Imagine walking along one day along a barren hill in Peru and stumbling upon 10-metre high pyramid. What would you think?

A) A perfect setting for an Indiana Jones themepark. Time to call someone in Hollywood.
B) What a fine reference for aerial surveillance and counterinsurgency efforts. Whisper a secret prayer/signal softly into the crack between the stones and wait for reinforcements.
C) Wow, those ancient Peruvians sure had big clocks. Stand back in awe, hands raised.
D) What a waste of stone. Walls or a house would have been a better choice, since nobody seems to have survived because of the pyramid.

If you chose C, you would have made a fine priest 4,000 years ago, according to the Sunday Times:

The oldest astronomical observatory in the Americas, it told farmers exactly when to sow their crops. Its discovery has provided startling clues to the way in which early man learnt to cultivate his fields.

“I was staring up at a statue on a ridge above the temple and realised it all aligned with the stars — it was an amazing moment,� the bearded scientist said last week.

“This alignment meant that at dawn at every winter solstice 4,200 years ago, key stars would appear in line with the temple and alert priests that river flooding was due and it was time to start planting crops. It was laid out as a wake-up call to the community.�

Bearded? Anyone else wonder what that has to do with anything?

I like the concept of priests as people who advance scientific knowledge and push the use of technology for “better” living. I also like the story about how police managed to recover a stolen Bronze Age relic, which eventually enabled a modern astronomer to decipher its meaning:

Since police tracked down the thieves in Switzerland in 2002, archaeologists and astronomers have been trying to puzzle out the disc’s function. Ralph Hansen, an astronomer in Hamburg, found that the disc was an attempt to co-ordinate the solar and lunar calendars. It was almost certainly a highly accurate timekeeper that told Bronze Age Man when to plant seeds and when to make trades, giving him an almost modern sense of time.

Wikipedia has an interesting review of how the relic was recovered and whether it is genuine.