Solstice as a winter sun festival was already recognised and celebrated 7,000 years ago near Leipzig in Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany, by
an ancient agricultural people who worked with simple wooden tools to till their fields but nevertheless created the oldest solar observatory in Europe, The Goseck Sun Circle, using the information it gave them both to help with their farming and to gauge the summer and winter solstices.December Solstice is for those south of the Equator a midsummer solstice which leads into the longest day of the year, while in the Northern Hemisphere its arrival brings the annual longest night before the days begin to lengthen and light slowly returns. A time around which for centuries a great many celebrations have taken place, from Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule and Kwanzaa to Saturnia.
The discovery of the Goseck Circle meant the long held belief that Neolithic, New Stone Age, Europe was far behind that of the Middle East has had to be revised, as the circle had been devised and was in existence long before the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian Cultures, and was being used by a European civilization whose lives were closely tied to the cycle of the seasons and the harvest.
The Circle had lain undiscovered for thousands of years until an aerial survey photograph, taken by an archaeologist studying the landscape during a drought in 1991, revealed circular ridges and crop marks under a wheat
field. The outlines of a 75 meter (246 feet) diameter circular enclosure were plainly seen, built on a flat river plain with a raised mound of soil in the central area, and surrounded by a ring of four concentric circles. Analysis showed that these were made up from an earthen wall, a ditch and two wooden fences with gates positioned Southeast, Southwest and North, via which anyone viewing from inside the structure through the openings would have been able to study the passage of time and seasonal changes from the direction the sunrise took, and mark the winter solstice as the sun rose directly through the south east gate to set in the southwest.
A winter solstice which promised a gradual return of the sun, of light in darkness, and of great significance for these ancient farming folk living from stored food and supplies during a period of the year known for its deaths from starvation and cold.
Using archaeological evidence in combination with Global Positioning System data, archaeologists found that the circle was probably the world's oldest solar observatory, as the two southern gates mark the sunrise and sunset of both the winter and summer solstice. In this it is unlike other prehistoric European monuments which align to either a solstice sunrise or a sunset, such as England's Stonehenge with a sight-line pointing to the winter solstice sunset, or New Grange in
Ireland and Orkney's Maeshowe, off the northern Scottish coast, where it is the winter's solstice sunrise that is channeled through an opening and illuminates an enclosed central room.As a solar observatory which also measured various lunar movements, it was a form of astronomical calendar indicating the best times for sowing, planting and harvesting.
In addition it probably served as a central meeting and market place, as well as an "astro-theological" religious site for the worship of the sun, moon, planets, stars and constellations where it is thought fertility rituals and weddings took place. Sacrifices also it would seem according to relics found, which have included bones from humans and animals together with traces of ritual fires.
For the moment however, despite modern technology and science, the reasons for Goseck's third gate remain a mystery, and, although it does point north, unlike the other gates it is not perfectly aligned.
With no written records, and few illustrations apart from simple designs on pottery, nothing of the language or the physical appearance of the people who built the Goseck Circle is known, nevertheless the site gives a detailed and revealing insight into the spiritual and religious world of the earliest European farming societies.
The wooden fences disintegrated centuries ago, but, using the characteristic patterns left behind, 2,300 new oak poles were erected in their original positions, each 2.5 meters high and hand finished so they would appear much as they did seven thousand years ago, and with their gates opening to the points on the compass where the sun rises and sets on December 21. The reconstruction of the solar circle was then completed by the replacement of its original ditch and earthen wall.
On December 21 2005 the recreated Goseck Circle was launched with a traditional seasonal celebration of renewal, revival and reflection, a winter solstice festival illuminated with flaming torches, laser lights and a watery winter sun that set over the south western gate.
Now thousands commemorate each solstice at the Goseck Circle, as for a few moments, and accompanied by fireworks and music, sunlight is again caught on the spot it was designed to illuminate seven millennia in the past.
Images:An aerial view of the reconstructed Goseck Solar Observatory, via Wikispaces - Plan of Goseck's double ring 'henge' with sun points, photo by Einsamer Schuetze, de.wikipedia - Photo of Goseck 'Woodhenge' ring walk, taken in late December, courtesy Wikipedia-ce, public domain - Drawing of the Goseck circle. The yellow lines representing the direction the Sun rising and setting at the winter solstice, the vertical line showing the astronomical meridian. Courtesy Wikipedia user Rainer Zenz, de.Wikipedia
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