Temple layout correlating to the solar system

I remember seeing at one time a temple complex in south america, where 'buildings" was laid down with the same 'distance' as the bodies of our solar system. And at summer equinox the sun would rise down at the center of the complex.

Anyone remember the name?

Try Machu Picchu in Peru...plus about a hundred others around the world.
There is absolutely no mystery involved here. Just a sense of wonderment on the part of our ancestors.


Peace...

That would really be rather hard to do, given the vast stretches of the solar system. Even at 1meter=1km, The inner planet temples would be either very tiny or sitting on top of each other. The one for Pluto would be almost a kilometer away: www.noao.edu...

They did have observatories and areas that marked the equinoxes and solstices. But planetary distances... I'm a bit skeptical.

The solar system is quite spaced out, so that would be hard to do. However, depending on how big the temple complex is, I suppose it could be possible, but it would have to be several kilometers across. Pluto, if I recall correctly, is forty times further from the Sun than Earth. So, if you had a few buildings relatively close to each other for the inner planets, you could have the outer planet buildings be a few kilometers away. Also, recall that the ancients wouldn't have known of any planets past Saturn, so that makes the model about half the size. (assuming Pluto as a planet, which I know it's not, but I still think of it as one, since I learned it that way as a kid :p)

This of course assumes that the ancients could measure how far away the planets were. With careful observation, I think you could at least get the scale right, if you knew what you were doing. You wouldn't be able to figure out that Earth was 150 million kilometers from the Sun using ancient technology, but you just might be able to figure out that Jupiter is X times further from the Sun than Earth is, i.e. you might be able to get the ratios of the distances, given what the ancients would have had available, if they were clever enough. They also wouldn't know anything past Uranus. The ancients knew of the planets out to Saturn, and supposedly if you know exactly where to look on a perfectly clear night, you can see Uranus as a tiny speck with the naked eye, but the ancients did not know of that planet.

Just as an example of the ancients measuring similar things, some ancient Greek guy did that and found the ratio of the distances from Earth to each of the sun and the moon using trigonometry, or at least his method was right; his number was in error because he was eyeballing the 90 degree angle, but his method was correct. He didn't know the exact distances, though.

If the complex you are thinking of claimed to also have the relative sizes of the planets to each other, it couldn't be true, though, because of the scales involved, especially if the Sun were included in that.

Thanks for replies, I'll intensify my search. I'm pretty sure I saw a documentary on it. I could of course be misremembering.

Documentaries report what controversial people are saying. We've seen several in the past years (since the writers' strike, come to think of it) where people have been presented advocating all sorts of things that weren't true. "The Jesus Family Tomb" is one that comes to mind... it was aired and every single scholar and historian and archaeologist leaped all over the huge errors in it.

And then there was the one about some sort of megadisaster that was so awful and so full of misinformation that scientists forced the tv channels to run a disclaimer before the program aired. I think was able to watch about 5 minutes of the thing before I went AAAGH!

That said, a number of structures do have stellar alignments and there are monuments all over Central and South America which functioned as date markers and as observatories. Eratosthenes did indeed measure the diameter of the Earth but was unable to get distance or diameters of other planets since they appear simply as points of light in the sky.

DUPLICATE REMOVED

[edit on 3-5-2009 by Quetzalcoatl 2012]

TEOTIHUACAN. That's the ancient city you're looking for. And the documentary where you heard about it being a scale model of the solar system is called "Quest for the Lost Civilization" based on the book "Fingerprints of the Gods" by Graham Hancock (Part lll, chapter 22).

Teotihuacan is in central Mexico, and it was the center of a vast empire from 500 BC-500 AD. After surveying the site for 20 years, the American engineer Hugh Harleston Jr. tested Prof. Stansbury Hagard's theories and discovered the standard unit of measure employed by the builders (Standard Teotihuacan Unit, or STU) and proved mathematically that the layout of the city's buildings is a scale model of the solar system. His findings were presented at the International Congress of Americanists in October 1974.

This is only ONE amazing feature of Teotihuacan. Also look into:
* The expertly cut sheets of (radiation-deflecting) mica installed under a temple.
* The use of pi (3.1416).
* The ancient seismographer (they filled the series of locks on the Street of the Dead with water in order to forecast earthquakes. See Alfred E. Schlemmer, American engineer, 11th National Convention of Chemical Engineers, October/1971).
* The Cydonia-Giza-Teotihuacan mathematical connection (check out the book "The Mars Mystery"), etc.

reply to post by Byrd


pluto was not discovered till the 1930's so i doubt we have to worry about the spacing in regards to that planet(or whatever they are calling it these days). the farthest planet most of the ancients knew of was saturn.

Originally posted by scratchmane
I remember seeing at one time a temple complex in south america, where 'buildings" was laid down with the same 'distance' as the bodies of our solar system. And at summer equinox the sun would rise down at the center of the complex. Anyone remember the name?

TEOTIHUACAN. That's the ancient city you're looking for. And the documentary where you heard about it being a scale model of the solar system is called "Quest for the Lost Civilization" based on the book "Fingerprints of the Gods" by Graham Hancock (Part lll, chapter 22).

