GamesIndiana Jones and the Great CircleYes, the ‘Great Circle’ in the new Indiana Jones game is a real thing: Let’s go down this conspiracy rabbit hole togetherWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesIndiana Jones and the Great CircleYes, the ‘Great Circle’ in the new Indiana Jones game is a real thing: Let’s go down this conspiracy rabbit hole togetherWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: MachineGames)
In case you haven’t heard the good news, the Nazi-punching experts at MachineGames revealed their next game during yesterday’s Xbox Developer Direct stream: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. It was a strong debut for the long-awaited action adventure project, and in keeping with the Wolfenstein studio’s speciality, we were pleasantly surprised to learnThe Great Circle is a first-person game.
“Throughout history, mankind has built sites of great spiritual significance. If you were to draw a line through these ancient sites around the globe, you get a perfectly aligned circle.” At the end of the trailer, Indy discovers evidence of the “protectors of the Circuli Magni: The Great Circle.”
(Image credit: MachineGames)
What is a “great circle”?
There are technically lots of “great circles”:great circlesare a mathematical term used to describe the circle that’s created when you split a sphere into two equal hemispheres. Any circle you draw around Earth’s globe that splits it in half isagreat circle. It’s also called an orthodrome.
The “real” Great Circle theory
The specific Great Circle we’re talking about comes from a blogger named Jim Alison (at least, he’s the earliest reference I can find for the theory online). Sometime around 2001, Alisonpublished an articlethat charted 17 ancient sites, including the Great Pyramid of Giza, Machu Picchu, Nazca, and Easter Island, that happen to align near-perfectly on a single great circle. We know Indy makes a stop at the Giza pyramid from the trailer, so that’s a solid clue we’re talking about the same cricle here. Not every site aligns exactly with the circle, but each one listed is no more than 5-25 miles away. It’s kind of a neat observation:
(Image credit: Jim Alison)
Throughout the 13-part article Alison draws all sorts of connections between the sites beyond their chance alignment, looking for meaning in measurements and even noting the circle’s proximity to theorized locations of Atlantis. It’s pretty dry stuff. I did not read the whole thing and I recommend you do the same, though it seems like Alison was less interested in asking “why” and more interested in the geography that binds it all together.
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Does the Great Circle actually mean anything?
Perhaps the Great Circle’s inherent mathy-ness is what’s held it back as an internet conspiracy. A fewfringe science siteshave cited Alison’s blog in their summaries of the Great Circle and there’s anodd video about ithere and there, but it hasn’t left a big impression on the conspiracy community. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to dismiss: you could draw a line around the globe anywhere and make thin connections between the historical places that align with it. A comment on a2013 Reddit threadabout the theory from user Vietoris sums it up best, I think:
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