Black Genesis (13 page)

SPACE AGE MEETS STONE AGE

In chapter 3 we saw how the ceremonial complex at Nabta Playa consists essentially of two major features: large stones, many of which are shaped and placed on the sediments of the ancient dry lake; and large, sculpted rocks and sculpted lumps of bedrock beneath the sediments. The 1998
Nature
letter and other early CPE reports on Nabta Playa dealt only with the astronomy of the Calendar Circle; they did not attempt to interpret the astronomy of the megalithic alignments, although they did report some of these megaliths' various orientations. Finally, however, in 2001 the CPE published their report and in it gave their tentative interpretation of the megalithic alignments and the GPS coordinates of each megalith. They determined that the twenty-two megaliths formed six alignments that radiated out from Complex Structure A, and they proposed that these alignments were intended to designate the rising locations of two important stars, Dubhe and Sirius, and also the stellar asterism of Orion's belt. Three alignments (A1, A2, A3) pointing north aligned to Dubhe at three different dates in the fifth millennium BCE; a fourth alignment (C1) pointed, also in the fifth millennium BCE, toward Sirius; and two alignments (B1 and B2) pointed toward Orion's belt at two different dates in the fourth and fifth millennium BCE.

Yet a serious problem with their data invalidated the dates they gave for these alignments. It is an understandable fact that most people do not question or verify the data and conclusions given in a technical or scientific publication by university professors of the caliber of Fred Wendorf, Kim Malville, and Romuald Schild of the CPE. Having already developed our own interpretation for the Calendar Circle before the CPE's 2001 site report was published, we were keenly interested in their alignment data for the megaliths. In order to verify the link among the alignments of the six rows of megaliths and the rising point of stars on the horizon, it was necessary to convert into azimuths the GPS coordinates of the megaliths given in the 2001 report and then to match them to the calculated azimuths of the proposed stars. Yet when we tried to convert these GPS readings into azimuths, we found that they did not match the published azimuths in the 2001 report! This meant that the dates for the stars' rising were also off. Only the azimuth given for Orion's belt was more or less the same as ours—but those given for Sirius and Dubhe differed radically from our calculations, which were in fact based on the GPS readings published in the 2001 report. Something clearly was not right. To make matters worse, the azimuths for the six megalithic alignments in the 2001 report were significantly different from those previously given in the 1998
Nature
letter. Further, some of the CPE's calculations of ancient star locations differed from our calculations, even before they were matched to rising azimuths.

All this was very confusing, for it was impossible to tell from these reports whether the raw GPS readings taken on location were in error or that the CPE calculations to convert these into azimuths was in error. We determined that it was best to ask the CPE about this. The lead author replied that we should contact another author who was responsible for the data in the relevant 2001 report. While we waited for the response, as luck would have it, the Space Age provided us with another and better way to clear up this confusion: DigitalGlobe, a high-tech corporation, was in the process of developing the first high-resolution satellite-imaging system for commercial use. In November 2000 they twice attempted to launch their Quickbird 1 satellites from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia, but both rockets failed and the satellites were destroyed. On October 18, 2001, however, the Quickbird 2 satellite was successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and after testing and calibration, DigitalGlobe began making commercially available 60-centimeter, high-resolution imagery from space. With this kind of resolution, we estimated that we could probably identify the Nabta Playa megaliths from space and obtain for ourselves the coordinates for our calculations. We thus sent in an order to Quickbird to task the satellite for us and obtain an image of Nabta Playa with their high-resolution data. As it turned out, we were likely the first to use Quickbird for archaeoastronomy. On December 31, 2002, Quickbird flew directly over Nabta Playa on a cloudless day and snapped the image with the coordinates we had supplied. After receiving and preparing the Quickbird data for analysis, we were thrilled to find that the Nabta Playa megaliths could be seen in the satellite image. Using the descriptions of individual megaliths given in the 2001 CPE report alongside some ground-based photographs published by Fred Wendorf, we were able to identify in the satellite image all the megaliths as well as Complex Structures A and B (and also other intriguing features, which we will discuss later). After georectifying the image and then correlating it to latitude and longitude, we were able to measure latitude and longitude coordinates for each of the megaliths. These coordinates were similar to those published by Wendorf and Malville in the 2001 report. This suggested, of course, that it was not the GPS readings obtained by them that were incorrect but rather that the CPE had made errors in their calculations. Because there was still a shift in our satellite-determined measurements, in order to be absolutely sure of our results we decided to go to Nabta Playa and take our own GPS measurements. The stakes were too high to rely only on the data we had thus far compiled, and we felt that a journey to Nabta Playa was well worth the cost and effort.

Figure 4.5. Zooming into the Nabta Playa satellite image (Digital Globe, Quickbird). Complex Structure A is labeled CSA. Also labeled are megalith lines B1 and B2, megalith X-1, and Complex Structure B (CSB). Note that that circular rings near CSA and CSB are the detritus left after excavation of these structures, not their original formation. The bright features in the center of the playa (seen in the upper two images) are actively moving sand dunes.

