Father Sky

In my previous entry I talked about early cultures using natural obstacles along the horizon to track the yearly progress of the rising (or setting) sun. But what if a significant annual event, (celestial or terrestrial), occurred while the Sun was between markers? In some cases you could just move your point of observation but that may not be practical, especially if the horizon markers were far away. You would have to move your “observatory” quite a distance to have any effect on the sunrise position. Well the next obvious solution is to make your own markers. I don’t believe that decision was as casual as it might be today, but at some point that’s exactly what we did. Probably the most famous example of a man-made “observatory” is Stonehenge in modern day England. Well, I’d like to introduce you to the earliest known observatory in the America’s, the solar observatory at Chankillo, Peru:

The 13 towers run North to South along a low ridge within a fourth century BCE ceremonial complex in north coastal Peru. They formed an artificial toothed horizon that spanned, almost exactly, the annual summer to winter solstice sunrise positions from observation points within adjacent buildings, (not visible in the above LivingInPeru website photo). Rumors of an observatory that pre-dated the Moche culture observatories spawned many a search without success until March of last year, (2007). (to be clear, the 13 towers were known for centuries but their possible use for astronomical alignment weren’t confirmed until last year).

Not much is known about the culture that built this nor exactly why. Carbon 14 analysis of wood from the surrounding structures indicate an age of 2,300 years old. If you’d like to know more I invite you to do your own research on Chankillo. But for the purpose of this entry I just wanted to show one (of many) examples where early cultures developed very clever means of reading their world.

In an earlier post I suggested the night sky was key to early man’s ability to survive. Utilizing clues from nature, including sky phenomena, humans could anticipate the migration of herds, the planting of seeds, when to begin the trek for safer habitation with the coming of winter and any number of other activities that helped us survive from season to season. This anticipation meant they had to know what was to come; that they had a calendar of sorts. Somehow, early man realized that the most precise calendar came from the sun and stars. Water temperatures could affect the timing of salmon runs, weather changes could affect the timing of deer migrations, but every year the sun followed exactly the same path and the seasons followed suit. A common method to track the sun can be imagined in the photo below, (photographer: Soylentgreen23):

How this would be done would be for the village priest or other designated official to track the position of the morning sunrise against horizon markers which could be various small peaks as seen in the above photo. The sun’s sunrise position migrates north each day as we head toward the summer solstice and south as we head toward the winter solstice. The solstice positions would be when the sun “stands still” for a few days and then, slowly begins heading in the other direction. With just a few years experience of timing the seasons with those horizon markers you have a pretty reliable calendar… “when the sun rises behind the sharp pointed peak, we will have no more morning frost and though it is still cool, it is time to plant our seeds.” (or something like that).