London: A new find from Australia has suggested that ancient Aboriginal tribes were the world’s first astronomers.
Scientists at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Canberra discovered a pile of old rocks laid out in a particular manner to map the progress of the sun - to create a primitive form of sundial.
“These stones have been laid out precisely to map the sun,” the Daily Mail quoted astrophysicist Professor Ray Norris as saying.
“This can’t be done by guesswork. It required very careful measurements,” he added.
The rocks have been laid out in a semi-circle, with two points set in perfect alignment with the setting sun on a midsummer’s day.
Norris said the Aborigines who laid out the stones would have made their crude ground map around 10,000 years ago - thousands of years before Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt.
While the Stonehenge is believed to be about 1,500 years ago, pyramids are believed to have been built about 3,200BC.
ANI
First Published: Sunday, February 06, 2011, 09:46