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Mystery shrouds the ancient Oshoro circle

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Starla St. Germaine
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« on: December 15, 2008, 01:37:21 am »



What you see at Oshoro today — it's a wilder-looking spot than its physical proximity to the city would suggest, set among farmers' fields and hills overlooking the sea — is an oval rather than a circular expanse, 33 meters north to south, 22 meters east to west, bordered by granite rocks, the tallest of which are about hip-high.

Some are rectangular, others rounded so smoothly you might think they had been sculpted, but no: "The rounded ones are called columnar joint stones," explains Ishikawa — "very common in the area, though some geologists say many of the stones were quarried at Cape Shiripa, 8 km away."

The site is a shadow of what it was at its height circa 1500 B.C. — a victim, first of 19th-century Japanese pioneers reclaiming Hokkaido from the wilderness and eager to appropriate handy rocks as construction material; second, of well-intentioned but misguided "cleanup campaigns," the first in 1908 preparatory to a royal visit by the Crown Prince, the future Emperor Taisho.

« Last Edit: December 15, 2008, 01:40:41 am by Starla St. Germaine » Report Spam   Logged


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