Помоги проекту - поделись книгой:
Cairns, Hugh, and Bill Yidumduma Harney.
358–379. Bognor Regis, UK: Ocarina Books and College Park, MD: Cen
ter for Archaeoastronomy, 2005. Flood, Josephine.
London: Routledge, 2000. Johnson, Dianne.
The earliest indications of the use of a symbolic notation to represent or visualize an astronomical cycle come from the Upper Palaeolithic period. At this time, in addition to striking cave art, engravings were made on small portable objects such as stones and pieces of bone and antler. Thousands of examples are known. A number of these are in the form of series of marks, and several were subjected to meticulous microscopic analysis by the American researcher Alexander Marshack. He concluded that the marks were not a simple decoration but carefully accumulated, often using different tools and techniques, over a period of time.
One famous example is part of an eagle’s wing discovered in a cave at Abri Blanchard in the Dordogne valley, France. Dated to around 30,000 B.C.E., it contains a series of notched marks in a serpentine pattern. Mar-shack proposed that these represent a tally of days. The assumption is that the earliest marks are those in the center of the pattern, and that marks were accumulated around existing ones. By following the line outwards and back and forth, we discover that there are about fifteen marks in each sweep before the direction changes.
The most prominent astronomical cycle is the phase cycle of the moon. In addition to being readily observable, it coincides with the female menstrual cycle. The moon’s phase cycle is certainly recognized among modern hunter-gatherer groups, although not necessarily universally (an apparent exception being Australian Aboriginals). The period of the lunar phase cycle (synodic month) is between twenty-nine and thirty days, so one interpretation of the Abri Blanchard bone is that it represents a tally in which the days of the waxing moon are marked off in one direction and those of the waning moon in the other; in other words it forms a rudimentary lunar calendar, maintained for about two months. Marshack suggested a similar lunar-calendar interpretation for patterns on a number of other Upper Palaeolithic portable artifacts.
Several criticisms can be made of the interpretation of the Abri Blanchard bone as a lunar calendar. Two assumptions upon which it rests are that the number of marks between each “turn” in the line was significant and, second, that this represented the period between successive new or full moons. How easy might it be to fit other explanations? How can we judge a particular interpretation against the alternatives? At least one of the turns is not sharp, which gives greater flexibility in interpretation. Two of the lines could easily be interpreted as separate straight lines rather than part of the serpentine pattern. And there is the question of what exactly we mean by “new moon”: there is a one- or two-day period each month when the moon is not visible at all (astronomical new moon occurs in the middle of this), but it is the first reappearance of the crescent moon in the evening sky (the popular concept of “new moon”) that is the most significant event in visual terms, widely recognized even in the today’s world, from small indigenous groups to major religious calendars. Finally, although some of the marks appear round and others crescent-shaped, there is no apparent correlation between the shape of the marks themselves and the lunar phases.
All of these points introduce doubts in the interpretation of the Abri Blanchard bone as a lunar calendar. It is possible to address them by increasing the complexity of the explanation: for example, the left-to-right sequences contain more marks and can be taken to represent the days from full moon to new moon in the popular sense. But the potential for speculative argument seems endless. Indeed, the underlying microscopic evidence that the engravings represent tally marks or some other form of notation in the first place has been vigorously questioned.
And yet the underlying idea—that certain people in the Upper Palaeolithic would have recognized the phase cycle of the moon and may have attempted to record it—seems plausible enough. One approach would be to try to ascertain, hypothetically, how easy we would find it to “recognize” patterns in sets of markings that were in fact unintentional (for instance, caused by people sharpening tools) or had other meanings entirely. The conclusions could then be used as the basis for a formal statistical test. Yet even if lunar tallies or calendars were quite commonplace in the Upper Palaeolithic, they may not have been recorded at all consistently, in which case any attempt to identify sets of calendrical tallies recorded in a systematic way would be doomed to failure.
Studies of some of the many other Upper Palaeolithic engraved artifacts may clarify the issue. One example, another bone fragment known as the Tдi plaque, has been interpreted by Marshack as a more sophisticated lunar calendar. And yet more complex designs give us greater flexibility in interpretation. This is not to say that such explanations are necessarily misguided, but rather that assessing them is no trivial matter. Identifying a methodology that will satisfy both scientists and social scientists is a challenge that has yet to be met by archaeologists.
See also:
Methodology; Palaeoscience. Aboriginal Astronomy; Presa de la Mula. Lunar Phase Cycle.
References and further reading
d’Errico, Francesco. “Palaeolithic Lunar Calendars: A Case of Wishful
Thinking?”
Knight, Chris.
Marshack, Alexander.
