At https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancient-egyptians/everything-we-found-shattered-our-expectations-archaeologists-discovcr-1st-ancient-astronomical-observatory-from-ancient-egypt … Egypt’s first ancient astronomical observatory was found at the fairly late period site of Buto in Kefr El-Shiekh. A gateway, or pylon, leads to a spot where sunlight would have illuninated where the sky observer, or ‘smn pe’, stood to track the Sun and the stars. There was also a large sundial – made of slanting stones, a shadow clock that used shifting angles of the Sun’s shadow to determine sunrise, sunset, and noon.
At https://phys.org/news/2024-08-links-conflict-population-neolithic-europe.html … since the end of the Ice Age human population growth has been far from uniform. There were periods of rapid expansion of numbers – and of sharp decline. War and conflict, it is suggested, could have played a major role – in population dynamics in Europe. The problem, once again, is that nobody is looking at the possibility of catastrophism. Only climate change is allowed to affect human numbers – or spark migrations. Catastrophism from the heavens can also create fear and cause migrations – and there appears to be such a pattern in the historical past. Or at least in the Bronze ages, and before – spilling over into the Iron Age. Computer simulation was used – rehashing evidence of known population ups and downs. If catastrophism is omitted they are bound to come up with war and conflict as a major reason for dispersal and decline. If the ongoing threat was coming out of the sky – hence the obsession in the ancient world with the sky gods, as well as humans spending a lot of valuable time tracking heavenly bodies, and this is ignored – and then war and conflict would dominate their simulations. .Only half the picture would emerge from their modelling.
See also https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2024.0210 …