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Lindsay (LM) Hi, I've seen documentries on ancient sites in south america, which showed stone figures that looked remarkably like astronauts. Any connections there with astronomical aspects other than the sun, or possibly anicent astronauts having visited Earth? thanks

 Hello Lindsay,  Not sure what documentaries you sawa but there was a lot of discussion about this from a series of books in the 1980's I think (perhaps earlier) where Erichvon Daniken claimed that the markings on the Nazca Plains showed pictures of astronauts and argued that this implied that astronauts, presumably extra-terrestrial, had visited ancient south america.  The books were called something like "In Search of Ancient Gods".  I can't remember the details but I think these were pretty heavily discredited.  The scales were not quite as quoted and a few other discrepancies.

 

Cheers - David 

Hi David and Linday, I was pretty excited recently when an ancient SOLAR observatory was discovered in Chile! It is a big wall with crenellations, like a castle, but apparently, it was really a solar calendar! You can see a picture in the article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070301_oldest_observatory.html. Paulett