Posted on 06/05/2006 4:27:51 PM PDT by blam
Native Americans recorded supernova explosion
16:45 05 June 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Zeeya Merali and Kelly Young
The Arizonan petroglyph may depict the supernova of 1006 AD - the star symbol is on the right and the constellation Scorpius on the left (Image: John Barentine, Apache Point Observatory)
This double-sun petroglyph at Chaco Canyon National Monument in New Mexico may depict the supernova of 4 July 1054 (Image: Mark Lansing)
There are numerous examples of rock art in the Chaco Canyon National Monument depicting celestial objects (Image: Mark Lansing)
Prehistoric Native Americans may have carved a record of a supernova explosion that appeared in the skies a millennium ago into a rock in Arizona, US.
John Barentine, an astronomer at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, came across the carving while hiking in the White Tank Mountain Regional Park in Arizona.
It depicts a scorpion and an eight-pointed star. "I had just been reading about the supernova of AD 1006 and I knew it appeared in the constellation Scorpius, so the connection flashed into my mind."
To make his case, Barentine and his colleague Gilbert A. Esquerdo, at the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, used planetarium software to recreate the sky as it would have appeared in Arizona during the supernova's appearance and overlaid it with photographs from the site.
The supernova would have been brighter than a planet, and both it and the constellation - which is shaped like a scorpion - would have appeared just above the edge of the rock, in the same orientation depicted in the carvings. Native Americans populated the region during that period and often recorded objects thought to have magical powers, says Barentine.
"It's by no means conclusive, but I think it's strong circumstantial evidence that the art depicts the supernova," says Barentine. He announced his theory at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Calgary, in Alberta, Canada, on Monday.
Star watchers
The supernova was recorded by star watchers in Asia, the Middle-East and Europe. But until now, nobody thought that prehistoric Native Americans followed events in the sky. "I don't think enough credit has been given to the ancient Native Americans in the past, but that might change now," Barentine told New Scientist.
If the art does represent the supernova, it would provide a useful date to help work out the age of neighbouring rock carvings, which are difficult to assess by other methods, says Barentine.
But the White Tank Mountain is not the first suspected supernova petroglyph in North America. A petroglyph at Chaco Canyon National Monument in New Mexico may depict the supernova of 4 July 1054.
Another petroglyph at White Tank may also be a recording of the AD 1054 supernova. White Tank Mountain park ranger Mark Lansing says that petroglyph looks like colliding suns and is nestled in a back canyon along with pictures of other celestial objects.
"The AD 1006 petroglyph is a little more abstract," Lansing says of Barentine's find. "I'd seen his petroglyph but not really related it to the sky for 1006. He does show what the sky may have looked like in AD 1006."
"surpassed"? Do you realize how much of the great cities of Europe today had already been built by the time Europeans wandered on over to the Americas (officially)? Do you think the Mayans could have taught the long gone Romans anything about civil engineering? Did the "Native Americans" have anything like Notre Dame de Paris when Columbus first landed on their shores?
Newsflash: the people living in the Americas were still neolithic peoples. Sure they did some spiffy stuff, but so did the neolithic peoples of Europe and they outgrew that level of technology a few thousand years earlier.
You have fabricated a lovely mythology for yourself.
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Next week the major story will be, "Ancient Native Americans Sh** In Forest, Theory Proved".
Waitaminnit, how would American Indians have any idea what a "Scorpius" was. That interpretation of the constellation arose on the other side of the world.
"Big dipper is only a piece of the Great Bear."
"And if you were to point to it in the sky, 999 out of 1,000 Americans (at least) would call it "the Big Dipper". I think that proves my point. Even in America, even here at FR, we can't agree what that set of stars looks like. We can't even agree on which which stars and how many to include in the image of the most famous one of them all."
The Big Dipper is one of the few really obvious constellations, along with the "Big W" (Casseopia, I think), Orion, and the thing that looks like a Big Sicle (I don't know the name of it). Those four just leap out at you because the stars that make them up are so bright you just sort of see them. I knew what Orion was, and with those very stars too, for about 15 years before somebody gave me the name for it, because Orion is obvious. So's the Big Dipper. But if you take the Big Dipper and make a bear out of it by adding stars, well, that ain't obvious. The Little Dipper is not a bit obvious - that one you have to be taught to see (and the way we're taught to see it is by looking at the obvious: the Big Dipper, and then moving from there).
"Here's one hint: Most languages evolved from Sanskrit. It's amazing how much is from Sanskrit, and dictionaries do not state this. They'll say Old French, or Latin, or something. But my primitive knowledge of Sanskrit informs me otherwise, plus there is much documentation of this that I have read."
It would be better to say that Sanskrit and the Western Indo-European languages are both Indo-European, and devolved from the same parent tongue or tongues. Yes, Sanskrit and Latin have similarities. So do Latin, Greek and Gaelic. Part is no doubt influence of neighbors (the Romans sucked up Greek culture like Californians suck up Italian leather goods), but with the Hindus and the Gaels, who obviously didn't have any meaningful contact until recent times, that their languages are related is evidence of the common parentage.
Nor is it really difficult to see how that parentage came about. North of India and east of Europe is a great sweeping plain, "The Steppe". Now, the Steppe is a crappy place to live, but absent Gengis Khan and his horse armies, it's a real easy place to cross, much easier than climbing mountains or wading through primeval forests. And if you look, that plain that contains the Steppe sweeps from Flanders all the way to the Tarim Basin of China.
