ARCHAEOASTRONOMY – THE COSMIC LANDSCAPE

"We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us.”

— Carl Sagan

    These famous words uttered by the late Carl Sagan, may be considered to be the precursor of numerous enthusiasts to understand the universe and in turn to understand ourselves. The discipline of Archaeoastronomy does exactly this, it tries to understand how early humans made sense of the sky and the cosmos, and in turn decode certain secrets of our evolution.

    Humans are inherently curious beings. We try to make sense of whatever is observed and try to explicate in terms that are acceptable by the masses of the time. Scientific and technological advancement today, has helped us understand a myriad of phenomena which were once totally inexplicable. During a time when our world was devoid of man-made illuminations, the night sky would’ve truly been a sight to behold, one that could hardly be ignored. Thus, the worldview of ancient humans was not only located on the earth’s surface, but also in the sky above.

Celestial events thus had great influence over the daily lives of ancient humans. Time, for example, was referenced with predictable cycles of certain stars, the sun, the moon and even planets (the months in the Mesopotamian calendar, for example, was based on the lunar cycle). Afterlife, a structural component of any worldview, was attributed to certain cosmic events, as seen in the Mayan tomb of King Pacal in the Maya site of Palenque, where the King is placed at the solstitial point, which marks the resumption of the solar cycle and the start of agricultural activities, thus symbolising his rebirth after death.

The lid of Pacal's sarcophagus

    But this left events that needed to be explicated in understandable terms. Religion played a key role in demystifying these uncontrollable events — events governed by the heavens. Festivities of the Gods and the worship of ancestors were managed in the calendar which enforced the relationship of religion and afterlife with their understanding of the cosmos. These religious proceedings were carried out by priests who had an elaborate understanding of astronomy. These “priest-astronomers” may be called shamans. The shamans supposedly venture out into the supernatural realms in an altered state of consciousness using hallucinogenic drugs which have been documented in Mesoamerica during the Upper Palaeolithic-Neolithic periods (2000 BCE – AD 200) where carvings of geometric circles and ovals are found in chambered tombs which are strikingly similar to modern day shamanistic inscriptions as documented by ethnological-anthropological studies. This venture from the temporal body to the supernatural by the shamans took place through the sky, which is apparent by the prominence of birds and bird-like-men in shamanistic iconography. The shamans act as an intermediary between the people and the supernatural beings of the cosmos and is thus elected as the custodian of the calendar and directs the rites and celebrations and his apparent close connections with the Gods, elevates him to a state of divinity amongst the masses.

Spirals and other abstract carvings on kerbstone. Newgrange.

This bond between the apparent cosmic beings and nature was ideological and intangible, which gave rise to the need to reform this cosmic vision into tangibility. This stemmed the emergence of monumental architectural structures which symbolised a material form of the cosmic cycles for the common people. These structures closely followed astronomy and could be understood with the concept of hierophany. An explicit manifestation of the sacred, hierophanies were the means of communication with the divine. They were sacred spaces that amalgamated celestial cycles and cosmic events with religious and mythological models which were engineered using the knowledge of astronomy. These structures are mechanisms where elements, that are designed with utmost precision, combine with celestial elements. When put together with religious connotations the events occurring in these hierophanies are considered divine manifestations. For example, the alignment to the sunrise on the winter solstice of Karnak’s temple in Egypt and the Serpent Equinox at Chichen Itza are manifestations of the renewal of a god’s power with the celestial cycles. The alignment of Newgrange and the Akhet hierophany at Giza symbolize the renewal relating to the afterlife.

Serpent Equinox at Chichen Itza. The shadow of the rising sun forms the body of the serpent.

Sacred spaces are associated with cultural memory i.e., once a place is deemed sacred, the community strives towards maintaining its divinity over time. This results in the modification, reconstruction and reinterpretation of that place according to the ruling community overtime resulting in the formation of a cosmic landscape, that merges the religious elements with the natural surroundings, which is enhanced by human construction following specific rules in accordance with the worldview (topographical and/or astronomical rules) which were passed on through generations. The Balamkanchè cave of the Yucatan, is a huge cave which has a naturally occurred column created by the joining of a stalactite and stalagmite over years of water percolation. Its resemblance to the sacred Maya tree, Ceiba, turned the cave into a shrine where people brought offerings. The giant “footprints of the sun” at Island of the Sun on the Titicaca Lake, where the Incas considered they originated from, were natural etchings which resembled footprints were deemed sacred as it lay near the rock where apparently the sun itself was born. The city of Teotihuacan in Mexico, the largest urban settlement of Mesoamerica, which fell after surviving five centuries and then centuries later was discovered by the Aztecs who called it “the place where the gods were born”. The two pyramids in the city, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, bear uncanny resemblances to the profiles of two mountains in the north when viewed from a certain point. Thus, the architects of the city aimed at replicating the mountains of their cosmic landscape. The city also bears astronomical connotations, the main street of the city is skewed at an angle in relation to true north. This results in the street aligning with the rising and setting of the sun on two specific days of the year which are 260 days apart, a number that is recurrent in Mesoamerican calendars and associated with agricultural activities. Thus, the cosmic landscape comprises of geographical, architectural and astronomical elements which result in extremely complex sites.

Schematic plan of Teotihuacan: 1 Main ceremonial road. 2 Pyramid of the Moon. 3 Pyramid of the Sun. 4. Ciutadela temple

Although, there has been numerous insane explanations to these complex ancient sites that resemble the cosmos, archaeoastronomical studies conducted by archaeologists, anthropologists and astronomers has provided significant insights in decoding the secrets of such sites. The discipline of archaeoastronomy has much more to offer which we will be covering in later posts.

Further Readings

Magli, G. (2015). Archaeoastronomy: Introduction to the Science of Stars and Stones. Germany: Springer International Publishing.

Milone, E. F., Kelley, D. H. (2005). Exploring Ancient Skies: An Encyclopedic Survey of Archaeoastronomy. Netherlands: Springer New York.

Ruggles, C. L. N. (2005). Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth. United States: ABC-CLIO.

The author, Shine M., has completed his post-graduation in Anthropology from the University of Calcutta. His interests lie in theoretical archaeology, social archaeology, prehistory, archaeoastronomy and socio-cultural anthropology.