Ancient Method for Calculating Cataclysms
Last Update: May 27, 2011
From TheCityEdition.com
While they don't get much love from their academic peers, amateur history detectives believe the Maya and other ancient cultures were aware of an astronomical quirk known as the Precession of the Equinoxes. This 26,000-year cycle represents the time it takes for Earth to wobble completely around on its axis, causing the zodiac constellations to recede backwards in the night sky a full 360 degrees. According to a theory offered by two history of science professors in 1969, ancient civilizations used the cycle to predict periodic mass extinctions on Earth.
Under this scenario, the 12 zodiac constellations act like gears on a very slow-moving clock. (Actually, there were originally 13 of them; the forgotten one is Ophiuchus). From our perspective on the ground, those little groups of stars named after animals and mythological figures follow the same path across the sky at night as the Sun traverses in the daytime. Astronomers call this route the ecliptic.
lunarplanner.com
To be more precise, it's the Earth that's moving, not the Sun or any of the other stars. It takes 26,000 years for the imaginary poles to go all the way around the precessional arc, as illustrated in the photo above. As a consequence, the constellations on the ecliptic are said to precess, or move backwards, at a rate of one degree every 72 years.
To better grasp this concept, find a top and give it a spin. As it slows down, gravity starts pulling its axis downward. This makes the top wobble like a drunken sailor, only in the opposite direction of the spinning. In Earth's case, it's the gravitational pull from the Moon and Venus causing the wobble. Luckily, this backward movement is both measurable and predictable. You've probably never noticed that the stars on the ecliptic show up a little later than expected each night, but evidently, the ancients were all over this.
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Astrological ages, as we know them today, are named according to the constellation behind the Sun as it rises on the morning of the vernal equinox. One age lasts about 2,160 years, the equivalent of 30 degrees of precession. So if you look at the sky at dawn where the Sun comes up next March 21st, you should see the constellation Pisces.
You may recall that Jesus is often associated with the symbol of Pisces, the fish. That's because his birth more or less marked the beginning of that constellation's alignment on the Vernal equinox. Past ages include Taurus, the bull (4300 to 2150 BC.) and Aries, the ram (2150 B.C. to AD 1). The stone monuments built during those time periods feature those animals again and again. If nothing else, the phenomenon underscores the universality of astrology as an anchor of human culture. Significantly, the age of Pisces will end in 140 years or so, as Aquarius takes its place behind the Sun on March 21st.
So what does all this have to do with mass extinctions? While such an infinitesimal creep of the stars has no real application in the short run, it would seem the implications are huge for longer range calculations. In fact, the explantion of how astrology came to be used to predict fortunes in the first place may hinge on that 26,000-year precession cycle. At least, that's what Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend argued in their obscure, but fascinating book Hamlet's Mill. The two claimed that the creation/destruction myths of the world's oldest cultures contain embedded codes referring to the Precession of Equinoxes.
Ancients Ponder Consequences of Changing Rotation
When the first cuneiform tablets were found in Babylonia five thousand years ago, it was evident that the occult science of astrology was already an age-old practice. Many civilizations in antiquity saw time as a series of cycles connected to the orbits of heavenly bodies. According to the philosopher's stone of ancient alchemy, the motto of human existence stated "As above, so below." Although we still don't know how they did it, primitive people thus acquired the capacity to measure the orbits and alignments of planets and stars. In particular, they learned to predict when a celestial body would line up directly behind the Sun. Such events, called heliacal risings, figured prominently in the scheduling of ancient religious holidays. They also provided a key yardstick for tracking the precessional cycle.
Shamanism, clairvoyance and other occult arts likely helped advance the cosmic know-how of our forbears. Equally remarkable, early on many cultures developed a proficiency in interpreting soundwaves, energy fields and currents. There's plenty of evidence that the Egyptians, Chinese and other civilizations founded "oracle centers" (a.k.a. important cities) at pre-determined geographical coordinates on Earth. According to ancient mariners' maps, the Great Pyramids lay along what was considered in those long-ago days the prime meridian. Today, we use terms like chakras, harmonics, longitudes and GPS to describe different aspects of this incredible expertise.
