In the 1970s, German archaeologists discovered an early Celtic tomb in the Black Forest. Dozens of additional graves were scattered around the central tomb, at first glance randomly scattered. New research reveals that the graves are part of a gigantic, ancient lunar calendar.
Researchers from the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in the German city of Mainz made this remarkable discovery when they evaluated an earlier excavation – between 1970 and 1973 – of an early Celtic tomb. Commonly known as the Magdalenenberg since its original discovery, the mausoleum is located near the village of Villingen-Schwenningen in the Black Forest. A nobleman who belonged to the Celtic Hallstatt culture is buried in the mausoleum. The complex has a diameter of at least one hundred meters.
Many more graves were found around the central tomb, presumably of people closely related to this nobleman. However, the neighboring graves were arranged in a mysterious way. Archaeologists were unable to discover any regularity or pattern in this for years.
New research now leads to a spectacular conclusion:the arrangement of the graves appears to accurately reflect the position of the constellations in the northern sky.
Because the earth orbits the sun, not all constellations can be seen all year round. In addition, the night sky slowly shifts over the centuries due to terrestrial precession and stars move relative to each other (an extremely slow process). Using special computer programs, Dr. Allard Mees, principal investigator of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, reconstructions of the northern starry sky in the early Celtic period. The position of the graves around the burial mound only corresponds to the stars in the northern sky as it is between midwinter and midsummer.
He accurately determined that the tombs are an exact reflection of the northern starry sky in the summer of 618 BC. It is likely that Magdalenenberg was also constructed at that time. This makes it the oldest lunar calendar that has been recovered almost completely intact.
Great Standstill
Many well-known astronomical calendars from prehistoric times – including the world-famous Stonehenge in southern England – focus their time on the place where the sun rises and sets. The calendar hidden in Magdalenenberg's tomb, on the other hand, focuses on the moon. The time reckoning of early Celtic cultures was largely based on the cycles in which the moon alternates between reaching its highest and lowest point relative to the celestial equator.
The builders of this calendar built rows of wooden poles that pointed precisely to the location of the moon during a so-called great lunar standstill. This phenomenon occurs every 18.6 years. The moon then reaches its highest point relative to the celestial equator and then appears to fall back to its lowest point relative to this equator in just two weeks. A standstill of the moon was seen as a special event by various cultures from the Bronze and Iron Ages and was therefore the most important benchmark in the time calculation of these cultures.
Oblivion
During his conquests in Gaul (the area that is now roughly France) the Roman general Julius Caesar has described in his diaries the lunar culture of various early Celtic peoples. When the Romans conquered large parts of Europe and introduced calendars based on the position of the sun, the ancient Celtic lunar calendars largely fell into oblivion.
There is still a lot of uncertainty about the way in which the Celtic moon culture functioned. "For the first time, we can now form a complete picture of the lunar culture of early Celtic civilizations," said archaeologist Allard Mees in an explanation.