Black Genesis (16 page)

ONE YEAR OF ASTRONOMY AT NABTA PLAYA

Now suppose you are viewing the various astronomical events during one year at Nabta Playa—say, 4500 BCE. You begin your observing year on the afternoon of the winter solstice. You intend to use the Calendar Circle that night, and so you observe that the winter solstice sun sets into the solstice gates of the circle and the sky begins to darken. You move to the north end of the circle to use the meridian gates as your sky-viewing guide, and over the next forty-five minutes the sky becomes dark enough that the stars seem to pop out around you. Then, fifty-five minutes after sunset, directly on the meridian, you see the belt of Orion shining into the deepening dark, oriented very much like the three southerly stones inside the circle. Trailing Orion is the brilliant Sirius, which crosses the meridian an hour and forty minutes later. Two hours after that the very bright star Canopus crosses the meridian, skimming low above the horizon. Perhaps, if you've learned your sky lessons, you know that when you travel north, Canopus drops even lower to the horizon. The starry show continues for eight more hours; then the sky begins to brighten, and the sun rises to make its low winter arc across the sky.

One month later the nightly show is similar, except that the sun sets a bit north of the solstice gates of the circle, and when the sky darkens, you see that Orion has already passed the meridian and Sirius is already there. Two more months pass, and the sun rises due east and sets due west. It is the spring equinox, and now when the sky darkens after sunset, Orion's belt is gone—already set below the horizon—but Sirius is still visible low to the southwest for about forty-five minutes before it too sets. About ten days later Sirius also disappears.
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Another twenty-eight days later, just before dawn, Orion's belt reappears in the southeast.
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After another twenty-nine days, Sirius also reappears in the southeast, when you can glimpse it momentarily before dawn.
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At Nabta Playa you have moved south of the Calendar Circle to view this heliacal rising of Sirius from Complex Structure A, the central megalithic construction that your society built to view stars rising over lines of megaliths. There, just before dawn, you see Sirius rise above a distant line of megaliths to the southeast, and when you look to the northeast you see hovering there, above another line of megaliths, Dubhe of the Bull's Thigh constellation.

Of course, these alignments are just as you have expected, because this is in fact a year of heavy construction, when you are completing the building of those two lines of megaliths. It is now just four weeks before summer solstice, and in seven more days, it will be exactly three weeks before summer solstice, the time when, at noon, the sun passes directly overhead and the standing stones cast no shadow, which occurs only twice per year.

Now the annual rains have come, and if they are plentiful, the playa basin fills with shallow water. The Calendar Circle is located on a low mound just off the edge of the playa, so you can continue your star viewing from there even while the playa is full of water. On the night before summer solstice you watch Orion's belt rising about an hour after midnight, followed, as always, by Sirius an hour and forty-five minutes later. Orion's belt moves toward the meridian and fades out of view about an hour before it reaches it, as the sky brightens and the sun rises in the solstice gates of the Calendar Circle. Three weeks after summer solstice the noon sun again passes directly overhead and the standing stones cast no shadow, and the nightly show repeats. This time you can see Orion's belt just approaching the meridian as the sky brightens with the sunrise. The sun now rises a bit south of the solstice gate, as the sunrise location moves toward winter, and the whole annual show will repeat.

Figure 4.12. Photograph of Orion being followed by Sirius beneath the Milky Way

MORE MYSTERIES AT NABTA PLAYA

When some important and new discovery such as Nabta Playa might put into serious question the established views about the origins of civilization, there is a tendency to wait until a suitable theory can be developed before releasing any data about the discovery. The problem with this is that sometimes the data that fits an established theory is regarded as more valuable than mysterious new data that contradicts it.
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Others, like us, take an opposing view. We see the mysterious, unexplained data as more valuable, because if we try to understand the mystery, we might learn something new. To us that is what scientific research is—or ought to be—all about. In this frame of mind, then, we will look in more detail at some mysterious aspects of Nabta Playa in the hope that such an approach might shed even more light on this mysterious place.

