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In the world of archeoastronomy (looking for astonomical alignments that explain archeological structures typically), precession has become very popular. Precession takes decades to become noticeable, so it has an appeal as a likely origin for "occult" knowledge. The idea is that certain monastic or clerical groups would be made aware through astronomical observations that the celestial sphere itself is "off its rocker", slowly shifting its orientation. And supposedly ancient religions might have formed to worship whatever gods would have the power to shift the turning of the heavens themselves. Sure... Ok.

The first time I encountered one of these precession-religion models is probably the first place that many people "literate" in the sciences encountered it: in an issue of 'Scientific American' back in December of 1989 by one David Ulansey who claimed that the cult of Mithra in the ancient Near East was actually a cult that worshiped the secret knowledge of precession. Many commentators have seen this as one of the nails in the coffin in the slow decline of Scientific American which was only a few years earlier something like the New York Times of science --the 'paper of record' where scientists, specialists in one field could read about advances in other sciences (in other words, a professional physicist might read SciAm to learn about advances in neurobiology). I should add that Ulansey's "Mithra=Precession" theory does not have many followers these days...

Well, we've got a new candidate. An Italian archeoastronomy professor, Giulio Magli, has proposed that an ancient structure in southern Anatolia was the center of worship for the star Sirius. And he has demonstrated his REAL intelligence by taking his idea to the masses, issuing press releases and selling the theory, for example, in "New Scientist" magazine. The idea here is that in this latitude in southern Anatolia (Turkey) Sirius would have been below the horizon all night long c.9500 BC (it's an amazingly old structure). Then around 9300 BC it would have peeked above the horizon right at the meridian. And then over the course of some centuries, it would have appeared higher and higher in the sky, and supposedly the ancient followers of this "new" brilliant star would have marked the progress of its rising point by building their structure to mark the points where it first appeared above the horizon in succeeding centuries as precession moved it very gradually northward. You can read his article here:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1307/1307.8397.pdf

What do you think of his analysis of the rising azimuths of Sirius? Do they match the structure?

-FER

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