Black Genesis (11 page)

THE 2001 OFFICIAL SITE REPORT: RELUCTANT INTRODUCTION OF THE STARS

In 2001, two years after the
Nature
letter and twenty-five years after the discovery of Nabta Playa itself, the CPE finally published an extensive report of their excavations in book format edited by Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild. It included the contributions of twenty-two articles by various participants in the archaeological work at Nabta Playa since its discovery.

One article in the book, titled “The Megalithic Alignments,” was coauthored by Wendorf and Malville and gave a description of the various megalithic structures—and discussed stellar alignments at Nabta Playa. Indeed, the megalithic alignments that were now declared to have such stellar alignments were all those that radiated from CSA. Seen as a whole, CSA itself was the most elaborate member of a group of about thirty complex structures built in the playa silts and covering an area of about two football fields. This area was located some 2 kilometers (about 1 mile) south of the Calendar Circle and included the rows of megalithic alignments that emanated 2 kilometers from CSA to the northeast and southwest. With stellar alignments now identified at Nabta Playa, the site took on a completely new meaning and importance, which, even at this early stage, suggested there was some deep message—symbolic or practical—that had to be understood and interpreted. Before we investigate this message further, we must first familiarize ourselves in more detail with the thirty or so complex structures at Nabta Playa, which were the subject of another article in the CPE book written by Wendorf and
Krolik.
²⁴

According to this article, each complex structure consisted of a cluster of megaliths arranged in an oval shape that measured some 5 to 7 meters (16 to 23 feet) long and 4 to 6 meters (13 to 20 feet) wide, with the longer axis oriented to a position slightly offset from the north-south meridian. The megaliths in each cluster were either placed on top of the playa silts or had been embedded in it. Some of the stones were still standing at the time of the article, but many have since fallen. The largest ones were placed in the center of the oval clusters, and although this was not mentioned by Wendorf and Krolik, we noted (when we finally traveled to see the megaliths for ourselves in 2003) that a few of the structures were partially sculpted with strange curves and angles that were clearly made by human
hands.
²⁵

One of the odd aspects of these complex structures was that they were placed above the sculpted lumps of bedrock (about 3 or 4 meters under playa sediments, the exact depths are different for each complex structure). Only one complex structure (CSA) contained in addition a separate “cow stone” sculpture that was hidden about 3 meters (about 10 feet) beneath the ground. Two complex structures were fully excavated, and on another three, only borehole tests were performed—yet this was enough to confirm that all the structures had beneath them sculpted bedrock, and the results also implied that all the remaining twenty-five or so complex structures had been built in the same way. We will later look at the possible meaning of these mysterious complex structures, but meanwhile, let us examine how and when they were built.

The CPE has established that the silt upon which the complex structures were built dates to 5100 BCE. This means that the visible part of these structures (the stone ovals) cannot be older than this date. Yet the bedrock that lies some 4 meters (13 feet) or more beneath the surface is surrounded by sediment that is dated from about 9000 BCE to 5100 BCE, which would indicate that the lumps of bedrock were sculpted by human hands at a time that was much earlier than the manufacture of the oval of stones that we see today on the surface. These sculpted lumps of bedrock are of hard quartzitic sandstone that remained in place after the softer surrounding sandstone was eroded by wind, long before 9000 BCE, and they were sculpted sometime before they were incorporated into the complex structures. How did the ancient builders who constructed the oval of stones on the surface know that deep beneath the spot they had chosen were these strange outcrops of bedrock? Wendorf and Krolik show their bafflement when they write: “How and why the builders of these [complex] structures located the buried bedrocks is not known. They may have used probes or dug pits. . . . Whatever technique was used to find the bedrock, when it was located, a large and deep enough pit was dug to expose the entire circumference of the [bed]rock . . . up to 5 meters [about 16 feet] in diameter at the base and 3.5 m [about 11 feet] or more deep. . . . Dug through heavy silts and clays, the pits required a major
effort.”
²⁶

According to Wendorf and Krolik, the ancient builders then sculpted the bedrock and, in at least the case of Complex Structure A (CSA), filled the pit partially; placed another megalithic sculpture, the so-called cow stone; and then filled the pit completely to make it level with playa silts. The final operation was then to make an oval of megaliths on the surface of the silts. We can note, however, another, more natural solution to this mystery:

Wendorf and Krolik theorize that CSA and thirty nearby similar Complex Structures were all constructed entirely after the sediments were lay down, with the builders locating subsurface bedrock lumps suitable for sculpting using some unknown method for knowing what is under the sand. Given that parts of CSA and the other Complex Structures consist of sculpted bedrock under the playa sediments, it is reasonable to think that something was possibly constructed there before or during the playa sedimentation, and only the final stage of construction occurred at or after the end of the last major humid
interphase.
²⁷

In other words, it is possible that whoever partially sculpted the lumps of bedrock that lie about 4 meters (about 13 feet) below the surface were at Nabta Playa thousands of years before the final stage of the complex structures was completed (that is, before the placement of the oval of stones that lie on the surface of the earth today).

In 2007, after reading our paper (“Satellite Imagery Measures of the Astronomically Aligned Megaliths at Nabta Playa”), Malville, Schild, and Wendorf came to agree with the possibility that the bedrock sculptures of the complex structures were created much earlier than previously thought. Thus, accordingly, they wrote: “How or why the buried table rocks were chosen remains a puzzle. It seems unlikely that the rocks had been found accidentally during excavation for wells, as these were in dunes at the edge of the playa and not in the playa sediments. It is conceivable that these round, large quartzitic lenses were part of the symbolic landscape of the Middle Neolithic and became significant before the establishment of the complex ceremonial centre. Perhaps their locations had been marked by rock cairns before gradual burial by playa
sediments.”
²⁸

Not only did Wendorf and his coauthors come around to our way of thinking, but also we made them aware in the paper we published in 2005 of a number of technical errors that the CPE had made in their previous
publications.
²⁹
Before reviewing these, let us recall that Complex Structure A was the focal point of a series of megalithic alignments that radiated toward the horizon, and then look at how Wendorf introduced the discovery of these megalithic alignments with unusual candor.

The discovery of the first alignment of large stones in 1990 came as a complete surprise. It is not clear why we failed to recognize them previously, or rather why we failed to understand their significance during the first three field seasons at Nabta [1974, 1975, and 1977]. It was not that we did not see them because we did, but they were either regarded as bedrock, or in some instances where it was clear they were not bedrock, regarded as insignificant. Perhaps the most embarrassing failure is the Group A alignment, which appears on one of our earlier published profiles as a somewhat fanciful steep sided hillock, buried under playa sediments. We were so sure it was bedrock that we failed to drill a borehole near the megalith. Our view of the Neolithic societies in the Sahara at that time was that the sites we were excavating represented small bands with simple social systems. Building [such] large stone monuments was not expected among such
groups.
³⁰

Wendorf 's candid words here show that even in the physical sciences there is a tendency to find only what we set out to find and ignore or fail to notice other features that do not fall within our preset objective. In other words, scientists have a tendency to discover what they expect. Important to note, at any rate, is that Wendorf and Malville in “The Megalithic Alignments” finally took notice of the mysterious megalithic alignments and structures and their possible astronomical meaning.

They were in for quite a surprise. In their 2001 report Wendorf and Malville listed no fewer than twenty-five megaliths that were placed in six main alignments toward the horizon. Although most of the megaliths today are toppled and broken, as indicated earlier, originally they stood upright and created impressive lines of sight. They were generally about 2 by 1 meters (about 7 by 3 feet) in height and about 0.4 meter (about 1 foot) thick. The biggest of these megaliths was a massive 3 by 2.5 meters (about 10 by 8 feet) in height and 0.7 meter (about 2.3 feet) thick and is estimated to weigh more than 10 tons. Yet this was by no means the largest block found at Nabta Playa. The largest, although not part of any apparent alignment, was labeled Megalith X-1 by Wendorf and measured 4 by 3.1 meters (about 13 by 10 feet) in height and 0.7 meter (about 2.3 feet) thick and was estimated to weigh nearly 20 tons. Returning to the six megalithic alignments, the astronomer Kim Malville spent some time measuring their latitude and longitude to determine their precise azimuths, and he identified three of them going toward the north and the three others going toward the
east.
³¹

Figure 3.4. Nabta Playa Megalith X-1, shown in the satellite image in the center of an oval hill and large, low, spiral-armed feature. The broken or cut X-1 is on the ground. Scale in the two images is indicated by the lengths of the labeled white bars.

ALIGNMENTS TOWARD THE STARS: WHEN AND WHY?

Malville concluded that the megalithic alignments had been intended to point to the rising place of important stars on the horizon in the late Neolithic period. He proposed that the three alignments going north tracked the star Dubhe at 4742 BCE, at 4423 BCE, and at 4199 BCE. Of the set of three alignments going east, one was aimed at Sirius about 4820 BCE and the two others tracked the stars of Orion's belt at 4176 BCE and 3786 BCE. What Malville had determined, even though he did not spell it out himself, was that the ancient builders were tracking the precessional shift of important stars over several centuries, perhaps even millennia.

At this stage, however, we must quickly point out that though one of the functions of the megalithic alignments was to act as trackers of the changing rising points of stars on the horizon across the epochs, it is important to note that the dates allocated by Malville to the alignments are in error due to the miscalculation of the azimuths made in the 2001
report
³²
—errors that have since been
corrected.
³³
Further, although the 2005 corrected azimuth readings gave much earlier dates for the tracking of the stars, and although Malville agreed on the corrections, he did not then apply those dates but instead proposed a set of different stars to fit his original (incorrect) dates. At this point we and Malville parted ways in the interpretation of these alignments. We chose to retain the original stars proposed by Malville—Dubhe,
^*6
Sirius, and those of Orion's belt—for as we will see in chapter 4 these stars no doubt made far more sense to the prehistoric people of Nabta Playa. In addition, chapter 6 shows how this prehistoric star lore was eventually passed on to the ancient Egyptians, who built the pyramids, and how especially the bright star Sirius became the star par excellence of the pharaohs.

CALENDAR CIRCLE REVEALED

Our own investigation of the astronomy of Nabta Playa began immediately after we had seen the 1998
Nature
letter by the CPE and also the accompanying press release issued by the University of Colorado on behalf of professor Kim Malville. We were intrigued by the so-called Egyptian Stonehenge in the Sahara and the sensational claim that it was the oldest astronomical megalithic site in the world. Looking at the simple diagram and the few photographs of the Calendar Circle, as the CPE now called it, it was quite obvious to us that the much-touted Egyptian Stonehenge was substantially smaller than the famous one in England, but the true importance of this strange artifact is in its age and the information that we can derive from the monument. For example, we can recall that in late 1996 a small meteorite from Mars, which allegedly contained hydrocarbons and tiny globules formed by fossils of tiny primitive bacteria, was found in
Antarctica.
¹
The photographs published in the press of the unimpressive ping-pong-ball-size rock did not really have an impact on the general public—unlike, for example, the famous radio broadcast of October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles' sonorous voice read an adaption of H. G. Wells' science fiction novel
War of the Worlds,
in which Martians invade Earth and cause panic in several cities in the United States. Thousands mistook Welles' reading for a real news broadcast.

Regarding the Martian meteorite, it was not really its size or shape that could impress us but rather the information it contained, which, if proved true, could completely change our perception of life in the universe and of who we really are. Likewise, the information locked in the arrangement and alignments of the Calendar Circle stones and its partner stone monuments could completely change our views on the origins and racial roots of the world's greatest civilization. The Calendar Circle of Nabta Playa, it turns out, is not an Egyptian Stonehenge but instead more of an Egyptian Mars meteorite with a rather special message for the story of humanity.

What first grabbed attention regarding the Calendar Circle, other than the two sets of gates on the outer ring of the circle reported by the CPE, were the six standing stones (actually two sets of three stones in rows) at the center of the circle. The CPE
Nature
paper focused on the so-called gates, explaining their astronomical alignments toward the summer solstice sunrise and toward the north-south (meridian) cardinal direction. No explanation at all was given for the two sets of standing stones inside the Calendar Circle. These were either ignored by the CPE or deemed unimportant. This seemed very strange, for if the Calendar Circle had meaning to the people who built it, then surely the primary feature of the arrangement—the two rows of stones standing at its center—must also have had meaning to the ancient builders. Perhaps the CPE simply had not been able to discern the meaning of the stones. We decided, therefore, to start our investigation by focusing on these mysterious stones. Our hunch was that they had some astronomical function that related not only to the gates of the Calendar Circle but also, perhaps, to the whole ceremonial complex at Nabta Playa.

Yet we did not know how best to approach the meaning of these stones. We knew that one of the pitfalls of investigations of ancient cultures is first to entertain preconceived ideas about what their capabilities and knowledge were. We saw in chapter 3 how the CPE made this mistake ragarding the megalithic constructions at Nabta Playa, which they saw as natural outcrops of rock, because they had assumed that “building large stone monuments was not expected among such
groups.”
²
Further, although the CPE anthropologists did eventually realize their mistake and understood that these megaliths were constructions that had been created by the prehistoric people of Nabta Playa, their preconceived ideas resulted in the delay of the advancement of knowledge by several decades.

How many times has this sort of obstinate blockage occurred in archaeology? Perhaps the most bald-faced one was when, in 1993, Rudolf Gantenbrink, an independent robotics engineer, explored one of the star shafts in the Great Pyramid and discovered at its end a small trap door with handles. “There is nothing behind this door!” cried German Egyptologist Rainer Stadelmann, who was in charge of the exploration. More than seventeen years later, the world is still waiting to know what might be hidden at the end of the star shaft. We were determined not to make the same blunder ourselves.

The
Nature
letter concluded that the Calendar Circle had an astronomical function of some sort. Thus we approached those six stones in its center as a straightforward astronomy puzzle—that is, we determined not to presume to know in advance what the Neolithic people who built it could have been aware of or what they were thinking or why they were arranging the stones as they were. For the purpose of solving the puzzle of the Calendar Circle, we determined simply to consider human-made stones on the ground and astronomy in the sky.
^*7

We decided that if we found a solution to the astronomy puzzle, then we could consider whether it fit in with the rest of the archaeological and anthropological evidence. It occurred to us that the first step toward solving the astronomy puzzle would be to assume that the six upright stones inside the Calendar Circle had been placed in position to work with the astronomical alignments of the gates. In other words, the two rows of central upright stones should somehow have been connected to the summer solstice sunrise and the north-south meridian directions when the Calendar Circle was built. Yet why would the ancient builders place six upright stones inside a circle that marked time with the summer solstice and that marked place with the meridian?

When we look at the Calendar Circle from directly above, the two sets of upright stones inside it appear analogous to the dials of a petrified giant clock. In the same way a police detective may examine the dials of a broken wristwatch or the pointers of a broken compass to determine the time and place of the crime, we decided to examine the two rows of upright stones in the frozen Calendar Circle to determine when and where in the sky the ancient astronomer-priests may have looked when they designed this astronomical stone instrument. What could they have seen on the meridian of the sky during the summer solstice that could be represented by these upright stones? We knew from our previous studies that much later the ancient Egyptians of the nearby Nile Valley paid particular attention to the summer solstice, because it was during this time of year that the annual flooding of the Nile irrigated the land and brought sustenance to the crops. We also knew that this yearly hydraulic miracle was marked by the appearance of three prominent stars at dawn—those we today call Orion's belt. We can recall how the monsoon rains that drenched the Sahara and refilled the dry lakes in midsummer were of vital importance to the prehistoric people of Nabta Playa. In fact the very same monsoon rains also filled the great lakes of central Africa, which were the source of the Nile, and brought the annual flood to Egypt. Could the prehistoric people of Nabta Playa have seen the dawn appearance of Orion's belt as a marker of the annual rains, as did the ancient Egyptians later with the annual Nile's flood? More specifically, could the three stars of Orion's belt be correlated to one of the sets of three stones in the Calendar Circle? The three stars of Orion's belt were equidistance from each other, as were the three upright stones inside the Calendar Circle.
^*8

This was, to say the very least, a tantalizing invitation to see a deliberate correlation between stars and stones. As we began to analyze the possibility, the puzzle of the Calendar Circle astronomy immediately began to yield.

We imagined using the Calendar Circle as an astronomical instrument, and we set our astronomical software to the earliest date possible for it: 4712 BCE, at the latitude of Nabta Playa. This was close to the date that the CPE had allocated to the Calendar Circle by radiocarbon analysis. We then looked at our computer simulation of the ancient sky. We imagined ourselves kneeling on the outside of the Calendar Circle and looking at the summer solstice sunrise through the set of gates that were directed northeast. We then imagined ourselves moving around the Calendar Circle and looking through the other set of gates toward the meridian in the sky. We set our computer screen to look at the south meridian—and there it was, close to the meridian: Orion's belt!

Our hypothesis at this stage was thus that the ancient astronomer-priests of Nabta Playa had designed a device that locked together the summer solstice sunrise and the culmination of Orion's belt for ritualistic purposes and also for the practical purpose of marking the coming of the monsoon rains. Yet could such a hypothesis be scientifically tested? Yes—it could be accomplished by working out at which epoch the pattern of the three stars of Orion's belt would have matched the pattern of the three stones in the Calendar Circle and then comparing this result to the one resulting from radiocarbon and other dating methods. If these dates matched, then the hypothesis would stand. We need not be bogged down here in details regarding how the position of Orion's belt can be worked out with precession calculations. This, in any case, can be verified easily on a home computer equipped with good astronomical software. Any keen observer of the night sky will know that Orion's belt forms a very noticeable
asterism
(small group of stars) in the southern sky. Indeed, so striking is this asterism that it was not only noticed but also used by many ancient cultures in their rituals and mythologies. The asterism is at the center of the great Orion constellation that today dominates the southern sky in the winter months.

Figure 4.1. Plot of all the radiocarbon dates from Nabta Playa published by the CPE

The current configuration of the constellation was formed about two million years ago
^*9
and will remain recognizable in the night sky for the next two million years or so, making it one of the longest observableby-humans constellations, and its familiar pattern was recognized by many ancient people, although these cultures represented it differently. Most often, however, it was respresented as a giant human figure striding across the heavens. Thus, the ancient Egyptians saw Orion as a giant man representing the god of resurrection, Osiris. To the ancient Babylonians, the constellation was Mulsipazianna, the heavenly shepherd. The Greeks saw it as a giant hunter. Even the Bible speaks of Orion and Orion's belt in the books of Job and Amos.
^†10
Indeed, on a clear, cloudless night, it is almost impossible not to be drawn to this bright and impressive asterism, especially to the obvious three-star asterism forming the belt—and likely this pull was stronger for the ancient people of the Sahara, who, every night, had the opportunity to watch the stars, unhindered by either obstacles or the light pollution of towns and cities.

Of course, it is important to note that the slow, twenty-sixthousand-year cycle of precession will change over time the angle that the Orion's belt asterism makes with the meridian. If we bear this in mind, it is relatively simple to verify by computer simulation of the sky what the angle of the three stars is relative to the meridian and then match it to that of the three upright stones at the center of the Calendar Circle. What epoch does the circle then represent? The CPE concluded that the Calendar Circle must be dated to about 4800 BCE, because organic matter found nearby was firmly fixed at that date by radiocarbon analysis and other archaeological methods. Clearly, then, it was worth checking the angle of the Orion's belt asterism around 4800 BCE in order to test our hypothesis. There was a hiccup at this point, however: our software went back only to Julian date zero, 4712
BCE.
³

Scaliger's Julian date counting Method

We note that the commonly used astronomy programs (SkyMapPro and StarryNight) employ approximation methods to calculate the locations of stars. Because they approximate around the current date, they are extremely accurate for any dates within thousands of years of today, but for extremely ancient or extremely distant future dates their accuracy begins to degrade. The program we used, SkyMapPro, cannot give readings earlier than 4712 BCE because it employs the so-called Julian date counting method, which is based on the Julian period proposed by Joseph Scaliger in 1583. This Julian period is a multiple of three time cycles: the nineteen-year Metonic cycle or synodic lunar cycle, times the twenty-eight-year solar cycle or leap year day counting cycle, times the fifteen-year indiction cycle used for tax accounting in medieval Europe. Scaliger intended his long period count to be useful for unifying the various measures of historical time with which scholars were then struggling, and he figured, interestingly, that 4712 BCE—the last time those three cycles were in their first year together—was a good enough place to start counting for a unified modern calendar system, because that date was earlier than all known historical dates at the time (that is, generally accepted historical dates known to European scholars at the time).