This press release from Eurekalert from last month describes some discoveries about an ancient Peruvian observatory. I love observatories, and am fascinated by today’s huge telescopes, but there’s also something thrilling about the ancient sites where people began observing the sky and understanding the wider context of our lives, the cosmos in which we live. Archaeologists have recently discovered that the Chankillo site in Peru, long thought to be just a fortress, in fact contains what’s left of the oldest complete solar observatory in the Americas. A slightly curved row of 13 towers has been found to mark the position of the sun over the entire course of the year. The towers go back to the fourth century BC, which makes the history of astronomy in the Americas older than anyone had thought. There are a couple of photos in the press release, and you can also see a lovely satellite image of the Chankillo Observatory from NASA’s Earth Observatory.
Ancient observatory