Nicolson, 1972.
———. “The Taп Plaque and Calendrical Notation in the Upper Palae
olithic.”
Accuracy
Alternatively spelled “acronychal,” for example, in British usage.
Alternatively spelled “acronychal,” for example, in British usage.
Archaeoastronomy owes its emergence in the 1970s largely to the furor caused by the controversial and often spectacular claims made by Alexander Thom and others about astronomical alignments at British megalithic monuments. Although archaeoastronomy itself soon grew to encompass a much wider range of evidence, “alignment studies” remain at the heart of a great many archaeoastronomical investigations, particularly those concerning prehistoric Europe.
Where we are searching for evidence of astronomical concerns in prehistory, alignments of monumental architecture remain at the forefront of most investigations. Yet alignments can arise fortuitously, since every oriented structure must point somewhere. Hence the importance of repeated trends, which can be identified and/or verified statistically; good exemplars are the short stone rows in western Scotland and the recumbent stone circles in eastern Scotland. (The stone circle at Drombeg in Ireland provides a cautionary case study.) On the other hand, where other types of evidence are available to us (such as written documents or ethnohistory), studies of the significance of particular alignments may be carried out in a broader context with little or no need for statistical verification. A good example of this is the alignment of the so-called Governor’s Palace at the Maya site of Uxmal.
The term
See also:
Archaeoastronomy; “Brown” Archaeoastronomy; “Green” Archaeoastron
omy; Methodology; Thom, Alexander (1894–1985).
Drombeg; Governor’s Palace at Uxmal; Recumbent Stone Circles; Short
Stone Rows; Teotihuacan Street Grid.
References and further reading
Aveni, Anthony F.
Ruggles, Clive.
Yale University Press, 1999.
Altitude is the vertical angle between a given direction—such as the direction toward a particular point on the horizon from a given place—and the horizontal plane through the observer. A positive altitude indicates that the point being observed is above the observer; if it is below, then the altitude will be negative. Thus the altitude of a horizon point level with the observer is 0°. That of the summit of a high or nearby hill might be as much as 5° or 10°, but that of a sea horizon viewed from a high place might be –0.5° or –1°.
One can also speak of the altitude of a star in the sky, but this will not generally be the same as the angle of the star above the horizon, since the horizon altitude will not normally be 0°.
There is considerable confusion between the terms
See also:
Compass and Clinometer Surveys; Field Survey; Theodolite Surveys. Azimuth.
References and further reading
Ridpath, Ian, ed.
New York: Pi Press, 2004.
Ruggles, Clive.
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
The kingdom of Ancient Egypt existed for over three millennia and for much of this time was remarkable in having two different calendars in simultaneous operation. Each arose in response to different social needs and developed a distinct function. At least, this is the standard interpretation of the evidence.
The oldest Egyptian calendar was lunar. It arose in Predynastic times (prior to c. 3000 B.C.E.) from the simple need to keep agriculture in track with the seasons. Twelve lunar phase-cycle (synodic) months only amount to 354 days, so a mechanism is needed for adding an additional (intercalary) month every two to three years in order to keep the calendar in track with the seasons. It is generally supposed that in Upper Egypt (the Nile valley) the calendar was regulated by Sothis, or Sirius, whose first appearance before dawn each year (heliacal rise) coincided with the regular annual flood of the Nile, the most critical event in the agricultural year. Whenever Sothis was not seen until late in the twelfth month, an additional (intercalary) month was added.
Some scholars have argued that a lunar calendar had also developed independently in Lower Egypt (the Nile Delta), but that there it was regulated by observations of the sun. A myth of central importance for the Egyptians was the daily rebirth of the sun god Ra by the sky goddess Nut, who stretched from one side of the sky to the other. This legend was played out
in the sky. If the Milky Way was seen as Nut herself, as has been suggested, the legend would doubtless have accounted for its shifting position with respect to the rising and setting positions of the sun, according to the time of year. This would have provided the conceptual basis for what we might too easily see as the purely pragmatic process of keeping track of the seasons by tracking the movement of the sunrise and sunset along the horizon. When the two parts of Egypt became unified into a single kingdom, these lunistellar and luni-solar calendars would have merged.
