Lucky for Us, Our Ancestors Did Just That

My friend Ed Krupp and I once got into a discussion about “using” the  sky. This was while I was working on exhibits for the Griffith Observatory (which Ed directs). Our conversation got started when I was writing some copy about the relationship early people had with the sky.

I wanted to make some statement about attaching mystical meaning to the sky and Ed warned me not to read too much into everything I might see about ceremonial sunrise rites and so on. Now, Ed’s an expert on various ancient cultures and the relationships they had with the stars, Sun, planets, and Moon. He’s traveled all over the place, examining temples and markers that were likely used to determine all kinds of iterative sky phenomena (stuff that happens regularly). And, he’s written widely respected books on the subject of early astronomers and their practices (you can find his book Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings in my online bookstore).  So, I listened and learned.

He pointed out that first and foremost, it’s important to know that people USED the sky. We still do, although not to the extent our earliest cultures did. For early people, the sky was a survival tool. While there was some element of mysticism attached to sky motions (and this is understandable, given that people in early times didn’t know what we do about the sky and we have this human disposition to attach mystical meaning to things we don’t understand), the practical, utilitarian use of the sky was at the root of everything  these people needed. They used it to know the time of day, the day and date, the seasons and the years.

To USE the sky, people had to WATCH the sky. They became intimately familiar with the objects and motions they observed, and that watchfulness is the root of astronomy. Now some early cultures made a real commotion about sky objects and motions. The Egyptians come to mind, as do the Aztec, Maya, the Chinese, the Polynesians, the earliest North American cultures, and many tribes in Africa. Whatever mystical meaning those people attached to the sky was secondary to the actual practice of watching the sky and charting the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets and then using the knowledge gained to improve (and sustain) life and culture. In time, they began noting down what they saw in the sky (the pictograph in the image above is at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and is thought to depict the supernova of 1054 A.D. (courtesy Ron Lussier)).

There’s a direct connection between those ancient people and us today. It’s called survival. What they learned helped keep them alive. Knowing when the seasons would come helped them know when to plant, or till the soil, or harvest their crops, or stalk the wild game at the right time. If they hadn’t, human culture might never have taken root around the globe. Or, perhaps it would have rooted differently, with consquences that we’d feel today. For them,it was a matter of survival to know the sky. We should be grateful to those early humans for the very practical knowledge they used to keep themselves alive and thriving.