On a more practical level, computing the annual movement of heavenly bodies like the Sun allowed our forbears to anticipate the rainy season, schedule crop growing activities, and stockpile provisions for winter. By constructing two columns, a stairway, an arch or a shaft in a specific place, the builders could insure that the Sun would line up exactly within the prescribed parameters on an equinox or solstice. Rituals and ceremonies held on these four days marked the beginning of spring, summer, fall and winter.
But some investigators insist the ancients had bigger fish to fry than the spring planting season. Monuments like Stonehenge, for instance, were laid out to track celestial movements within the entire solar system.
Above, Stonehenge was comprised of multiple circles surrounding the inner one with the surviving monument. Below, two sun "daggers" line up with a petroglyph on the winter solstice at Fajada Butte, Chaco Canyon.
In the American southwest, you'll find an even stranger anomaly. At the massive Chaco Canyon site in New Mexico, several slabs of rock at Fajada Butte were placed over two petroglyphs to refract sunlight like a dagger. If the superimposed light didn't line up correctly over the spiral glyphs, it indicated that the axis of the planet must have suddenly shifted, presaging a doomsday event in the works. This intriguing, if not hair-raising interpretation of the daggers was discussed in a recent episode of the History Channel series Ancient Aliens. Built by the Pueblo Indians around 900 A.D., Chaco Canyon is thought to have been laid out with the Sun and the Moon in mind, as well as constellations like Orion. No one really knows the reason might explain why Native Americans picked such a desolate site to drop anchor, since Chaco Canyon has no water source. Pueblo legends suggests the clan was guided to the spot by "guardians of the sky".
The Mayans also used sunlight and shadow to keep tabs on the Earth's axis. At the pyramid of Kukulcan, in Chichen Itza Mexico, you'll find the shape of a snake undulating down the steps at dawn every spring and fall equinox. In Egypt, numerous temples to Isis were constructed so that the star associated with the goddess, Sirius A, would cast a beam of light down the main aisle at the time of its annual heliacal rising. Like the other configurations mentioned here, this one allowed our forbears in antiquity to monitor the Earth's axis with ingenius precision. See Aliens Without Borders for more on Isis.
Pyramid of Kulkulcan as seen in Chichen Itza on an equinox. Notice the carved stone head of the snake at ground level.
On the Trail of An Assassin
That disparate cultures spread around the globe engaged in detailed discussions of the cosmos in their myths and legends has always amounted a huge headache to modern scholars. (It didn't help that few historians and folklorists had any astronomical training. But the authors of Hamlet's Mill did know their stargazing, and found widespread evidence that precessional calculations were being deliberately transmitted across generations using the ancient epochs. Given the catastrophic nature of most creation-destruction myths, the professors further theorized that these cultures had deduced something we're not even aware of today — that the Precession of the Equinoxes may be linked to a recurring geologic catastrophe on Earth.
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More Resources
Articles of Interest
"Hamlet's Mill." Attributed to Dr. William Sullivan. From Secrets of the Incas.
"2012 Precession of The Equinox- from Darkness into Light." By Timothy Connolly. Shift of the Age 11/2/09.
"A Primer on the Evolution of Astronomical Calendars" by Bryan C. Bates
"A View of Hamlet's Midnight." By Mather Walker.
Websites
Windows to the Universe (University of Michigan)
The Thirteen Zodiac Constellations
Ancient Observatories (The Exploratorium)
Precession of the Equinoxes video
Suggested Reading
Fingerprints of the Gods (1999) by Graham Hancock.
Hamlet's Mill (1969) by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. Text available online.
The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt (2003) by Jane B. Sellers.
Homer's Secret Iliad (1999) by Florence and Kenneth Wood. (Based on the research of Edna Leigh.
TV Programs and DVD's
"Closer Encounters." Episode from the Ancient Aliens series (2010) by the History Channel. YouTube
The Mystery of Chaco Canyon (1999) Narrated by Robert Redford.