From Stars We Come, To Stars We Return

Exploring Ancient and Indigenous Cosmic Worldviews

Introduction                                          

This project advocates for an interdisciplinary approach to reexamining ancient and Indigenous art and architecture, challenging Eurocentric paradigms in the history of astronomy. At the heart of this investigation is a detailed analysis of how three culturally and geographically diverse groups—the Ancestral Puebloans of Northwest America, the Abbasids of the Islamic Golden Age, and the Northern Songs of medieval China—responded to and documented the Crab Nebula in 1054 CE. This extraordinary astronomical event, which was observed worldwide, serves as an unparalleled lens through which to explore the rich tapestry of human interaction with the cosmos.

The importance of this project lies in its potential to bridge gaps between disciplines, fostering a holistic view of ancient and Indigenous scientific achievements. It challenges the conventional narratives that have marginalized the astronomical insights of the Ancestral Puebloans, Abbasids, and Northern Songs, bringing their contributions to the forefront of academic discourse. This interdisciplinary approach not only enriches our understanding of historical astronomy but also celebrates the shared human curiosity and ingenuity that transcend space and time.

What is the Crab Nebula?

Messier 1 (The Crab Nebula). Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, and A. Loll (Arizona State University).

In 1054CE, a dazzling, but transient, new object emerged in the sky, flashing into existence and reaching a brightness that surpassed even Venus, the brightest object in the night sky, by nearly fivefold. [1] It was so dazzling that it could be seen for twenty-three days in the sunshine and was recorded by observers from different civilizations, across the globe. [2] We now know that this was the light from a supernova, or cataclysmic star explosion, that finally reached us. For more than nine hundred years, the gas and debris ejected by this expanded outward into space, producing a nebula. This region in the constellation Taurus has a somewhat crablike shape, and the event that created it is termed the Crab Nebula. Also known as Messier 1 (M1) and catalogued as NGC 1952, it is one of the most studied supernova remnants in the sky. [3]

The Ancestral Puebloans, residing at Chaco Canyon at the time, captured the occurrence through a pictograph near Peñasco Blanco in Chaco Canyon. A hand, a crescent-shaped sign suggestive of the moon, and an asterisk-like mark that some believe represents the supernova are painted on this overhang. A fourth pictograph, a sun-watching sign, is located nearby and was perhaps used to indicate the location where the rising sun may be aligned with objects on the eastern horizon. [4] Halfway across the world, in the heart of the Islamic Golden Age, the event was also documented by the Abbasids. Ibn Butlan, a physician from Baghdad residing in Constantinople, recorded the appearance of a new star in the sky. [5] Similarly, in East Asia, Chinese and Japanese astronomers left perhaps the most detailed accounts of the Crab Nebula. In Chinese records, the supernova is depicted on the Suzhou Planisphere, a detailed star map that offers invaluable insights into the astronomical knowledge of the time. [6] It wasn't until 1731 that the British astronomer John Belvis rediscovered the nebula, and in 1758, Charles Messier cataloged it as the first entry in his Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d'Étoiles. [7]

Star trails over Casa Rinconada. (© NPS/D. Davis)

PART ONE

The Golden Age of Chaco

Inhabitants of the middle San Juan Basin of north-western New Mexico exerted virtually unimaginable human energy between 1030CE and 1130CE to build a cultural environment of epic proportions - a truly lasting architectural masterpiece. They built large structures, monumental kivas [8], ornate stairways up cliffs and mesas, complex road systems, and intricate irrigation systems. However, just after 1130CE, this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of human achievement disappeared nearly as fast as it had begun. [9] Nevertheless, this century was Chaco Canyon's apex, a time that was practically unequalled in the pre-Columbian Southwest. [10]

By contemporary standards, Chaco Canyon is a bleak environment, seemingly bereft of most of the fundamental materials required to develop the sophisticated society that arose there, which make the reasons for these achievements all the more baffling. The speed with which the events unfolded is also astonishing! Only three buildings stood out on the Chaco Canyon landscape in 1030CE. [11] Seventy years later, the canyon had a dozen gigantic structures (termed great houses), each with hundreds of rooms. [12] This was the epicentre of the great Ancestral Puebloan world, which at its pinnacle, stretched from portions of the modern state of New Mexico into Colorado - its territory roughly equal in size to the country of Jordan! [13] People travelled long distances to attend feast days and to witness and participate in ceremonies. In the remote stillness of the canyon, thousand-year-old sandstone cliffs still gleam in golden sunshine and the storied landscape carries with it a plethora of meanings that people continue to inscribe upon it to this day.