We recall that all the megalithic alignments at Nabta Playa radiate out from a central megalithic structure called Complex Structure A. CSA is composed of megaliths that lay on the surface; a large megalith carved by human hands (the so-called cow stone) buried 3 meters (about 10 feet); and finally, berneath the sculpted cow stone, a lump of bedrock, also partly carved by human hands. The megaliths on the surface are arranged in an oval shape, and some are partially sculpted. Two of these are partially sculpted into a curved geometric form, one into a convex form, and two into a concave form, giving the impression that they might have been chunks of a much larger structure that has now
disappeared.
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The cow stone that was buried beneath was 1.9 by 1.5 by 0.7 meters (6.2 by 4.9 by 2.3 feet) and composed of hard, quartzitic sandstone weighing about 2
tons.
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Photographs of the cow stone immediately after it was excavated show that one part of the stone is finely shaped and smooth and another portion is either unfinished or was roughly flaked. According to Wendorf and Krolik, it “had a flat, possibly naturally smoothed, almost polished top. One side was convex and pecked smooth. At one end . . . there was a fan-like projection that might represent a head.”
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From photographs and video frames of the cow stone taken after its discovery and from taking measurements of the arching of its extended outer surface, we could see that it may have been shaped like a spherical section. As we have seen, the CPE concluded that this sculpture vaguely resembled a cow.
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As an integral part of an intensely astronomical construction linked to stellar alignments, this cow sculpture may be both bovine and supernal, both cow and star—that is, it may be symbolic astrologically. Because it was placed under CSA sometime around the start of the astrological Age of Taurus (the Bull constellation), usually assumed to be ca. 4500 BCE, then a symbolic connection to mark this age is a viable proposition.
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Of course, it is a widely held notion that the ancient Greeks invented the zodiac signs based on their knowledge of Babylonian-Chaldean star lore from the first millennium BCE. Yet there is significant dissent among historians as to the age of the zodiacal signs, with some proposing that they may be much older than we have generally
presumed.
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We can also note that several megalithic alignments emanating from CSA mark both the rising of Sirius and the Big Dipper—and the ancient Egyptians often identified the former with a cow and the latter with a bull's thigh. Indeed the possibility of a cultural link between the cow stone at Nabta Playa and the ancient Egyptians was suggested by Wendorf when he proposed that this strange, sculpted megalith “may have been the origin of the ancient Egyptians' fascination with working large
stones.”
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Many questions regarding this cow stone remain unanswered. How was the top surface so finely polished? How were the fine, sharp, and precise curvilinear edges made? What tools could have been used by ancient people who lived before the age of metal? Unfortunately these questions may never be answered, for the cow stone was removed from Nabta Playa by the Egyptian antiquities authorities and today lies broken in the backyard storage area of the Nubian Museum in Aswan (see appendix 3). We can also recall that the cow stone itself was placed on top of another sculpture that was cut into the living bedrock of the site. This bedrock sculpture has the shape of a large, smooth disk that is about 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) across, with some of its parts and its edges carved by human hands. According to Wendorf and Krolik,

The north and west sides had been carefully shaped by removing one or two large sections that left a curved outline, following an arched bedding plane in the bedrock. The large sections removed during the shaping of the tablerock were most probably reused as the two large slabs placed in the center of the surface architecture. The top of the tablerock was flat and smoothed. It is possible this was natural smoothing . . . but this seems unlikely since none of the other table-rocks visible at the sourthern end of the Nabta Basin display similar smoothed surfaces. . . . Regardless of how the top was smoothed, the sides were clearly pecked and had a slightly re-curved
outline.
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Surrounding this bedrock sculpture is a great mystery that has not been adequately investigated. How and why was it sculpted—and, more intriguingly, when was it fashioned? Wendorf initially proposed that it was created during the Late Neolithic—that is, around 5100 BCE, after the playa sediments were
formed.
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Yet if so, we may wonder how the ancient people of Nabta Playa could have known where this outcrop in the bedrock was located if they could not see it, for it was totally covered by a thick layer of sediment. Wendorf and Krolik had no explanation. According to them, however, the ancient people somehow knew where this outcrop was and thus dug through the sediment to expose it. They then sculpted it, covered it with sediment, placed the cow stone above it, covered the cow stone with more sediment, and finally arranged the megalithic architecture on the surface.

This seems quite implausible, and perhaps there is a simpler explanation: the bedrock sculpture long predates the Late Neolithic given by
Wendorf.
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How old is the bedrock sculpture, who built it, and why was it built? What could have been its true meaning? Clearly it was important enough to be made the centerpiece of the Nabta Playa ceremonial complex when the Late Neolithic people placed the cow stone over it thousands of years later. Unfortunately we could not investigate this matter further, for the sediment has been dumped back into the hole, and, as we have learned, some of the surface megaliths have been removed and taken to the Nubian Museum in Aswan while others have been moved on site, scattered randomly (see appendix 3). Whatever might be the solution to the unsolved mystery that lies behind the multilayered and pangeneration construction of the CSA, it is sure to fit into a very elegant astronomical scheme.
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We must also remember that Complex Structure A, although the largest at Nabta Playa, is but one of thirty complex structures in the southwest part of the site. Only two of these structures, CSA and another, CSB, were fully excavated. The bedrock under CSB was also sculpted, but into a different shape described as an inclined oval disc; there was no embedded sculpture above it. A third complex structure was also partially excavated, and two more complex structures had holes drilled into their sediment, confirming the presence of bedrock outcrops. This led Wendorf and his team to conclude that all the complex structures seen on top of the sediments probably contain a sculpted bedrock outcrop covered by 3 or 4 meters (10 or 13 feet) of sediment.

