Prof. Laurie Rousseau-Nepton (University of Toronto)

“What did ancient astronomers know? When and how did they acquire this knowledge? How did they understand the universe?” Recently, I have studied the astronomical design of two medicine wheels (MW) stone circles, one in Alberta, known as the Majorville/Iniskim Umaapi site and the other in Wyoming, the Bighorn MW. Although their Astronomical purpose is still debated, I hope to shed some light into how they were used and the secrets that they hold. MWs have been used by First Nations and Native American tribes for generations. In this work, I developed a new methodology that uses state-of-the-art land survey data to reconstruct the MW sites' horizon and the orientation of the stone structures. I developed tailored analysis tools to precisely model the light path of celestial objects in the atmosphere through different epochs and at very low horizon angle. Any idea how old they are? I can promise that the results are surprising. I hope this work will inspire people to look into these sites with more depth and a more open mind. The name medicine wheel comes from a deformed translation from Native languages and means mysterious circles. Let’s make them a bit less mysterious.