Moon to Sun

Barbara Adam ( Time ) summarizes the work of archaeoastronomists who have studied the astronomical design of ancient buildings around the world. She says, “Evidence from across the world suggests that the moon was the earliest planetary source of cultural forms of time reckoning and associated rhythmic practices that integrated all the significant levels of existence. Orientation to the sun seems to have been a later development.”

A similar move from moon to sun is evident in “relation to the dead and treatment of the dead. With respect to Neolithic Britain, for example, it appears to correspond to a chance in practice related to the bones of deceased members, which the records suggest have been circulating widely among the different cultural sites. At about the same time that buildings began to be oriented towards the sun’s movements, bones ceased to circulate as currency and markers of identity and stayed buried instead with the skeleton intact.”

This change resembles the biblical movement from moon-based calculation of time (Passover, new-moon festivals) to a solar emphasis in the New Covenant.