What could have driven the ancient people of Nabta Playa to sculpt all these outcrops of bedrock? Perhaps more intriguingly, when these outcrops were completely covered by sediment carried and compacted by wind and rainfall thousands of years later, how could they have been rediscovered by the people who built the megalith arrangements on the surface? Or, were they not rediscovered by the Late Neolithic people? Perhaps, instead, they were maintained over thousands of years by an even more ancient culture about which we know almost nothing.

Let us not forget, as well, the most provocative question that surrounds these mysterious complex structures. When the CPE, led by Wendorf, started excavations at Nabta Playa in the 1970s, they very much hoped that the many complex structures and tumuli were tombs that contained human remains of high-ranking individuals or even kings. Instead excavators found the strangely sculpted outcrops of rock and the skeletons of cows in the tumuli. If we bear in mind that the complex structures and the tumuli are an integral part of a vast ceremonial complex that is intensely astronomical and stellar, we may wonder if the empty tombs and cow-bone burials are part of some mysterious star ritual related to some ancestral cult of rebirth. This provocative thought occurs because, as we will see in chapter 6, the same empty tombs have baffled Egyptologists when the Old Kingdom pyramids were explored and found to contain no human remains. Even more intriguingly, in some of the great pyramids of Giza only the bones of cows were found. Further, like the ceremonial complex of Nabta Playa, these pyramid complexes were intensely stellar in their orientation and symbolism. In chapter 6 we will return to this strange link between the empty tombs of Nabta Playa and those empty pyramids of ancient Egypt. Meanwhile, let us examine another mysterious feature at Nabta Playa: the largest megalith, which Wendorf called Megalith X-1.

Megalith X-1 consisted of a pair of giant stones set on an oval-shaped mound of cretaceous
bedrock.
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The larger of the two stones measured 4 by 3.1 by 0.7 meters (13 by 10 by 2.3 feet) and was estimated to weigh some 20 tons. The oval-shaped mound on which the two stones stood seems to have been shaped by human
hands.
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When we looked at Megalith X-1 on the Quickbird satellite image it was immediately apparent to us that it was in the middle of a large spiral arm feature, which was about 50 meters (164 feet) across.
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Upon examining this area during our 2003 expedition to Nabta Playa, we were able to discern clearly this strange, spiral-shaped mound that we had seen on the satellite image. We also found in its middle the fragmented remains of the two giant stones of Megalith X-1. How were these massive stones moved? Why were they placed in the middle of the spiral mound? Was the mound man-made—and if so, by whom and when? We also considered the current condition of all the megaliths at Nabta Playa. Most of them were either toppled or broken or deliberately cut into parts. How did they get to this pitiful state? Closer examination showed that some of the megaliths had been cleanly cut, as if intentionally—but why? Was it, instead of the work of vandals, due to some ancient ritual or symbolic act, when the function of the megaliths became
obsolete?
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Many of the remaining mysteries of the site involve understanding the bedrock sculptures, which are more ancient than the playa surface megaliths and are only slightly excavated. How extensive are the bedrock sculptures at Nabta Playa? Could there be a whole precursor ceremonial complex that is yet to be discovered? To begin to address these questions, it may be best to use ground-penetrating imaging methods that can see through the playa sediments to the bedrock beneath. Fortunately, launched are new synthetic aperture radar remote-sensing satellites, and there are better ones in progress. With them we have been able to start searching the subsurface at Nabta, and as a result we have hints of intriguing new
results.
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Though many mysteries at Nabta Playa still remain, those former mysteries that have come to be understood are more than enough to provide us with a vision of a social and cultural complexity that was not expected for such remotely prehistoric people. The level of skill, insight, and social organization, as well as the sophisticated astronomical observations that are incorporated into their megalithic ceremonial complex, should leave us with little doubt that we have in these mysterious ancient people the true precursors of the Egyptian civilization. We will look at this more closely in chapter 6. Meanwhile, we are now going to take a closer look at other prehistoric sites in the Egyptian Sahara that strongly indicate that such activity was not confined solely to Nabta Playa. Instead, it also seemed to extend hundreds of kilometers into the deep desert toward the north and west.