The Light of the Gods

One of the most fascinating areas of archaeoastronomy has less to do with measurements and the appreciation of genius in ancient man, but is rather the way that common man related to the stars. In almost all ancient cultures, the symbolism ascribed to the stars equated them with gods, in often startlingly different ways.

While one culture may elevate the sun to be the representative of their supreme deity^* (such as the Egyptians under Akhenaten), another may not ascribe the sun so much importance, and instead look to the stars to provide them with a playground of the gods. In this way, the night sky is useful – if you do not wish to make a single deity so powerful and significant, you place them among their peers, where the brightness of their presence indicates their relative positions.

In terms of importance, then, it is worth noting the modern names of our planets, in particular those that were known to the ancient astronomers: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These, being the visible planets in our solar system were selected especially in order to take the names of gods. This is due to their seemingly remarkable ability to move across the sky relative to the stars – all other stars remain relatively stable, moving only gradually, and certainly not in a manner notable over the course of a lifetime. Their special ability to move, then, granted them the significance of gods.

While it is obvious that there are other symbols man could have chosen for their gods (and often did) – such as volcanoes, great trees, mountains – stars have a single feature that gives them divine credence: they are eternal. Any symbol found upon the earth can disappear from view, but a star can always be seen on a clear night.

^*Even Christianity co-opts the power of this symbol, by aligning God with light itself – beautifully illustrated in medieval art, in which the halo is not merely a golden circle indicative of the sun, but may also include rays of light.

The Astronomy of the Pacific

In the field of archaeoastronomy, the indigenous peoples of the Pacific islands are a curiosity – they evidently had an understanding of the stars, key dates throughout the year were marked by the appearance of different stars and constellations, and they were able to navigate vast distances even during the night...and yet only a single culture of the Pacific islands ever developed a written language, and that was upon Easter Island, far to the east and many thousands of miles from the origin of the Polynesian peoples.

Given the evidence that the Polynesians regularly travelled across the Pacific, how did the navigators manage to reliably travel to disparate locations without star maps or written directions? The answer, of course, is in a lifelong training and the memorisation of oral records. For the navigators, it was less essential to know the precise location of stars relative to each other so much as the location a star should be at a given location and a given time. For instance, the stars of Arcturus, Spica and Sirius are perceived to sit directly above Hawaii, Samoa and Tahiti respectively, while Polaris disappears beneath the horizon when you cross the equator.

Further, the navigators of Polynesia did not rely solely upon the stars. Migratory paths, prevailing winds and tides all played their part – it was not a system of navigation dominated by the stars, but an holistic approach that accepted the roles of many factors in establishing routes. As David Lewis, author of We, the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific, once wrote, they “were not merely in tune with their environment...they were literally a part of it.”

The Polynesians are unique in this regard – no other culture (or, more accurately, group of related cultures) lacking a written language ever crossed such vast distances by sea.

Why We Watch the Stars

“The movements of the heavenly bodies are an admirable thing, well known and manifest to all peoples. There are no people, no matter how barbaric and primitive, that do not raise up their eyes, take note, and observe with some care and admiration the continuous and uniform course of the heavenly bodies.” Bernabé Cobo, 1653.

Cobo was an early 17^th century explorer of Latin America, and in his many journeys and encounters with the people there, he was able to gain an appreciation for just how important the stars were to those cultures. As he rightly states, there is no state of man so primitive that we are not compelled to look into the sky in wonderment.

It has been an enduring fascination of mine, and with all the same fervour that doubtless compelled the religious leaders of the ancient world to ascribe supernatural powers to the stars. Their permanence in the night sky; wandering slowly and in accordance with one another; their apparent formation into meaningful figures: these are the causes for a very human fascination.

With the full awareness that the stars are not gods, that they do not orbit the Earth (although research shows that a great many early astronomers had already deduced this), nor place humans at the centre of the universe – even now, we find ourselves under a clear night sky, far from the light pollution of the cities, and we stare upwards into the belts of the Milky Way at pinpricks of light that have travelled millennia to reach us.

As you can imagine, then, the appearance of the brightest celestial phenomenon in history must have caused quite a stir. In 1054 AD, the Crab Nebula was born, and for nearly two years it was a feature of the night sky (in fact, for twenty-three days, it was even bright enough to be seen in daylight). This event is often used as a sort of “proof of age”, as it is a widely-recognised event that was of note to the whole of humanity. As such, finding references to its appearance provides us with a reasonable estimate of the date upon which that reference was made – whether in the written form or in “mere” pictograms such as those used by the Anasazi of North America.

The Proof of Ages

As you may know, I am a man who is constantly astounded by the ingenuity of ancient astronomers, and I have as part of my career relied upon a belief in their talents in order to ascertain the dates of events in the past. Naturally, then, as an academic, I must believe in the proof that these astronomers were more than simple men, but were great men possessed of genius, whose measurements are reliable.

It is true that few people can read Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mayan pictograms or Sumerian cuneiform, and that I must rely for the most part upon their translations, providing an extra barrier of proof to be overcome. It is, however, also true that each of these cultures composed – independently or otherwise – what is called the ‘Saros cycle’, which is an accurate calendar that can predict such events as solar and lunar eclipses. While to the layman this must seem bewilderingly complex, it is, in fact, a very simple thing to achieve, because they follow precise patterns.

The remarkable achievement, therefore, is not that they were able to calculate this – all that is required is observation – but that their records were such that they were able to observe the period of those cycles. Lunar eclipses are much more common than solar eclipses, and are visible to the whole of the night side of the Earth, which should make their task simple, except for the reason that there are a variety of types of lunar eclipse, depending on its completeness (which is to say, how much of the Moon is occluded by the Earth’s shadow). This, naturally, requires a much longer period of observation.

Consider, then, that in these civilisations, the average age of even the wealthy may not exceed 50 or 60, and that a full cycle lasts around 18 years, and, further, that to accurately predict all eclipses requires a sequence of Saros cycles that forms a Saros series, lasting between 1200 and 1500 years... Needless to say, the fact that their calculations are accurate in predicting both lunar and solar eclipses makes it a simple, awed response to appreciate the beauty of their measurements.