  Daunia is a region in northern Apulia with many interesting archaeological
sites, particularly of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Beginning from the fifth
millennium BC, the farmers living in the wide plain of Daunia dug hypogea and
holes in sites that could be considered prehistoric sanctuaries. The
characteristics of the rows of holes indicate a ritual use, and the
archaeologists tend to exclude other applications, such as post holes and
cultivations. The rows have possibly an astronomical orientation, and in the
sanctuary discovered near Ordona, some stars of the Centaurus-Crux group (may
be alpha Centauri itself) could have been used as targets. In past centuries,
astronomers and scholars have remarked this spectacular region of the sky, and
its possible relevance for the ancient civilizations was pointed out for
example by G.V. Schiaparelli in 1903. In his work on the astronomy in the Old
Testament, he mentioned in particular the observations of the astronomer W.S.
Jacob and of other scholars. It would be probably worth to make simulations in
order to reproduce the 'Jacob effect', that is the diffused light (a sort of
faint twilight) produced by such very rich stellar region of the sky.