In October 2003 we used the service of a British safari tour company to secure the necessary permits from the Egyptian government to visit Nabta Playa, and we arranged for a very small safari tour to make a deviation from their route and deliver us to the site. Egyptian regulations also required that we be accompanied by an Egyptian military officer as well as an inspector from the Egyptian antiquities department, a Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Egyptologist. After a long trek by jeep from Cairo via the desert oases route, we arrived in the evening near Nabta Playa and set up camp 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) away in order not to cause any environmental disturbance of the important archaeological site. Before leaving from Cairo, we had coded into our handheld GPS receiver the coordinates of the megaliths obtained from the Quickbird satellite data. Now, some two hours before dawn, we were ready to walk from camp to the Nabta Playa ceremonial complex. As we prepared to set out alone, however, the SCA Egyptologist who had come along asked if he could accompany us, perhaps out of curiosity but also to educate himself, because we were amazed to find that he knew nothing about Nabta Playa.

Figure 4.6. The excavation debris from CSA, in satellite image, with one of the megaliths as seen on the ground in April 2008

Wondering what the ancient people who had once lived there would have thought of us, on a chilly dawn carrying a handheld GPS, we set out on foot from our campsite to the world's oldest astronomical site. It seemed to us that the ancients would have been totally at ease moving around in the dark, using the stars for navigation, while we, with all our technological know-how, moved clumsily in the dark, clinging to our GPS tracking device in order not to get lost in this no-man's-land of empty desert. Five kilometers (about 3 miles) can seem a very long way to those trekking on foot and in the dark in one of the most vast and hostile environments on Earth. After a while, when we lost complete sight of our camp, and as we surveyed the horizon as a backup to our GPS navigation, the Egyptian inspector began to get somewhat nervous. He wrongly interpreted that we were totally lost, but we quickly reassured him that, with our GPS navigation, we knew exactly where we were. As we continued to trek in the dark, however, our reassurances failed to calm the inspector, and he began insisting that we should walk in a different direction. A serious dispute ensued. We stopped listening to the inspector's lament and decided to focus on our GPS indicator. We told him that he could go in a different direction if he wanted to or follow us with our GPS. After some deliberation, he decided to follow us, but with the caveat that his protest had been duly registered.

Figure 4.7. Satellite image of the area of Nabta Playa containing the megalith alignments. Left, satellite image with black gridlines for measuring; right, the megalith alignments and the Calendar Circle appear labeled, but the circle stones are too small to be seen in the satellite image.

Finally, to our relief, the light from the growing dawn was strong enough for us to spot in the distance the first megaliths of Complex Structure A. The inspector beamed at us, and with a broad gesture of his hand to express his excitement and approval, he seemed to tell us that all the previous animosity toward us was quickly forgotten. We had at long last arrived at Nabta Playa, but our work was only just beginning. We estimated it would take all morning and several more kilometers of fast walking in this vast complex to get all the GPS readings and photographs needed for our purpose. Slowly and diligently, we recorded the GPS of all the megaliths, and we also had enough time before noon to investigate a mysterious feature beneath the largest megalith at Nabta Playa—labeled X-1—that had shown up on the Quickbird satellite image. The day was now becoming seriously hot, but we pressed on to visit the Calendar Circle and took some photographs for our own use. When we were satisfied that we had all the information and photographs we wanted, we rendezvoused with the jeeps, and after a quick sandwich break and refreshments, we headed south to connect with the new tarmac road that would take us to the city of Aswan on the Nile.

Back home in California, we carefully analyzed our GPS field measurements and compared the results to those obtained from the Quickbird image and found them to be in agreement (although we had to make a small correction for the very slight error in the satellite's pointing vector from space). We now had multiple corroborating coordinate readings for all the megaliths, and, armed with this data, we were able to determine their exact alignments, satisfied that at last we could do this with certainty. We found that the 2001 CPE report included raw GPS coordinates for the megaliths that were fairly accurate, but azimuth calculations derived from them were incorrect. Correcting this error yielded a completely new set of dates for the stellar alignments of the six rows of megaliths. Most significant was the alignment to the rising of Sirius. Malville and Wendorf had proposed that one of the megalith lines, C1, was directed toward the rising of Sirius in about 4820 BCE, but our calculations showed a much earlier date of around 6090 BCE. At this point we sought the support from a close colleague, Paul Rosen, from our previous interplanetary robotic space mission work, who was now a leader in spacecraft radar remote sensing technology. Together in June 2005 we published the new results for the Nabta Playa megalith alignments in a peer-reviewed academic
journal.
¹⁰
Because our results showed that the megalith alignments given by Malville and Wendorf were substantially in error, we proposed a new set of dates for around 6200 BCE for the stellar targets that fit the corrected data.
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