Megaliths, Mounds, and Peace

So I've been completely absorbed lately in the research for my paranormal novel. Part of what I'm checking out are ancient civilizations. Like, ancient. The kind that built megaliths and have sometimes been termed "moundbuilder civilizations" by archeologists.

It's amazing to me that ancient peoples all over the planet built and created structures that were identical and, quite feasibly, for similar purposes. Societies in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, South, Central, and North America all created -- often by hauling massive stones or earth for many, many miles -- giant megaliths, or something like megaliths. And many built what scientists presume to be ancient observatories for monitoring the movements of the stars and planets. Did you know that a thousand years before Stonehenge, there were Stonehenge-like observatories in parts of Africa and South America? And that there are pyramids in Central and South American, and China? I did not. Yet another reason I LOVE what I do.

Were these one people who roamed from place to place on the planet over thousands of years, setting up identical mounds, pyramids, and behemoth boulder-structures? Or did all the peoples of the world, at some point in time, revere the same things, follow similar rituals and rites, and look to the stars for answers?

If you want to check out some of the sites, here is a list of the world's archaeoastronomical sites from Wikipedia.

And here is one of my absolutely favourite bits -- there is a neolithic structure in Germany called the Goseck Circle. Here's what Wiki says about it:

The Goseck circle is a Neolithic structure in Goseck in the Burgenlandkreis district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It consists of a set of concentric ditches 75 meters (246 feet) across and two palisade rings containing gates in defined places. It is considered the earliest sun observatory currently known in the world. Interpretations of the ring suggest that European Neolithic and Bronze Age people measured the heavens far earlier and more accurately than historians have thought. The site was made public in August 2003.

Here's an aerial view:

Site of the Goseck circle. The yellow lines represent the direction the Sun rises and sets at the winter solstice, while the vertical line shows the astronomical meridian

I'm sorry, but that is an ancient peace symbol if I ever saw one . . .

I don't know about you, but stuff like this gives me the chills. In a good way.

Peace, y'all!