[Aztlan] Astronomical thinking universal?

[Harold H. Green]

This is a very interesting discussion - thanks to Robert Hall for  
initiating it, Martha Noyes for getting it restarted, and Lloyd  
Anderson for contributing provocatively to it.

In "Tropical Archaeoastronomy" (1981), Anthony Aveni emphasized how  
important culture was in interpreting the night sky: "Often in our  
age we tend to view and judge the cosmologies of other civilizations  
through our own eyes. The comparative study of astronomical systems  
demonstrates that ancient man's view of the universe is best  
considered in the context of his cultural values and environmental  
background."

Aveni also has found that, at least culturally considered, it is not  
correct to conclude that h"The sky is the sky wherever on earth one  
is." At least, where one is on the earth may rather significantly  
influence that person's understanding of the sky.

As Aveni states, "nearly all tropical cultures that developed  
indigenous astronomical systems ... gravitated toward a reference  
system consisting of zenith and nadir as poles and the horizon as a  
fundamental reference circle [or square?]. Such an arrangement stands  
in remarkable contrast to the celestial pole-equator (or ecliptic)  
systems developed by ancient civilizations of the temperate zone."  
For the ancient Maya, who could observe solar zenith passages and  
were able to mark at the horizons the days of nadir passage, zenith  
and nadir were fundamental reference poles, and importance was also  
attributed to the chronological midpoints between zenith and equinox  
(e.g., the Stelae 12-10 baseline at Copan) and between nadir and  
equinox.

The perception of asterisms also varies widely with location and  
culture. To the ancient Greeks, Orion was "the hunter." More  
important to the ancient Maya were three stars of Orion (Rigel, Saiph  
and Alnitak) that were understood to be the "three hearthstones," the
"three stones of creation."  The Inca placed more importance on the  
so-called "dark constellations" - perceived shapes where stars were  
not visible - than on perceived arrangements of specific stars.

As Lloyd Anderson also notes, while modern astronomers may be able to  
prove that "rules" of  "sky behavior" are "universal," such "rules"  
may not have been perceived in the same way by all ancient  
civilizations. Modern astronomers understand that the intervals  
between solar zenith and nadir passages vary with the latitude of the  
observer, a "rule" of  "sky behavior" that may not have been fully  
appreciated by the ancients, especially those in the temperate zone  
who were not able to observe zenith passage. Without accurate timing  
mechanisms, the ancients may have had some difficulty determining the  
equinoxes (which are not "the midway point between [the solstices]"  
but are in fact "when the length of the day equals the length of the  
night").

Lloyd Anderson mentions the directions "North, South, East and West,"  
a subject about which there is great confusion in the Maya  
literature. When today we say capital-E "East," we are usually  
referring to the "cardinal point" or "compass point" East; when we  
say small-e "east," we may be referring more generically to the  
direction where the sun comes up.  Lloyd's "Orca in an aquarium on  
the NWest coast" has apparently figured out that the sun does not  
rise at a point in the East, but rises at a different point each day  
between the solstices, the locus of which points is a line, or a side  
of the world. This concept of side versus point is made in the Popol  
Vuh as well as by the Maya words "lak'in" and "och k'in" (which are  
generally translated as the cardinal points East and West,  
respectively).

The Popol Vuh conceptualizes the world as four-sided, with four  
corners: "Great is its performance and its account of the completion  
and germination of all the sky and earth -- its four corners and its  
four sides. ... Thus were established the four corners, the four  
sides, as it is said, by the Framer and the Shaper, the Mother and  
the Father of life and all creation" (Christenson 2003).  "Lak'in"  
and "och k'in" more closely mean "where the sun comes out" and "where  
the sun enters," respectively - in other words, they refer to a line  
or a side, not to a point (see Watanabe 1983 and B Tedlock 1992).   
Writing of "Mesoamerican Description of Space," Brotherston concludes  
that "Except for those in Yucatec, with their matching glyphs, Indian  
words for direction do not even suggest a system of four cardinal  
points. ... [T]alking of the four cardinal points of the Mesoamerican  
world as if they were ours actively hinders appreciation of its  
science and its art" (Brotherston 1976:41, 59).

A number of Maya scholars have argued that the directional glyphs  
placed in the middle of each of the four walls of Tomb 12 at Rio Azul  
prove that the ancient Maya understood, and oriented their structures  
to, the "cardinal directions" East, North, West and South. But these  
glyphs could just as readily (and I would argue more likely)  
denominate each of the sides of the tomb, not the cardinal directions  
or compass points.

In trying to understand how the ancient Maya may have understood the  
cosmos, and especially in attempting to interpret the way that
such understanding may have been incorporated in mythology, it is  
well to keep in mind Aveni's admonition that "Often in our age we  
tend to view and judge the cosmologies of other civilizations through  
our own eyes."

