Journal of Geomancy vol. 3 no. 2, January 1979

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KENYAN STONES

RONALD P. ANJARD

The ancient peoples of the world were quite skilled in astronomy and unique observatories are being analyzed in many parts of the world.  While Stonehenge is the most famous structure in Western Europe, there are numerous other megalithic sites throughout the British Isles and coastal France.  In North America, the Celts and Iberians built Stonehenge-like systems in Vermont and New Hampshire.  The Mayans and the Indians of South America used a similar marking system which this author has discussed elsewhere.  The Kivas of the Central and Southwest American Indians, essentially observatories based on the moon and the planet Venus, have similarly been treated by this author.  Reports of unusual stone structures in Arabia are being currently researched. 

Virtually nothing has been reported about ancient African observatories.  Ethiopian megalithic sites have been found but none have yet been related to astronomical evidence.  One site in northwestern Kenya has been found oriented to certain stars and constellations.  These same systems are used by modern residents to calculate their accurate calendar – the site has been dated to at least 300 BC (in contrast, Stonehenge is now dated at about 2000 BC, and the principal Vermont site at about 1000 BC). 

The Kenyan site is identified as Namoratunga II.  Namoratunga means “stone-people” in the language of the local Turkana tribe who believe that a spirit could turn people into stone.  At Namoratunga II, Lynch and Robbins found 19 large stone columns arranged in rows and separate from the other stones at the site.  The average height of these markers was reported as 22 inches and the estimated weight was 90–550 pounds each.  As mentioned earlier, a present tribe, the Eastern Cushites, use a very sophisticated calendar which uses “seven stars or constellations in conjunction with various phases of the moon to calculate a 12 month, 354 day year”.  These stars and constellations include Sirius, central Orion, the Pleiades, Triangulum, Aldebaran, Saiph and Bellatrix.  A detailed analysis of stone alignments’ azimuths for 300 BC showed a very significant statistical result. 

This new finding strongly suggests that an accurate and complex calendar system based on astronomical reckonings was developed by the first millennium BC in Eastern Africa.