The ancient Egyptians used two bright stars in the Big Dipper and Little Dipper constellations to align their pyramids in a north-south direction, a British Egyptologist says. If she's right, we can now pin down the ages of the pyramids far more accurately than before.
Archaeologists have been attempting to pinpoint the exact age of the Egyptian pyramids for years.
While we know that the pyramids were built in the third millennium BC, narrowing it down further is difficult. Because the pyramids were built as tombs for Egyptian kings, records of the reigns of these kings can provide a date accurate to within 100 years. British Egyptologist Kate Spence however has come up with a new way to measure their construction dates based on the stars.
Spence maintains that the builders aligned the pyramids in a north-south direction using the Big Dipper and Little Dipper constellations as a guide, by looking at the locations of these constellations in the night sky it is possible to determine at what date these would have been in a position to facilitate the alignment of the pyramids in this way.
Source New Scientist