Hal Green

On Aug 6, 2007, at 6:05 AM, ECOLING at aol.com wrote:

> Continuing discussion with Martha Noyes:
>
>> There is, however, quite a difference between sky knowledge as
>> native people know/knew it and what we call astronomy today.
>> One need not be an astronomer to learn this sky knowledge.
>> In fact there are many accomplished astronomers who would
>> miss much of the import of sky knowledge.
>
> Agreed.   At the same time, astronomers may have tools which help to
> suggest that our modern *interpretations* of native sky knowledge
> may be off base.   And those same astronomers can also go overboard,
> wanting a kind of precision which is inappropriate to the kind of
> information in native sky knowledge, or missing a precision present  
> there.
> There is simply no one method to detecting what a the more
> knowledgeable people of an ancient culture thought -- it is not  
> directly
> accessible to us.
>
>> One important thing about sky knowledge is that it is nearly
>> universal.
>
> Disagree.
>
>> The sky is the sky wherever on earth one is.
>
> Agree.   So it is legitimate to *consider the possibility* that  
> people in
> one part of the world in one time have interpreted what happens in the
> sky in ways at least partly like those in another place and time.
> But there are still many possible patterns of interpretation to  
> choose from.
> We cannot just jump to conclusions.
>
> There is another opportunity I think you have not mentioned,
> to use unique events in the sky to assign absolute dates to  
> observations
> in native sky knowledge and in history, *if* we have approximate dates
> and *if* we can be certain of observations of ancient records.
> But this can be slippery.   How to know whether something we *think*
> reflects the explosion of the crab nebula really does refer to that?
> How to know whether a particular graphic symbol in a Mixtec codex
> refers to a comet or not, and if so to which one, given the  
> potential that
> our reasoning about their historical records is not absolutely certain
> and that we can be off by a multiple of 52 years?   Difficult  
> questions,
> all of these.
>
>> The basic "rules" of the sky's behavior are therefore also universal,
>> not only across cultures, but across time.
>
> Not if those rules are cultural.
>
>> The ancients of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and Persia had skywatchers
>> who observed the same phenomena the Skidi (Skiri) Pawnee, the Maya,
>> the Inca, the Chumash, and Polynesians observed.
>> The solar year, the lunar month, the annual track of the sun (the
>> ecliptic), the unmoving Pole star(s), the "turning" of the sun at its
> northern
>> and southern limits (the solstices),
>
> So, far I agree.   Though the *importance* assigned to various of  
> these,
> and the metaphors used to refer to them, can be very different.
>
>> the midway point between these when the
>> length of the day equals the length of the night (the equinoxes),
>
> Potentially, but not necessarily.   Aveni may have established  
> statistically
> that the Maya changed from an earlier view which did use the equinoxes
> to a later view which used sun-at-zenith.
> The earlier view would divide the year into approximately 4 x 91 days.
> The later view would divide the year into approximately 260 + 105  
> days,
> and works with those numbers only in a certain range of latitudes.
> Aveni inferred this from a change in the orientations of "E-shaped"
> structures,
> and did so only by using a large number of them and displaying their
> orientations statistically so that centers of gravity could be seen
> statistically
> for the two time periods he considered.
>
> Perhaps you deliberately did not mention directions North, South, East
> and West.   Even these may not be universal, in some sense, though I
> personally am taking no position on this, from lack of intimate  
> knowledge.
> Some cultures are said to have cardinal directions in NE, NW, SW, SE,
> reflecting perhaps maximal northern rising and setting points of  
> the Sun
> in summer and winter.
>
>> that the planets "wander" among the "fixed" stars,
>
> Surely yes, but then things get more complicated.   Did a  
> particular ancient
> people think about the planets as being at a certain altitude above  
> the
> horizon?
> Or did they think of their motions as measured against the  
> background fixed
> stars and as moving along the ecliptic?   I think probably some  
> peoples one
> way, some the other, and some used both.   I'm in an ongoing debate  
> with some
> archaeoastronomers who seem to believe the former, and argue that we
> must calculate that in a particular way, that it is very difficult to
> determine
> an exact day of maximum elongation or of standstill (for outer  
> planets),
> which I agree with.   But they seem to want to interpret ancient  
> records from
> a people as necessarily making precise claims about an exact day of  
> for
> example standstill, or as not being about standstill at all.   I  
> frankly do
> not
> understand how one can propose to know that a priori for a given  
> set of
> records which might be about astronomy.
>
>> that the earth has an axis around which the sky turns,
>
> Shouldn't that read that the "sky has a center around which it  
> turns" ?
>
>> that the sun rises on a slightly different point on the horizon
>> each day of the year, and so on were all easily observable
>> to people of old, just they are to us.
>
> Surely yes to the last one.   I have even read an account that an  
> Orca in an
> equarium on the NWest coast of the USA would lick the edge of its
> confining pool each day at the place where the light of the Sun was
> *going to* appear that morning.   I take that as evidence for thought.
>
> But notice the several difficulties I pointed out earlier for assuming
> that sky knowledge is universal in the way it is conceived.   It is,
