[HN Gopher] A 26,000-year astronomical monument hidden in plain ...
___________________________________________________________________
A 26,000-year astronomical monument hidden in plain sight (2019)
Author : mkmk
Score : 272 points
Date : 2026-01-20 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (longnow.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (longnow.org)
| ifh-hn wrote:
| I first heard about this in a Graham Hancock book. Found it a
| fascinating example of an attempt to encode a date that far
| distant future generations might understand (provided it
| survives).
| DougN7 wrote:
| That was an excellent rabbit hole to go down while eating lunch
| :)
| aebtebeten wrote:
| For a hypothesis concerning the precession of the equinoxes and
| religious pantheons, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38761574
| GrowingSideways wrote:
| The concept of "religion" didn't exist until the 17th century
| or so. Let's not use it here.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| What?
| tzs wrote:
| Wikipedia says similar [1]:
|
| > The concept of "religion" was formed in the 16th and 17th
| centuries. Sacred texts like the Bible, the Quran, and
| others did not have a word or even a concept of religion in
| the original languages and neither did the people or the
| cultures in which these sacred texts were written
|
| That said, GrowingSideways is mistaken. He is confusing the
| thing with the category of the thing.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religion
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > or even a concept of religion in the original languages
|
| IMO this and the sources it cites are wrong. A huge chunk
| of the Old Testament is about how God had to keep sending
| prophets to tell the Israelites to stop worshipping other
| deities. So while they may not have had a single word
| that was equivalent to 'religion,' they clearly possessed
| the same concept. They would just use the phrase
| "worshipping other gods."
| tzs wrote:
| You are confusing the thing with the category of the thing.
|
| Religion the category is only a few hundred years old. The
| things that fall under that category go back at least as far
| as Neanderthal times.
| maebert wrote:
| cf. "The Map is not the Territory"
| testaccount28 wrote:
| it's an interesting point, and i don't think it can be
| resolved quite so neatly. to the people building such
| monuments, or writing such texts, the activity may have
| been closer to what we now refer to as "history" or
| "natural philosophy" (or even "civic infrastructure").
|
| the fact that _now_, we have independent traditions
| referred to by those terms, and so categorize the ancient
| practices under "religion" is quite confusing, and it may
| be productive to make the distinction clear.
|
| for a modern example, suppose we build a skyscraper in such
| a way that it lines up with, or reflects the setting sun on
| the solstice. we would regard this as "architecture", not
| "religion". i would be quite offended if, some thousand
| years from now, the aesthetic decision is dismissed as
| primitive superstition.
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> i would be quite offended if, some thousand years from
| now, the aesthetic decision is dismissed as primitive
| superstition._
|
| Why? I can't imagine being offended if people _today_ ,
| ignorant of the true motivations, dismissed it as
| primitive superstition, let alone a thousand years from
| now when I'm long dead.
| Aloisius wrote:
| The conceptualization of religion as a category, is
| actually quite a bit older. The idea that it was created
| recently was, well, created recently.[1]
|
| Casadio details it going back thousands of years across
| cultures.[2]
|
| [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-
| religion/index.ht...
|
| [2] https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780191045882_A
| 29773...
| akshay326 wrote:
| > There is an angle for doubt, for sorrow, for hate, for joy, for
| contemplation, and for devotion.
|
| I'm so intrigued - what was going on inside Hansen's brain?
| Liquix wrote:
| Makes sense when talking about human postures and emotions.
|
| Victory/elation/worship corresponds to extending the arms above
| the head or in a "V" shape, sorrow/grief corresponds to
| dropping to the knees and holding the head in the hands, etc.
| These associations seem to persist despite language barriers
| and great spans of time.
| myrdynEmbrys wrote:
| You solved the riddle good sir!
|
| Walking along the millennia, viewing the night's glorious
| celestial panorama, the registrations on the floor, you'll
| have successfully circumnavigated the Long Now.
| vedmakk wrote:
| This is the kind of stuff I love about ancient architecture. It
| seems they were full of such clever things (or maybe only the few
| constructions which survived until today).
