Namoratunga: The First Archeoastronomical Evidence in Sub-Saharan Africa

B. Mark Lynch · Lawrence H. Robbins

64 citations0/0 files storedScience

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Historical and Architectural Studies Archaeology and Rock Art Studies Historical Astronomy and Related Studies

Abstract

Namoratunga, a megalithic site in northwestern Kenya, has an alignment of 19 basalt pillars that are nonrandomly oriented toward certain stars and constellations. The same stars and constellations are used by modern eastern Cushitic peoples to calculate an accurate calendar. The fact that Namoratunga dates to about 300 B.C. suggests that a prehistoric calendar based on detailed astronomical knowledge was in use in eastern Africa.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 64 citations exist upstream.

References

1977Animal Brands and the Interpretation of Rock Art in East Africa

Cited by

2013The context of early megalithic architecture in eastern Africa: the Turkana Basin c. 5000-4000 BP 1982Archaeo-astronomical Cushites: Some Comments 2011Obsidian types from Holocene sites around Lake Turkana, and other localities in northern Kenya 2019The bioarchaeology of mid-Holocene pastoralist cemeteries west of Lake Turkana, Kenya 1981Archaeoastronomy 1986Statistical Analysis of Namoratunga: An Archaeoastronomical Site in Sub-Saharan Africa?1984B. Mark Lynch 20 February 1952?14 December 1982 2015Archaeology of Eastern Africa

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.