Teotihuacan is in central Mexico, and it was the center of a vast empire from 500 BC-500 AD. After surveying the site for 20 years, the American engineer Hugh Harleston Jr. tested Prof. Stansbury Hagard's theories and discovered the standard unit of measure employed by the builders (Standard Teotihuacan Unit, or STU) and proved mathematically that the layout of the city's buildings is a scale model of the solar system. His findings were presented at the International Congress of Americanists in October 1974.
This is only ONE amazing feature of Teotihuacan. Also look into:
* The expertly cut sheets of (radiation-deflecting) mica installed under a temple.
* The use of pi (3.1416).
* The ancient seismographer (they filled the series of locks on the Street of the Dead with water in order to forecast earthquakes. See Alfred E. Schlemmer, American engineer, 11th National Convention of Chemical Engineers, October/1971).
* The Cydonia-Giza-Teotihuacan mathematical connection (check out the book "The Mars Mystery"), etc.

reply to post by DragonsDemesne


Teotihuacan. See info below.

reply to post by scratchmane

Teotihuacan. SEE INFO BELOW

How exactly is the layout of Teotihuacan even rometly close to the solar system?
Last time I checked, it was only a couple of a large temples and alot of small ones. Or maybe the moon really is marginally smaller than the sun...

reply to post by merka



Hey, man, you're welcome to look up and verify the information and references in the post. In fact, I want you to, so that we can have a more productive discussion here. I'm reading through Hugh Harleston Jr.'s work myself , but it's very dense and technical. I've learned that the size of the buildings is not a factor; also, the "central line" of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl is the spot which indicates the position of the sun, not the Pyramid of the Sun, as might be expected (the Pyramid of the Sun would be Saturn, the Pyramid of the Moon would be Uranus, while Neptune and Pluto would be marked by mounds a few kilometers north of Teotihuacan).

BTW, the builders of this city used a specific unit of measurement which Harleston named the 'STU' (Standard Teotihuacan Unit). Check this # out:
1 STU = 1.0594063 meters = 'Jewish rod' of 3.4757485 feet = 1 Stonehenge Lintel unit = 6/millionth part of the Earth's polar radius = 1/37,800,000th part of the Earth's mean circumference.

PLEASE LOOK THIS STUFF UP. I'm not asking you to trust me (I'm looking for answers myself). If you're an honest skeptic, you're gonna spend a few minutes looking into the work of the serious, professional people I mentioned in the post. Why do you think they spent their entire careers studying this #? Because it's #ing mind-blowing!

Go to www.thehiddenrecords.com or better, buy the book.

It tells it all, explains it all.

Very, very interesting...

Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl 2012
PLEASE LOOK THIS STUFF UP. I'm not asking you to trust me (I'm looking for answers myself). If you're an honest skeptic, you're gonna spend a few minutes looking into the work of the serious, professional people I mentioned in the post. Why do you think they spent their entire careers studying this #? Because it's #ing mind-blowing!

Well I compared it roughly myself, based on astronomical units. The dots going from bottom to top is sun, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn and uranus.



Saturn misses its target... And the question is what is supposed to represent jupiter? The gift shop?

Now, if every single planet had landed *exactly* on a temple with even pluto and neptune landing *exactly* on two temples further north, then I'd say it was mind blowing.

reply to post by merka


I'm no cartographer, so I don't have the vocabulary to adequately tear apart the outrage that is your simplistic juxtaposition, 'astronomical units' and all (but common sense tells me that you can't just use any old map off Microsoft Encarta, the orbits of the planets are not perfectly circular, etc.)
I mean, I appreciate the time you took to upload the map, but your sarcastic remark about the gift shop makes it clear that you're just a naysayer. An honest skeptic doesn't pretend he hasn't heard the evidence, and doesn't just dismiss it ALL without even taking a cursory look! But a contrarian does.
The very first thing I practically implored you to do is the first thing you shrugged off. Couldn't you have spent at least 10 MINUTES reading the body of evidence collected over the course of 30 years by:

* Stansbury Hagar (former secretary of the Dept. of Ethnology of the Brooklyn Institute of the Arts and Sciences), and
* Hugh Harleston Jr., the American engineer whose findings confirm the claims. Mr Harleston was an electronics technician in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946, working in the operation and repair of radar, sonar, transmitters, receivers, teletype, and telephoto. He is an alumnus of Rice University, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering in 1947 with postgraduate research studies in cooling tower efficiency. He has authored many technical reports on Mesoamerican sites.

Well maybe I was wrong to attempt to bring forth the point of visual evidence instead of sprouting numbers. Because now when I look closer at your suggestion that "Quest for the Lost Civilization" would contain information about it being a scale model of the solar system, I see that it does not suggest anything of the sort. In fact they dont even mention the solar system alignment, only Earth, when Hugh Harleston is talking.

I even took the time to read a little of Mathematics of Ancient Architecture and once again I see that physical solar system alignment isnt what his numbers is about at all.

So in short, you're right and I apologize. My post was fully wasted and unneeded since Hugh Harleston never seem to make this claim to begin with, unless you can show me a source where?

reply to post by merka


Hey, man, I read your reply. Sorry I called you a "naysayer'.

I have the book right here. It's by Graham Hancock and it's called "Fingerprints of the Gods". The part where he mentions the solar system layout is in part lll, chapter 22 (in case you can borrow it from someone). Otherwise, I can
scan the few relevant pages for you. (And then I'll have to figure out how you did that "external link" trick).

reply to post by merka

BTW, don't forget that Hugh Harleston Jr.'s findings and theories were presented at the International Congress of Americanists in October 1974. I'm sure there's some link to that on Google or Dogpile.


[edit on 5-5-2009 by Quetzalcoatl 2012]