The most important archaeological discovery in the last century — a still-functioning stone calendar, aligned with the cardinal points, the solstices, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and the rise of Orion’s belt.
This ancient — and still functioning — stone calendar is possibly the most important archaeological discovery in the last century. Dating such a site is very complex. We have looked at archaeoastronomy, erosion, geology, lichen growth, soil shift, oral tradition, ancient texts. The site keeps getting older as we do more research. The original estimate in 2008 was 75,000 years. The latest estimate suggests around 300,000 years.
Johan Heine showing the shadow of Adam’s Calendar
Adam’s Calendar sits on the edge of the Barberton meteor impact crater — estimated to be 3 billion years old. It is also known as the Transvaal Escarpment, made up of a sandstone ridge known as Black Reef Quartzite, rich in gold. This is where the highveld drops into the lowveld. The site is strategically placed right on the edge of a 200m sheer drop into the crater valley that is almost 1km at its deepest point.
Adam’s Calendar is aligned with all four cardinal points — North, South, East and West. It is aligned with the summer and winter solstices. And it is aligned to the north with Great Zimbabwe and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, along the 31° East longitude.
The Spring Equinox sunrise on the eastern side of the calendar is marked by a 3-metre-tall monolith that clearly resembles the shape of an Egyptian Horus bird. The Horus stone looks at three monoliths to the south of it, on the outer ring, that are aligned with the rise of Orion’s belt from a specific vantage point on the opposite edge of the original stone ring.
Adam’s Calendar, Mpumalanga — monoliths that have stood on the edge of the Barberton meteor crater for an estimated 300,000 years.
The Stoneman
This is the name given to a remarkably shaped stone monolith that was part of the calendar, marking the sunrise on the equinox. The stone was removed around 1992 by the local forestry company for reasons that remain unclear. Miraculously, it was returned in 1994 to close proximity of the calendar — for the opening of the Blue Swallow Nature Reserve.
The Spring Equinox sunrise of 21 March 2008 — the sun rising directly above the monolith, exactly as it has done for tens of thousands of years.
African Shamanic Knowledge — Credo Mutwa
In August 2008, I visited Baba Credo Mutwa for the first time. When I showed him the Adam’s Calendar book that had just been published, he began to cry, and said:
I never thought that I would see this special place again.
~ Credo Mutwa, 2008
Then he told me how he had been initiated there in 1937 as a young man. The site is well known to African shamans and sangomas as Inzalo Y’langa — “Birthplace of the Sun, where humanity was created by the gods, to be the slaves in the gold mines.”
It is therefore curious that the calendar is referred to in ancient Sumerian tablets as a “Place of Observing” — built by the Anunnaki’s supreme deity ENKI, who established the vast ancient gold mining activities in a place called the ABZU (southern Africa). In the same reference, the Sumerian text mentions sites that can be equated with Great Zimbabwe and the Pyramids of Giza. ENKI was also known as the architect of a new species called Lulu Amelu — “primitive worker,” or “creature” — created to work as slaves in the gold mines.
Michael Presenting his Adam’s Calendar book to Credo Mutwa, 2008
Fossils at Adam’s Calendar
Since 2018, when the discovery of fossils was made around the stone circle ruins, it became clear that the stones making up Adam’s Calendar — and the hundreds of other dolerite rocks scattered to the north and south of the calendar — are not just misplaced dolerite. They are fossilised body parts of all kinds of creatures.
There are bones, claw marks, scratch marks, petrified skin, footprints in the rocks, and other anomalies. This poses a geological dilemma — indicating that dolerite is not always an igneous rock formation. Much more research is needed.
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The Stone Altar
In 2008, Johan Heine and I discovered what we called the Stone Altar — exactly north of Adam’s Calendar, aligned with the previously mentioned sites. Later in 2008, Credo Mutwa revealed that this is the burial site of an important ancient king, possibly related to the Anunnaki. Based on the connections to Sumerian texts that seem to reference this site, the grave may be around 11,000 years old.
The Ritual & Ceremonial Path
Baba Credo Mutwa described this path to me in 2008 as the ceremonial path taken during ritual celebrations — beginning at Adam’s Calendar, weaving between the large fossilised rocks, performing various ceremonies at significant stones, and ending at the Stone Altar grave site, where the final ceremony was performed.
Adam's Calendar Pyramids
There are two, possibly three, pyramid-shaped mounds at the centre of the crater, below the calendar. Some research has been done; many argue these are not pyramids. Various powerful energetic anomalies have been detected around them, igniting debate. Could they have been carved out of the original bedrock, and eroded over a very long time?
The one major clue: the pyramids are perfectly connected to Adam’s Calendar and the Stone Altar grave site by a perfect Golden Spiral. This statistical probability makes the pyramids highly significant. It cannot be a coincidence.
The Discovery of Quasicrystals
Around 2020, my partner in the Antiquities Research Institute, Martin Werner, discovered large quasicrystals — many times the size of the first microscopic quasicrystals originally discovered in 2009.
Quasicrystals were first discovered by Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman on 8 April 1982, while studying rapidly solidified aluminium-manganese alloys at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST). His observation of a 10-fold symmetry electron diffraction pattern — previously considered “forbidden” in crystallography — overturned centuries of belief. Shechtman was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery.
The first naturally occurring quasicrystal (icosahedrite) was discovered in 2009 within a meteorite from the Khatyrka River in Russia. They were microscopic. The significance of finding large quasicrystals at Adam’s Calendar has yet to be realised by science.
Other Geometric Anomalies
Martin Werner has also discovered a highly geometric pattern that is imprinted over the entire region around Adam’s Calendar. The significance and meaning of this is yet to be determined.
Visit the site, touch the stones.
Join a Sacred Sites tour to the Stone Circle Museum, the ruins, and Adam’s Calendar.