'Oldest man-made structure' unearthed ?

Here's something for discussion, I put the question mark in the title since this claim is disputed within the article itself.




The last line of the quote above may be telling, a book being released along with this claim could lead one to believe it could be a marketing deal.

Could Adam's calendar be true to the claim or is it the latest in junk science?

Very interesting find, thank you!

I wonder...... the article talked about the differing materials, the stones being dolomite (if I recall correctly)... I would want to find out how far away the nearest deposit of dolomite is from the site. Perhaps there would be more clues to the finite dating of the stones if they could find the excavation site, as well as providing addtional evidence that they were, in fact, moved by other than natural forces.

If they are lined up "perfectly" with the four directions, I wonder how that would compare with magnetic north of, say, 75,000 years ago? If the evidence supports that there IS a magnetic alignment there, that'd seems pretty impressive to me for an ancient civilization to even be aware of a way of measuring direction, or geometry to strike a bisecting line between the sun's path.

Looks like accurate dating of the moving of the stones is critical.

Good story, thanks OP!

The article said the stones came from several kilometers away.

Its very hard to date stones without doing an exhaustive dig of the area- that AFAIK hasn't been done. The marketing associated with this "discovery" makes one suspecious.

I'd say real stones, maybe set up by man but the date is way way out there.

As so often happens with these types of claims, more data is needed

Here's some pictures of the structure:

Taken from the downloadable online PDF:
Adam's Calendar
July 2008
by Johan Heine & Michael Tellinger
Published by Zulu Planet Publishers

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cheebay-

"Adam" is a reference to Adam and Eve from the Bible. It's merely a clever title for what is believed to be the oldest man made structure on Earth.

And what better way to have scientists and archeologists take your find seriously than by giving it a Biblically referenced name....... wait a minute...... maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

Forgive my skepticism,
But isn't it possible that the stones are 75000 years old, and were moved and etched up and set up much more recently?
Carbon dating just dates the year of the stone, i thought, not when it was possibly aligned.

I find it unlikely that the carbon dating the stones would specify a date, since AFAIK its impossible to do. Carbon dating is for organic matter.

If 75 000 years makes scientists "heads spin" their heads must be small indeed.

Im always surprised at the indignation and skepticism towards everything that surpasses little pea-brain.

Good post.

The stones are more likely to be 700 million years old (or much older) and could be up to 3 billion years old. Given that they seem to be dolomite, I'd suspect a lot younger than 3 billion years.
www.southafrica.to...

I looked at information on state parks in the area of Mpumalanga, South Africa, (where "Adams Calendar" is located) and found that the geology of the area is dolomite (soft limestone) and quartzite, deposited in layers.
www.mpumalanga.com...

In order to prove that they were set up there 70,000 years ago, there needs to be found bones from that era (not impossible) that show human activity (flint tool marks... very distinctive) and/or fire pits (which were known at that time) as well as some hand tools (scrapers, choppers, etc. The stones can't be directly dated, but are dated through organic remains we find on the site.




No carbon in the stones to be dated... and most rocks take a very long time to form.

However, you're right... dating rocks gives you no information about when they moved into the place. South Africa WAS near Antarctica and the rocks could have moved into place (or even into that area, leaving humans to do the final setup) during any of the four major Ice Ages:
en.wikipedia.org...

It doesn't. Scientists are continually revising things, but they want more proof than the author of "Slave Species of the Gods" whose credentials include a Bachelors' in pharmacy, credits as an actor and songwriter, but who apparently can't tell an Australopithecus from an Aardvark:
en.wikipedia.org...



In reading about something that SEEMS impossible, the first thing to do is check the credentials of the claim.
* Does the person making the claim have a good background in the field?
* Are they often quoted by others in the field? (sometimes laymen's work IS cited by scientists. Although I'm not a paleontologist, I will be cited some year by paleontologists who supervise me for my work on the Alamosaurus.)
* Is there other evidence that supports the claim?
* Do the rest of their supporting facts match what's known? (in this case, the article quotes an archaeologist at a nearby university saying that the sites have been studied before (in spite of the claim by one of the discoverers that they've been dismissed out of hand and so forth) -- so I suspect if you knew the terms to use and went digging through academic papers and PhD dissertations, you'd find several dozen papers on the area.)

The question of the star alignment to "70,000 years ago" is a good one. Depending on what stars you pick, you could probably find ways of aligning it to any number of stars. And remember, the look of the constellations 70,000 years ago was a bit different because the apparent position of the stars changes as our sun drifts through the galaxy.