Medicine Wheels of North America

Archaeologists have found hundreds of Medicine Wheels in the United States and Canada. They are assembled with a central pile of stones, radiating in a circular arrangement,that can be used to align to the sunrise at Summer solstice.

The monuments were created by laying stones in a pattern on the ground oriented to the four directions. Most medicine wheels follow the basic pattern of having a center pile of stones, and surrounding that is an outer ring of stones with lines of rocks from the center to the four Cardinal Directions, East, South, West and North..

One of the sites called the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming is the most famous and appears to be aligned to other objects in the sky as well as the Summer solstice Sun at sunrise.

There are many ideas about the origins of the wheels and the reasons they were built. They are being studied by astronomers and archaeologists alike. Scientists analyzing the formations have discovered alignments to different solar events, in particular, the sunrise and sunset at the Summer Solstice.

Medicine Wheels had many different uses and changed over the years from tribe to tribe. Some of them were used as burial mounds, some of them point to other Medicine Wheels or natural resources. Some evidence shows that some of the wheels were updated over the centuries to track the changes in celestial alignments.

One astronomer had a theory that some of the wheels were used as astronomical sites, which the people used to track sunrise or sunset, at a certain times of the year, marking certain auspicious days of the year.

Medicine wheels are thought to be used to mark the geographical directions and astronomical events of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, in relation to the Earth's horizon at that location. Ancient peoples believed that the medicine wheel in had great power.

They were sites for important ceremonies, teachings, and in as much were sacred places. Today, the Bighorn Medicine Wheel is still an accurate predictor for the summer solstice and is still used by various Native American groups.