|
| Its nice to see that some people still care about creating such
| thoughtful art for modern constructions. It seems that most
| building of our time are just optimized for fast and efficient
| construction.
|
| I hope there are many more out there, so that Earth's Graham
| Hancock of the year 16000 has something to explore on his/her
| ayahuasca trip.
| dylan604 wrote:
| When you had no electricity to produce light pollution, when
| you have no TV, printing press, or any other thing to distract
| your attention, you had plenty of time to look at the night
| sky. When that also means you didn't have a way to have a
| shared calendar, you paid more attention to the sky to know
| when the seasons were changing. When the changing of seasons
| were key into surviving, you gave it a lot of importance. It's
| hard to put that into perspective when we can just look at an
| app to see the specific time/date of astronomical events well
| into the future.
| praveen9920 wrote:
| Having something built IRL would at least inspire a few to
| actually be interested in astronomy or star gazing.
| sneak wrote:
| The buildings then were also optimized for fast and efficient
| construction.
|
| Those buildings are, of course, gone now.
| calibas wrote:
| Sounds like it's about the precession of the equinoxes and the
| new "Age of Aquarius".
| throw0101a wrote:
| More:
|
| > _Due to the precession of the equinoxes (as well as the stars '
| proper motions), the role of North Star has passed from one star
| to another in the remote past, and will pass in the remote
| future. In 3000 BC, the faint star Thuban in the constellation
| Draco was the North Star, aligning within 0.1deg distance from
| the celestial pole, the closest of any of the visible pole
| stars.[8][9] However, at magnitude 3.67 (fourth magnitude) it is
| only one-fifth as bright as Polaris, and today it is invisible in
| light-polluted urban skies._
|
| > _During the 1st millennium BC, Beta Ursae Minoris (Kochab) was
| the bright star closest to the celestial pole, but it was never
| close enough to be taken as marking the pole, and the Greek
| navigator Pytheas in ca. 320 BC described the celestial pole as
| devoid of stars.[6][10] In the Roman era, the celestial pole was
| about equally distant between Polaris and Kochab._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_star
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_pole
| kraig911 wrote:
| I loved this. I wish I had the ability to do the same innocuous
| deep dive into a easter egg in code - but I fear it would never
| be discovered at this rate of which AI is generating similar
| stuff. But much like this article maybe there's a time and place.
| lalos wrote:
| > Having this one fixed point in the sky is the foundation of all
| celestial navigation.
|
| Only in the northern hemisphere.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| During DEF CON XX, I got bored/overwhelmed (it was not my first
| year attending) -- so I decided to rent a car and visit Hoover
| Dam (this was before the bypass bridge was completed). I drove
| through the desert 100mph+, in my own little HST jaunt, searching
| for nothing but concrete's _high water mark_.
|
| The statues in OP's article are absolutely beautiful examples of
| Art Deco / 1930s Americana (my local post office was built then,
| too, and has eaglettes of similar [but smaller] design). I had no
| idea they were out there until stumbling upon them, and they
| definitely leave a lasting impression of our forefather's
| imposing _presence_. America, _fuck yeah_!
|
| Wish I had then-known about this "clock," which is definitely
| _hidden in plain sight_. Wish we had similarly-lavish federal
| budgets, today. But worth visiting, both article, statues & dam.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| In the extremely interesting book about water, cadillac desert,
| there is a great discussion with a scholar of some kind, I think
| an archeologist, about the large western US dams and the future.
| The gist is that the reservoirs will eventually silt up and
| disappear, but the dams will remain for thousands of years. The
| silted lakes will preserve clear evidence of their construction
| in the geologic record of these regions.
|
| We will quite plausibly be known as the dam builder civilization,
| as these artifacts could very easily outlast the memory of what
| we call ourselves. It is fitting to embellish them in this way.
| avhception wrote:
| Haha, I clicked without reading the URL. Then I read the "01931"
| in the text, immediately looked at the URL and of course it was
| longnow.org. Brought a smile to my face.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _construction of the dam began in 01931_
|
| Person in far future:
|
| Was that in _the_ original 01931 as in 1931? Or is that the usual
| truncation of 101931, since most relevant dates are in this
| decamillennium?
