Father Sky

A healthy dose of skepticism is highly recommended when confronted with new ideas or theories in science, but it’s probably also a good idea to question where the skepticism comes from. I am merely an amateur astronomer and have not been trained in anthropology but have already come across numerous examples in my reading where the author seems surprised with the level of technology for the ancient culture they are studying. I wonder why this is so? It is generally accepted that Homo sapiens have been around for approximately 130,000 years. It shouldn’t be hard to assume that in order to survive they’d need a pretty good understanding on how to use the resources at hand to their advantage.

The photo above from A. M. Kuchling is a reproduction of an Altamira cave painting. Amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola discovered the cave and paintings in 1879. The paintings were believed to be Late Stone Age (Upper Paleolithic), 45,000-20,000 years ago from cave floor excavations. This immediately resulted in controversy due to the supreme artistic quality. Sautuola was even accused of forgery or of hiring a contemporary artist. It wasn’t until some 20 years later when other caves in France and Spain were discovered that Sautuola was exonerated for his find. (To date some 350 caves have been discovered which contain art from prehistoric times in these two countries!)

My point? Well, I’d like to quote Von Del Chamberlain from the Archaeoastronomy journals XII-XIII, “…The fact that we have scant record of their awareness of the more subtle things of nature tells us more about ourselves than it does about the people we study. We simply tend to assume that they did not know about such things, rather than find the means to learn of their knowledge.”

In my own clumsy way I’ve begun to describe why I am so taken with trying to understand how early humans perceived the night sky and how it impacted their lives. As this blog evolves I hope I’ll get better at it.

But at the moment, I’d like to share a photo I found at EveryStockPhoto, (a free web photo site, perfect for those of us who can’t travel to these area’s we wish to discuss). The photo was taken by James Gordon and as you can see it is a beautiful Petroglyph from Chaco Canyon in north-central New Mexico.

So what does it mean? Naturally, the interpretation of any artifact of a people who are no longer around to ask is prone to controversy, but if I may, I’ll share the understanding of a couple of notable astronomers such as Bill Miller who discovered the petroglyph and Ray Williamson who’s book, “Living the Sky: The Cosmos of the American Indian” is never far from my nightstand, (and contains many of the facts I share below).

Their belief is that this is a record of the Supernova of 1054 A.D. by an Anasazi artist/priest. In fact the Supernova of 1054 is a well documented event in Chinese and Japanese records who kept such records for political/astrological reasons. This same Supernova was poorly noted in European records due, it seems, to being in the dark ages.

Anyway, the Chinese and Japanese records indicate a star going Supernova, (massive explosion, virtually destroying itself) in the constellation of Taurus on July 4, 1054. It was so bright it could be seen in broad daylight for approximately 3 weeks. What is fortunate is how detailed and accurate the Chinese and Japanese records are. With them astronomers were able to determine the position of the “new star” and the moon on the morning of July 4, 1054 in what we call New Mexico before sunrise. The position of the star-like shape and the crescent shape in the above photo match exactly the position of the new star and moon on that date.

Now before anyone gets too excited, dating of rocks is difficult to do. There really isn’t any carbon to carbon-date so one method is to date nearby structures or other evidence of occupation. Of course you can’t really prove the two things (petroglyphs and living structure) are related so there will always be an element of doubt. So we can’t say for sure THAT is what this petroglyph is showing…

But still. I don’t see why not.

What do YOU think?  Don’t you find this exciting! I do!!!