THE CREATION OF MYTH
               On Communal Group
    Constructions and Settlements
         
On Communal Group Constructions and Settlements
Furthermore, it is quite likely that these peoples’ same shared sense of reality was at the root of the large group efforts needed to undertake the monumental megalithic constructions commonly central to the their cultural practices. ... structures, temples, sculptures, etc. ... For what a particular group of persons understood, believed, and acted upon would cement social relations — and enhance collective cohesion within the social group itself — allowing the members of the group to act together in complete solidarity, to accomplish feats before unimaginable or otherwise thought impossible.

As myths of creation referred to the process through which the world was given a definite form within the whole of the cosmic world-order, they thus also served as a basis for the orientation of humankind within this world within the cosmic whole. The ancients’ concern with astronomy ... in particular was deeply reflected in their architecture and settlement patterns. Ancient cultures around the world seem to have been commonly motivated to incorporate astronomical or (so-called) “divine” plans in the arrangement and orientation of their ceremonial architecture, dramatizing the cosmogonic myths of the local culture by attempting to reproduce on earth a miniaturized version of the cosmos.

Where we find significant numbers of monuments with similar designs, similar orientation, and even consistent patterns of astronomical alignment, we can be confident that common practices prevailed over a considerable area and time.  These prehistorical collective manifestations must have been of very great importance. — The Egyptian and Mesoamerican pyramids, Stonehenge, the giant stone statues on Easter Island, the giant intaglios on Peru’s Nazca Plain, ...  ... standing stone arrangements  — and other such mysterious megalithic monuments of our human past were built by people who shared in the awe and fear of very real cosmic visions.

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