Father Sky

As early as 1500 BCE Egyptians were dividing their sundials into 10 parts (hours) plus 2 twilight hours, (one for morning, one for evening). Night was also to be 12 hours… so you have 24 in total.

Why do I share that? Well, as promised last time, I wish to share how we got the order of the 7 days to our week… and having 24 hours is key to that understanding.

The second important piece is understanding this was back when everyone assumed the earth was the center of the universe. So lining up the planets by their distance from the sun as we do today just didn’t matter.

What made more sense was to list the celestial wanderers according to how fast they moved from one constellation of the zodiac to the next… from slowest to fastest. So instead of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn you get; 1) Saturn, 2) Jupiter, 3) Mars, 4) Sun, 5) Venus, 6) Mercury, and 7) Moon.

If you check my previous post you’ll probably notice that is NOT the order of the days associated with our planets in today’s calendar. Well, there is one more important tidbit. Remember the couple of lines about needing 24 hours at the beginning of this piece? Well, astrology played an important role in the past, and each hour of the day was ruled by a planet. The order assigned to each successive hour was the order just discussed. So day 1, hour 1 was ruled by Saturn. Day 1, hour 2 was ruled by Jupiter and so on. When you come to the end of the day and start hour 1 of day 2 you just pick up where you left off on day one.

So cycling through our 7 planets throughout our 24 hour day, Saturn rules hour 1, 8, 15 and 22. Hour 23 is ruled by Jupiter and hour 24 is ruled by Mars. So hour 1 of day 2 is ruled by the next object in line, the Sun.

Do that for 7 days and you get the order we have today… with one final curve to throw at you. You’ll notice this lineup has the week starting on Saturday, which it was in the world of Exodus. Upon their flight from Egypt the Jews made it the last day of the week out of hatred for their oppressors.

So there you have it. Rather involved but certainly fascinating!

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).

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!!!