Neolithic Science: A Student Hands-On Project: How To Build a Large Portable Pinhole Camera or Camera Obscura to Explore How Neolithic Optics at Newgrange Were Able To Accurately Determine the Time of the Winter Solstice

 This article explains how to build and experiment with a room-sized, but inexpensive, camera obscura which would have been possible in the Neolithic era. This how-to article explains how a pinhole camera or camera obscura arrangement could have been possible in the Neolithic era which could have been used to measure the sun's position at the time of the winter solstice in real-time and by direct observation. This article describes how students or others could inexpensively make a large room-sized camera and configure it so that it magnifies or enhances the image of the sun. With a basic prehistoric optical device, the very difficult measurement of the position of the sun during the winter so1tice might have been determined. This determination was so difficult the Romans could not do it with direct observation 3000 years later and often made mistakes even when using other methods.