It isn't really surprising that the languages of the people on the OTHER SIDE of the mountains from the step all show common roots (Tocharian in the Chinese Basin), Sanskrit and Hindi in India, Hittite in old Anatolia, Iranian (Aryan), and of course all of the Western languages at the European end of that plain.
If one follows the logic, an original linguistic family lived there and migrated and spread out across it, but then their own population pressure (the Steppe is great superhighway in an age without roads, but it's not a very pleasant place to live) and eventually the pressure of people behind them...the Altaic peoples (Mongols and the like) who live on the Steppe NOW ... drove the Indo-Europeans across the respective mountains rimming the step and sundered them one from the other. 'Twas the 19th Century linguists of the European Empires who noticed the striking similarities between Sanskrit and Latin and Greek.
But we should not go too far and suggest that Western languages CAME FROM Sanskrit. They are, rather, cousins of a common parent, long sundered by vast distances and interposing peoples.
....Why should the two continents have the same celestial imagery?....
Maybe because the imagery was universal.
Keep in mind that Chaco is on a great circle with many other celestial observatories around the world.
If you haven't been to chaco to spend a day or two......go.
"Why do we continue to discount that they had civilzations, histories, cultures = even observatories, long before we knew there were continents here.
When the white man came, they found cities that surpassed those in Europe - and astronomical observatories, planetary observations, calendars, predictions and a numerical system that surpassed that of the old world.
Even Chaco Canyon was a remarkable community where over 5000 people lived for a few hundred years. They observed the planets, kept track of the solstices, ...
We try to ignore the histories of the Native Americans because we haven't grown up enough yet to admit they were not just a bunch of wild savages whose lands we were meant to take thru' 'manifest destiny.'"
Whoa! Let's not go overboard here.
Who is "We", specifically?
You mention "Manifest Destiny". That was a particularly American political philosophy, having to do with the obvious (hence "manifest") destiny of the United States to sweep aside the European and post-European empires in North America and thereby reach from sea to sea. It didn't have anything to do with the Mayas at all.
If one wishes to dwell on Mayas and Aztecs, or Incas, then one isn't talking about American history at all but Spanish.
Also, one is not dealing with "a" culture, but several, which were not friendly to one another. Mayan civilization was long in decadence (no thanks to "us", once we've defined who "we" are) when the Aztecs were at their peak, and there was no love lost between the Aztecs and the Mayan descendants either. And there still isn't.
I am confused as to who this great monolithic "We" is that somehow embraces both the Spanish AND the Americans AND has as its target everything and everyone from the Iroquois to the Mayans.
Were various Amerindian civilizations interesting? Of course. Were they technically advanced? Not very, really. But you have to break down who we are talking about. The North American woodland Indians with whom the English and French and Dutch settlers came into contact were a stone age people. Europe is closer to Plymouth Rock than the Incas were, so it's tough to see any continuity between South American ancient civilizations and the North American woodlanders. Their languages were utterly unrelated. They were as different from each other as Ethiopians are from the Irish, and farther apart too.
But before we can even discuss that, we have to settle who this "We" is who has those peculiar views you outlined? "We" generally means "You and me", at least. What do you and I have in common?
It is a 'possible' theory.
Maybe not so lovely. The other day that poster was jumping ugly on Columbus and anyone expressing anything but hatred and disdain for him. I think you're dealing with "the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, every century but this one, every country but his own." A self-hating Westerner, is my diagnosis.
Excellent overview and it 'jives' with my thinking.
The deep steppes we impassible and uninhabitable until two things occurred, the domestication of the horse and the invention of the wheel. The domestication of the horse prompted the invention of the first pair of pants too.
I was wondering the same thing.
Actually, one of the best times to pick out constellations like Scorpio is when there is a full moon or a slightly hazy sky. (Or, in my case, when I have not yet switched off our mercury vapor security light.)
Although the Indians in the desert southwest didn't have time exposure cameras, they certainly had views of amazingly star-rich skies. OTOH, they had the same moon as we do -- and under those "light polluted" conditions, Scorpio does look very much like a scorpion...
Maybe............ maybe not.
A fish hook to me, but then again. I see lures, rods, boats and bait in about everything these days.
Considering the geography, they certainly had first hand knowledge of scorpions...So, whatever language label they attached to 'nasty venomous critter with hooked tail' would translate to 'scorpion'....same thing if the drawing had been of a 'web-footed foul with a quacker' translating to 'duck'.
Considering the geography, they certainly had first hand knowledge of scorpions...So, whatever language label they attached to 'nasty venomous critter with hooked tail' would translate to 'scorpion'....same thing if the drawing had been of a 'web-footed foul with a quacker' translating to 'duck'.
With all due respect, I hold that Sanskrit is the ancient language from which the Indo-European languages derived. I am a student of the Vedas (can't read Devanagari, but do have a very simple appreciation of a lot of Sanskrit terms as long as they are written in my alphabet!). The Vedas themselves describe their origin and the time frame is very, very ancient. The original British Indologists had a conscious motivation to obfuscate the great antiquity of India's history and the Vedas. For instance, they posited the idea that the Greeks influenced India, when it was in truth the other way around.
I've read quotes (wish I had them handy) of one British Indologist admitting their knowingly lying in this regard. Also, the so-called Aryan invasion theory is also proving to be false. It's a fascinating topic, which unfortunately I don't have time for. Wish I did.
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