the degree to which highly-visible and naturally enduring-- but possibly superficial and culturally unimportant-- features of these sites lead to skewed conclusions.

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An historian friend once told me that whenever you see "ritualistic" or "religious reasons" mentioned in archeology publications it basically means "we have no fucking clue why they did that".

Well, many ancient structures align with sunrise on Equinox: the day where the earth is perfectly aligned with the sun and not tilted (that is: neither hemisphere is closer to the sun than the other). This is the exact middle day between the longest day of the year and the shortest day of the year.

Others have a similar alignment on summer Solstice or winter solstice (the longest and shortest day of the year respectively)

It _may_ be a coincidence, but I don't think any modern building has a window on both sides of the building where the sun rises on summer solstice and shines straight through both windows. If we do have any such buildings, I'm fairly certain it's by design.

OTOH, there's some ruins where it aligns with sunrise on _some_ random day, and that just feels like a coincidence. Like dropping a pencil on the floor and claiming the direction in which it points has some special meaning -- if you look hard enough, you'll find a meaning to give to it.

I'm not saying it isn't by design; I'm saying it may not be an essential feature of the building, just one that's easy to see for modern archeologists.

> If we do have any such buildings, I'm fairly certain it's by design.

Right, so imagine you found a contemporary building with this feature. Would you conclude that the building's purpose likely involved cosmological rituals, or that the architect thought the alignment was neat?

It's possible for something to be a custom but still be superficial. The sun can be very important to the Mayan people and cause them to design their buildings around its schedule, without the building being specifically meant for sun-related rituals.

Imagine being an archeologist in the year 2650 and discovering all those decorative lions on large buildings built in the 1900s. What lion-oriented purpose did these buildings serve?

Yeah, for starters it actually has to coincide with winter solstice, which is not January 31 or November 11.

Ok, sure, but what if it did? The point isn't about the specific building, it's about the depth of inference you can make from calendar alignment

It's less likely such an alignment happens by chance. If you do observe it, it's reasonable to look for explainations. A ritual use is of course not the only reason, there could be other features in the site (geological or otherwise natural e.g rivers, pre-existing man made artifacts like roads etc) which may have imprinted a direction on the building

well it kind of make sense due to the fact that people used to look up much more. i suggest you travel outside of light pollution and at night you will see what ancient people saw.

I have! But I don't see the relevance? Also this about the sun, not the stars.

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