Humans Have Done It Throughout History
I’m currently advising on a project in archaeoastronomy—the study of ancient astronomy. It’s an interesting topic, one that keeps cropping up as we find and visit places around the world with evidence that our ancestors used certain objects or landmarks as astronomical markers. Finding these means that even many thousands of years ago people were watching the sky and using it as a calendar and perhaps also in some kinds of cultural/religious/philosophical activities.
Of course, it’s hard to know exactly what the earliest people thought and said about the sky, since writing is a relatively recent invention in human history. They did cave paintings, they carved symbols on stone monuments, they aligned huge buildings (the Pyramids in Egypt come to mind) with specific positions of things in the sky, and they also created crude instruments to help them navigate using the stars. So, the discipline of archaeoastronomy really has its work cut out when a new site is uncovered. Not only do the positions of celestial objects come into play (particularly as they were in the time when the sites were built), but experts in sociology, paleontology, cultural anthropology, geology, and even chemistry and biology all can look at a site from their particular viewpoint and give us some insight into what function the site had, who used it, what it’s built from (field stone, stones from distant areas, etc.), and if there are burial sites nearby, who the people were who created these astronomy-related places.
Our planet has many such sites—the ones that come to mind immediately are places like Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt, the supernova painting in the U.S., and many others. It’s in our own interests as a species to preserve and understand these sites because they give us a lot of insight into our own history and cultural developments, and of course, the development of astronomy.
To that end, the United Nations UNESCO group and the International Astronomical Union have been working together to create an initiative called Astronomy and World Heritage. The aim of the initiative is to explore and reinforce the links between science and culture, particularly through the exploration of astronomy in the heritages of the world’s many cultures, particularly in the past.
You can get a good sense of the initiative from IAU’s own press release, where they state,
“The three-year agreement commits UNESCO and the IAU to promote astronomical sites and provide states party to the World Heritage Convention with expertise, as they prepare nominations for locations to be included in the World Heritage List of exceptional sites that bear witness to major breakthroughs in the development of scientific knowledge. This is a step towards the recognition of the importance of the worldwide astronomical heritage, and its role in enriching lives throughout history and promoting international exchange.
UNESCO and the IAU signed a first memorandum within the framework of the thematic initiative on Astronomy and World Heritage in 2008. It was renewed in 2010 and implemented through close cooperation between UNESCO’s World Heritage Center and the IAU, sparking off a series of activities entitled Astronomy and World Heritage; across time and continents. It also led to the publication of a thematic work on astronomical heritage, compiled in cooperation with the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), to the creation of a web portal (http://www2.astronomicalheritage.net) on the history of astronomical heritage and to the organization of numerous seminars and conferences on the subject.”
When you stop to think about all the humans who have walked this planet, and consider how much astronomy has influenced cultural growth—from navigation to cultural rituals to science—it is tremendously important to seek out and preserve sites where humans long ago first set their eyes on the skies and used what they saw to survive and thrive.