The Puebloans, like all peoples, attributed stories and meanings to the world around them. We cannot know the plots or characters of these legends, but we can learn about what ideas were meaningful to the Puebloans by examining how they emphasized and transformed the spatial world around them. It can certainly be argued that the Chacoan landscape was a large-scale geographical expression of a worldview shared by numerous Ancestral Puebloan residents, builders, and visitors. [14] Chacoan architects consciously built a landscape that provoked a strong emotional response in visitors. Their worldview focused on interconnected themes such as sacred geography, balanced dualisms, directionality, visibility, cyclical renewal, social memory, and centre place. [15] And so, the experience actively validated individuals who shared this worldview – reaffirming their beliefs about the nature of the cosmos and their place within it – as they travelled through the magnificent built structures and transformed environment of Chaco Canyon.

Cosmological understanding was tied to religion, and as the latter became the all-encompassing force of life, the Puebloans experienced a transition from separate rural aristocratic societies to a centrally dominant urban formation between 850CE and 1050CE; individual traditions were superseded by a civic ideology tailored to this new social structure. [16] Astronomy gained a new quantitative dimension and with urban progress came the advent of skilled professions, such as architects, who used their mathematical and astronomical knowledge in the design and interior decoration of sacred spaces.

Astronomical Alignments and Celestial Observations

The western Pueblos of Zuni and Hopi, which were mostly undisturbed by European influence until the twentieth century, provide the bulk of what we know about Pueblo astrological customs. [17] Spanish immigrants near the eastern Pueblos sought to convert the Natives to Catholicism, forcibly repressed religious rites, and imposed a Christian calendar with aid from the Catholic Church. [18] As a result, the Eastern Pueblos restricted access to religiously linked information, including astronomy. The study of Puebloan astronomical knowledge commenced in the late nineteenth century when ethnologists visited Native American tribes in the Southwest to chronicle their language, traditions, myths, and ceremonies. [19] They also documented origin stories and collected information on how Pueblo communities engaged with the sun, moon, and other celestial objects. [20] These insightful early investigations demonstrated not just how Puebloan peoples utilized astronomical observations in their daily lives and ceremonial activities, but also their interconnectedness with the cosmos.

PART TWO

Studies on the Abbasid Caliphate have not yet been completed.

PART THREE

Studies on the Northern Song Dynasty have not yet been completed.

Why is this study important?

My fascination with the Ancestral Puebloans, Abbasid Caliphate, and Northern Song Dynasty stems from a personal and academic journey deeply entwined with the ongoing discourse in art and visual culture centred around race, sex, gender, and colonialism. As a person of colour who has navigated realms of exclusion within both academic and artistic institutions, I am drawn to the legacy of these groups. Their histories, often overshadowed by colonial narratives, resonate with my experiences of marginalization and the struggle for visibility and representation. This personal connection not only fuels my desire to challenge and expand prevailing narratives within the history of astronomy but also to advocate for a reevaluation of the contributions of ancient and Indigenous peoples to our collective understanding of the universe.

We are still finding our way in the cosmos, seeking clues and directions to unlock the riddles of life. Perhaps, the solution to our queries is embedded in the stars; indeed, we are all made of star stuff. Our understanding of the ancient past is fragile and constantly up for correction and debate. History is far more than just a collection of events or biographies of important people; it is the subtle interweaving of human behaviour spread over various landscapes and embedded in the very fabric of spacetime. Studying the alluring world of ancient and Indigenous astronomical art and architecture is a way to learn about ourselves and allows us to reconsider our place in the cosmos. In the face of catastrophes such as climate change, rising food insecurity, and the collapse of ecosystems and biodiversity, it is critical to re-evaluate not only our relationship with the heavens, but also with the very land we call home. 

Works Cited

[1] Rob Garner, “Messier 1 (The Crab Nebula),” NASA (NASA, October 6, 2017), https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-1-the-crab-nebula.

[2] Ling Xin, “Highest-Energy Particles Yet Arrive from Ancient Crab Nebula,” Scientific American (Scientific American, July 8, 2021), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/highest-energy-particles-yet-arrive-from-ancient-crab-nebula/.