The Early Dynastic period (c. 3000–2600 B.C.E.) was the time of the first pharaohs and the development of written records. The lunar calendar was fine for regulating agricultural activity on a local scale but became unworkable for satisfying the needs of a complex economy and state bureaucracy. Recording and regulating the movement of perishable commodities, for example, demanded absolute agreement about the date. Yet the beginning of each month, and the insertion of intercalary months, was determined by observation, and observations could differ; as a result, it was often difficult to be certain either about the month or the day in the month. The result was the development of a quite independent civil calendar used for administration purposes. This comprised twelve “months” of exactly thirty days each, divided into ten-day periods known (rather confusingly, given that the word is commonly taken to mean “ten years”) as
It may seem surprising to suggest that the lunar calendar did not die out when the civil calendar was introduced. Yet this is precisely what has generally been believed for many years, following the work of the great Egyptian scholar R. A. Parker in the 1940s. According to this view, the purpose of the lunar calendar became the regulation of religious observances. Responsibility for determining the correct month and day within this calendar, and with it the timing of religious festivals, became the responsibility of certain priests. At some stage, and possibly as early as Old Kingdom times (c. 2600–2100 B.C.E.), Egyptians started to use the heliacal rise of other stars to help regulate the calendar and to develop the system of
Only recently has a different view emerged, proposed by the Spanish archaeoastronomer Juan Antonio Belmonte. This is that different Egyptian calendars did not in fact coexist. In Belmonte’s view, sun observations were used initially to establish the 365-day calendar, but thereafter the dates of lunar-related religious festivals were simply established within this calendar, rather as Christians determine the annual date of Easter to this day.
Whatever the outcome of this debate, it is clear that the decans also heralded a hugely important innovation: they could be used as “clocks” to mark the passing of time during the night. Instead of focusing just on the heliacal rise, that is, on the decan rising immediately before dawn, one simply had to view the risings of successive decans through the night. On this basis, the Egyptians were the first to divide the night into approximately equal time intervals. Theoretically, at the equinoxes, when sunrise and sunset are exactly twelve hours apart, eighteen ideally placed decans should rise between sunset and sunrise at intervals of 40 minutes. In practice, however, the length of the night varies through the year, and twilight renders the first and last risings invisible. Furthermore, it could not have been possible to find stars to use as decans that were precisely evenly spaced across the sky. Finally, the Egyptian kingdom stretched sufficiently far from north to south for latitude to make a difference. The most decans that could actually be seen in one night, during the longest nights of the year around the winter solstice, was twelve. This fact, it is widely believed, led to the concept of the night being divided into twelve “hours,” whose length varied through the year, but which were nonetheless a precursor to the modern concept of dividing the day-night cycle into twenty-four equal hours. There is a scholarly consensus on the identification of several of the decans, but the identification of others remains extremely speculative.
The Egyptian civil calendar was simple, useful, and all-pervasive. It worked unfailingly for almost three millennia, and although it gradually slipped with respect to the seasons (historical sources confirm that the civil new year once more coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius in C.E. 139), this never seems to have created a problem during any particular epoch. Not until the third century B.C.E. was any attempt made to add leap years.
See also:
Lunar and Luni-Solar Calendars. Coffin Lids; Egyptian Temples and Tombs. Heliacal Rise; Lunar Phase Cycle.
References and further reading
Belmonte, Juan Antonio. “Some Open Questions on the Egyptian Calendar: an Astronomer’s View.”
Clagett, Marshall.
Depuydt, Leo.
Hoskin, Michael, ed.
Traditional belief systems that still persist in a number of remote Andean villages link mountains, ancestor worship, ritual pilgrimage, and the sea as the ultimate source of water and fertility. The landscape is “animated” in the sense that unusual or prominent features are perceived to have a supernatural aspect. Local communities often regard themselves as the descendents of mountain deities; consequently mountain peaks—and especially volcanoes—occupy a prominent place in their cosmic beliefs and communal rituals. Mountains and mountain gods are seen as the controllers of rain, and their summits sometimes remain an important focus of ceremonial activity today. These metaphysical convictions do have a foundation in the physical world, in that prominent mountains have a strong effect on local meteorological phenomena.
These modern mythologies represent the remnants of belief systems stretching back at least as far as Inca times. Numerous shrines, both Incaic and more modern, have been discovered on hills and mountain peaks in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Sea shells and river stones were commonly offered to deities for water, but more macabre offerings have also been uncovered: human (including child) sacrifices. We know from the accounts of Spanish chroniclers that elaborate pilgrimages were involved in reaching these sacred places. But the intensity of conviction that motivated the expeditions still defies the imagination. Offerings have been found on mountain peaks as high as 6,000 meters (20,000 feet).
There is every reason to believe that some of the mountain pilgrimages were tied to specific calendrical rituals and that they were astronomically timed. Broadly similar sets of beliefs and practices in central Mexico provide more concrete evidence of calendrical and astronomical associations. However, the specific associations that regulated the Andean rituals remain largely unknown.
Поделиться книгой: