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Macedonia's Megalithic Kokino Observatory Places 4th on NASA List (SETimes.com)

By Marija Lazarova for Southeast European Times in Skopje -- 11/05/05

Macedonia's Megalithic Kokino Observatory is more than 3,800 years old. NASA has ranked it the fourth oldest in the world. [File]

Macedonia's Megalithic-era Kokino Observatory is located 1,030m above sea level on the Tativec Kamen Summit near Kumanovo. Archaeological and astronomical analyses have shown that the observatory is more than 3,800 years old. According to NASA, which earlier this year released a list ranking observatories by age, it is the fourth oldest in the world, after Abu Simbel in Egypt, Stonehenge in Britain and Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

"Kokino has incredible astronomical preciseness and has a central observation post and accessory observation posts," says physicist Gjore Cenev, the head of Macedonia's Youth Cultural Centre Planetarium, who has been performing a detailed analysis of the site. "The observatory defines the four main positions of the Moon and three main positions of the Sun during a year, the autumnal and vernal equinox and winter and summer solstice." One specially positioned marker shows that the observatory was also used to follow the movement of the star cluster Pleiades.