[3] Rob Garner, “Messier 1 (The Crab Nebula),” NASA (NASA, October 6, 2017), https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-1-the-crab-nebula.

[4] Kendrick Frazier, People of Chaco: A Canyon and its Culture, (WW Norton & Company, 1999), 212.

[5] Kenneth Brecher, R. A. Fesen, Stephen P. Maran, and John C. Brandt, “Ancient records and the Crab Nebula supernova,” The Observatory, vol. 103, (1983): 107.

[6] Brecher et. al, 109.

[7] N. U. Mayall, "The Story of the Crab Nebula: Ancient records reveal its origin as a supernova; recent work indicates it is a cosmic synchrotron," Science 137, no. 3524 (1962): 91.

[8] A ceremonial chamber, typically round in shape but square among the Hopi and other Western Pueblos, of the contemporary Pueblo people.

[9] David Grant Noble, ed. In search of Chaco: new approaches to an archaeological enigma, (School of American Research Press, 2004), 1.

[10] Noble, 1.

[11] Stephen H. Lekson, The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh-Century Pueblo Regional Center, (School of American Research Press, 2006), 11.

[12] Lekson, 8-9.

[13] Paul F. Reed, The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon, (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), 1.

[14] Ruth M. Van Dyke, The Chaco Experience: Landscape and Ideology at the Center Place, (School for Advanced Research Press, 2008) 9.

[15] Van Dyke, 9.

[16] Kathryn Gabriel, Roads to Center Place: A cultural atlas of Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi, (Johnson Books, 1991), 59-62.

[17] Ray Williamson, "Pueblo Ethnoastronomy," Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy (2015): 641.

[18] Williamson, 642.

[19] Williamson, 641.

[20] Williamson, 641.

[21] Andrew Munro, "The astronomical context of the archaeology and architecture of the Chacoan culture,” 93.

[22] Frazier, People of Chaco: A Canyon and its Culture, 192.

[23] “Wijiji Trail,” National Parks Service (U.S. Department of the Interior), accessed May 13, 2022, https://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/wijiji-trail.htm.

[24] Michael Zeilik, and Richard Elston, "Wijiji at Chaco Canyon: A Winter Solstice Sunrise and Sunset Station," Archaeoastronomy, The Bulletin of the Center for Archaeoastronomy College Park, Md 6, no. 1-4 (1983): 66-73.

[25] Zeilik, 66-73.

[26] Zeilik, 66-73.

[27] Munro, "The astronomical context of the archaeology and architecture of the Chacoan culture,” 78.

[28] Frazier, People of Chaco: A Canyon and its Culture, 192.

[29] Jonathan E Reyman, "Astronomy, Architecture, and Adaptation at Pueblo Bonito: Exterior corner windows at a Chaco Canyon pueblo may have been aligned to the winter solstice sunrise," Science 193, no. 4257 (1976): 957.

[30] Reyman, 960-961.

[31] Reyman, 960-961.

[32] Reyman, 960-961.

[33] Gabriel, Roads to Center Place: A cultural atlas of Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi, 84.

[34] Gabriel, 85.

[35] Frazier, People of Chaco: A Canyon and its Culture, 200.

[36] Frazier, 200.

[37] Frazier, 200.

[38] Fagan, Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society, 10.

[39] National Center for Atmospheric Research, “The Sun Dagger: High Altitude Observatory,” The Sun Dagger | High Altitude Observatory, accessed April 11, 2022, https://www2.hao.ucar.edu/Education/SolarAstronomy/sun-dagger.

[40] National Center for Atmospheric Research, “The Sun Dagger: High Altitude Observatory.”

[41] Gabriel, Roads to Center Place: A cultural atlas of Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi, 89-91.

[42] Ramer and Miller, The Beauty of Space Art: An Illustrated Journey Through the Cosmos, (Springer, 2021), 23.

[43] Frazier, People of Chaco: A Canyon and its Culture, 202.

[44] Munro, "The astronomical context of the archaeology and architecture of the Chacoan culture,” 56.

[45] Munro, 56.

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Messier 1 (The Crab Nebula). Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, and A. Loll (Arizona State University).

Star trails over Casa Rinconada. (© NPS/D. Davis)