To add to my above post, their claim sounds like Forbidden Archeology type stuff.
The 75000 year number was achieved by matching fallen chunks of rock and matching them to the original location. Noting that 3cm of rock was missing and judging that for that particular rock it takes 75000 years for 3cm (or 1.5cm x2) to erode the stones must be at least 75000 years old. There are so many ways this could be off by huge factors.
The science is very fuzzy in both cases. Its Limited-expertise-Philosophy-Psuedo-Science, not fact based science.
Never mind. Quercus beat me to it. 
There is no math to do. There is no evidence that 200,00 year old humans were into astronomy. There is no evidence that some random rocks correspond to any modern constellation, let alone Orion.
Of course, if you multiply the period of the Earth’s procession (25,000 years) by the classic NPOOMA* coefficient, you can get either 75,000, 200,000 years or pretty much any number you want.
*Number Pulled Out Of My Ass
I’m just rereading The Sunbird by Wilbur Smith (there’s a distinct lack of bookshops in my neck of the woods), so I’m going to have to say that the ruins are Carthaginian, dating around the 4th century AD! (No way black people could ever have been civilised).
I’d remembered that the book was racist, but had managed to forget that it was also sexist and homophobic. Still a good read though . . .
And MrDibble, next time I’m in South Africa I’d like to buy you a beer.
Don’t constellations (the stars themselves as viewed from Earth) change position over time, independent of the procession?
All of our stars are orbiting the center of the Milky Way, but not at the same speeds or angles…
Yes, they do. The change in constellations from that is called “proper motion”.
Wikipedia says the constellation Orion took on a recognizable form about 1.5 million years ago.
Ah. Thanks. I thought the stars drifted faster than that.
Some of them do. For instance, the Big Dipper is going to look quite different in 100,000 years.
Some stars we see in the night sky are bright enough to see because they’re intrinsically really bright, and some are bright enough to see just because they’re close by. Orion is made up mostly of the first category, while the Big Dipper is made up mostly of stars in the second category. Proper motion of nearby stars is much more obvious than that of distant stars, for the same reason that you see fenceposts whizzing by you on the freeway, but the mountain on the horizon hardly seems to move at all.
That said, though, Orion will look quite different 100,000 years from now, but that’s because Betelgeuse will have gone supernova by then. 100,000 years ago, though, it would have looked basically the same (especially in the belt).
the thing is, orion’s belt moves on a constant basis. it dips above and below the horizon as the earth tilts seasonally. couple this additional degree of freedom with the precession movement and the fact that the belt is evenly spaced and linear and you can pretty much do the same dating with any 3 stones anywhere on the plant.
so, in figuring out at which point in time the stars and stones line up, it gives a starting point. that’s probably where the first 25,000 year date came from.
the jump from 25k to 75k is befuddling though. without any further information, the second “archaeoastronomer” added 2 interations of precession. maybe the guy who wrote the article just heard “it could be any factor of 25k. 25k, 50k, even 75k” and chose the oldest number. it’s not like this guy is AP or anything.
the last leap from 75k to 160k is due to “erosion” measures which as someone said previously is sketchy at best. it’s interesting for sure. the stones are probably pretty old. 175k is ridiculous though.
and fwiw, carbon dating is only applicable to organic compounds dating back 60k years. the fact that it was even mentioned detracts from the page’s credibility. also betegeuse isn’t in the belt, but that’s just nitpicking for nitpicking’s sake.
Yeah, my mention of Betelgeuse at all was nitpicking for nitpicking’s sake, too. That’s why I said that “especially the belt” would remain unchanged, because even if Betelgeuse were a significantly different brightness, the belt would be the same.
You obviously didn’t get to the last page where he was pulling quotes from Sumerian mythology as a basis for claiming the human race was created for slavery in the gold mines using cloning and/or in vitro fertilization, until the gods’ nearby home planet came close enough to Earth to cause floods with its gravity, but one god liked this one human and told him to build a boat so the human race wouldn’t get wiped out.
Forget the efficacy of carbon-14 dating or patina tests, this is all the proof anyone needs that the hypothesis is batshit insane - or would be if the use of the term weren’t so insulting to bat shit.
See! I told you!
Though the Earth’s human race is really only half descended from beings-constructed-as-slaves and the other half the ‘gods’ who built the slaves. And the floods weren’t on Earth and were more like ‘nuclear explosions’ than floods, and the boat is of course a spaceship, but otherwise the Sumerians were right on.
It all fits, I tell you. It all fits!
I have no doubt the stones are pretty old - those are drystone walls made of natural rocks, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were dateable to several billion years old given the geology of the area, but that means nothing. You can only date something like these walls from associated artifacts, not loon theories of astro-alignment.
And Petrobey, anytime. Cape Town has a rather nice Paulaner microbrewery…
And if you drink three in a row, you get transported to the stars…
Grim
edit: completing a trifecta of Capetonian posts.
so I’m guessing that because of the “fruit loop” factor no Archeologist has specifically investigated Adam’s calendar. Which seems a shame as it could easily be much older than the stone kraals.
Science doesn’t work that way. If someone claims that the circles were made by faeries to house unicorns, no one’s going investigate the claim unless you find some fossil wings and horns. If someone claims the existence Sumerian Space Alien Gravity Ships, they’d better have some actual, you know, evidence. Even Roswell level “evidence” would be better than nothing.