Hey, i didn't realise that the parhelion and aphelion were timed within a few weeks of the equinoxes (Jan 2, July 2 (in 2004 anyway)). I guess this is just a coincidence though. IIrc the period of our Axial processession is something like once every 26,000 years and the interweb seens to indicate the period of oribital procession to be something like 21,000 years.

Its nice to know that our era is special in some way..

It always amazed me that with everything in geology dating back millions or billions of years that the time frames for a lot of things in celestial mechanics are so small. The fact that there are rocks which are a significant proportion of the (current estimate for the) age of the universe (as we understand it) on earth is neat.