> after all, a *cultural* phenomenon, and it is notoriously easy for us
> humans to assume that another culture has to think about something
> in the only possible way, which just happens to be the same way we  
> do. (:-))
>
>> More than just the architecture and mechanics of the sky are/were
>> common across cultures and time.  Some myths/legends were celestial,
>> and there are keys to recognizing them as celestial.  Not  
>> surprisingly,
>> just as the sky is universal, so, too, are some of these keys.
>
> Very dangerous to reason thus, even though sometimes one will come
> to a correct inference by doing so.
>
>> The presence of twins at the beginning; association of kings and high
> chiefs
>> with the sun; Venus as a major player, often having to do with war or
> ritual
>> violence;
>
> Statistically, some validity to that.   Forcing such an  
> interpretation onto
> an ancient culture merely because we are familiar with it in some  
> cultures,
> no, we can't justify that.   It doesn't matter where ideas come  
> from, we can
> get an idea anywhere.   But asserting it applies to a particular  
> culture is
> much more difficult.
>
>> the moon's association with water and dragon/lizard/crocodile type
> creatures;
>> celestial crosses - the Southern Cross, the crossing of the  
>> ecliptic and
> the
>> Milky Way, and other crosses;
>
> I doubt the first of these.   And the use of the word "cross" can  
> be vague
> here
> so it becomes almost impossible to know what claim is being made,  
> therefore
> impossible to know what evidence supports or argues against it.
>
>> the death and rebirth of the sun, usually at the winter solstice;
>
> Certainly in some cultures.   Isn't the daily one more common?
>
>> a boat or canoe in the sky; a path or entry to the realm of souls /
>> the deceased in the sky;
>> a tree or pole or mountain or heap of stones as the axis;
>
> In *some* cultures
>
>> North as up and South as down;
>
> I think I have read indications that in some area of NE Asia, the  
> underworld
> is in the North instead of the South, and the color black is in the  
> North.
> This would be only reasonable given that they are in the far northern
> hemisphere.
> The North-up and South-down correlation you note certainly *does*  
> extend
> also far into the northern hemisphere, but it may not be universal.
>
>> a bird at the top of the axis when the axis is a tree, and so on.
>
> Does occur repeatedly, but may have different interpretations and  
> historical
> origins, and our *interpretations* of this may lump these together  
> much
> too easily.   There is for example a ferment currently going on in  
> Mayan
> studies, concerning how many different birds there are, and whether we
> have correctly understood the metaphorical or literal associations  
> of the
> "Principal Bird Deity", etc.   This ferment is healthy, but it  
> constitutes
> precisely going *beyond* the lumping of all such birds together.
>
>> Time, cycles, and measures were of particular significance to
>> ancient and native people.  It wasn't so much that it was esoteric
>> knowledge as that it was secret, privileged knowledge.
>
> Both statements above apply just as much to modern peoples today.
>
>> That's why it was couched in language of story, metaphor, analogy,
>> pun, and symbol.  It's also part of why it became obscure,
>> almost forgotten - when the conquering began the secret knowledge
>> was, as it had always been, in the minds of the those of the elite
>> who had been trained in it.  As they succumbed for whatever reason,
>> the keys to the language began to be lost with them.  But it was  
>> never
>> really gone; it was in the myths and legends all along.
>
> The phrase "that's why it was ..."   is actually a *very strong*  
> claim,
> potentially an empirical claim, but very difficult to argue for or  
> against.
> One similar approach (Santillana and von Dechend _Hamlet's Mill_)
> was to claim the knowledge was encoded in myth *in order to* hide it
> or to preserve it.   Very close to your "That's why
> it was couched in language of story, metaphor, ..."
> That approach has been much disfavored in academic scholarship,
> and I can't argue for it specifically.   "Astralism", finding  
> astronomical
> meanings everywhere in myths, certainly can be overdone.   So given  
> that,
> how do we know when such an interpretation is valid, and when not?
>
> Another approach might be that astronomical events were couched in
> language of story, metaphor, etc. either because of cultural play  
> or as a way
>
> precisely of making astronomical knowledge more accessible to the
> larger population.   But then the stories can take on a literary  
> life of
> their own, and be changed through time for literary reasons.
> In that case they will deviate from what a simple story geared to
> astronomical events would have narrated, and the match between
> the two becomes incredibly difficult.   We cannot know for certain
> what the story was about long ago, and cannot even be certain
> what the story *was* long ago.
>
> We should *both* admit that information really can be lost,
> in cultural history all over the globe, when either elites or people
> in general succumb for whatever reasons,
> and *also* that much information is preserved in cultures which
> academic scholarship does not take account of, because lines of
> communication are not open, or because students of the subject
> (academic or not) have preferred subjects and methods of working,
> and neglect what does not fit those preferred methods.
> It is a constant struggle to get ethnography of any kind,
> including ethnoastronomy, to be included in scientific studies.
> Finding new ways of "translating" information between different
> human communities is a part of the task of overcoming this.
>
>>
>> Phew.  Sorry to have gone on and on.
>
> Not a problem.
>
> Best wishes,
> Lloyd Anderson
>
>
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