|
| Leading zeros don't do what you think they do; you need look no
| further than how people say 03 when they mean 2003. A leading
| zero does not unambiguously say "there are no implied nonzero
| digits to the left of this zero".
|
| Just, stop.
|
| Or find some other convention, like, say, =1931. The = means,
| this is an exact value and not some value truncated modulo a
| power of ten.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| It is a convention of The Long Now Foundation to get people to
| think of time in terms of 10k years instead of a lifetime at
| best. It goes hand in hand with their 10k year clock.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now
| kazinator wrote:
| > 10k year clock
|
| a.k.a. cuckoo clock
| zamadatix wrote:
| I think they are speaking to, not ignorant of, this.
| bregma wrote:
| I just look at it and think someone can't even count to 010 in
| octal.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Why do you imagine that =1931 wouldn't be equally confusing in
| some future decamillenium? Arabic numerals have only been
| around for (charitably) 0.12 decamillenia. Sorry, =.12
| decamillenia.
| eddieh wrote:
| error: invalid digit '9' in octal constant
| krisoft wrote:
| But is the star map there? This article seems to imply that it
| got demolished in 2022: https://www.oskarjwhansen.org/news/save-
| the-star-map
|
| If so that is somewhat ironic. A message intended to communicate
| a date to thousands of years into the future got demolished a
| mere 86 years after its creation due to a drainage issue and a
| contract dispute.
| joezydeco wrote:
| It's in pieces, evidenced here:
| https://www.oskarjwhansen.org/news/save-the-star-map-decembe...
| Tylast wrote:
| At a loss for words. :|
| rburhum wrote:
| That is a crime of humanity. Terrible!
| ofalkaed wrote:
| It is currently under reconstruction, it sounds like much of it
| was beyond salvage and has to be remade but it is difficult to
| find much info on this, bits and pieces strewn about the web.
| The project was resumed in 2023 and the BOR stated they were
| still committed to reconstructing the star map. In 2024 they
| completed the new underlayment and I have yet to find anything
| from 2025 other than that Monument plaza is still closed to the
| public.
| tempaccsoz5 wrote:
| The same website says that as of 2024, it is slowly being
| reconstructed: https://www.oskarjwhansen.org/news/2024-hoover-
| dam-star-map-...
| breckinloggins wrote:
| I somehow doubt there is any future version of me that regrets
| joining The Long Now Foundation, and work like this is the main
| reason why.
|
| If you're in SF you should pay them a visit and buy a coffee at
| The Interval; I think you'll find it worth the trip.
| krisoft wrote:
| I have once created a pendant to my friends' wedding following a
| similar idea. A silver disk engraved one one side with the
| position of the planets and major moons at the moment of the
| ceremony. Fun thing is that the Galilean moons orbit fast enough
| that you can even read the intended minute.
| https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIpFTPOIP60/
| BrandonY wrote:
| That's so cool! Is there a calculator somewhere that can
| convert to/from dates and solar system position charts?
| mkesper wrote:
| Positions at a given time could be simulated in e.g. Celestia
| (and then projected). The other direction, I don't know.
| gus_massa wrote:
| If you have a blog post with a few more technical details, it
| may be a nice submission for HN. (Do you have a few photos of
| the intermediate steps to share?)
|
| Some ideas/questions: How is it painted? Is it laser cut or by
| hand? Did you designed it? How did you do the calculations?
| Does Saturn have rings? Where is the cutoff? (No
| Neptune/Uranus/Fobos/Deimos/...) Have you tried to give a
| different size to each planet?
|
| PS: I showed the video to my older daughter that is interested
| in astronomy and she likes it.
| flomo wrote:
| Thanks for this, at one point I tried to google this monument and
| didn't find much.
| peter303 wrote:
| The precession circle is 144 arc degrees sin 23.5. In an 80 year
| lifespan precession would move the rotation pole about .44 arc
| degrees or the diameter of the full moon. Any long lived
| astronomical observatory in ancient times would have noticed
| this.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-01-20 23:00 UTC)