Black Genesis (14 page)

Although we were pleased to see that in 2007 Wendorf and Malville (with Schild and Brenmer of the CPE) formally acknowledged their errors and accepted our corrected calculations for the azimuths of the six lines of megaliths, they nonetheless rejected our earlier date of circa 6200 BCE, because, they point out, some of the megaliths in the alignments were on top of playa sediment that was dated to approximately 5100 BCE, and also 6200 BCE is “about 1500 years earlier than our best estimates for the Terminal Neolithic.”
^*15

Even though we do accept that some of the megaliths were placed after the sedimentation of the playa's basin, we also note that in their 2007 article Wendorf, Malville, and their coauthors suggested (as we also did earlier) that the original part of Complex Structure A, which is the center of all the megalith alignments and is part of the bedrock beneath the playa sediments, was “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.”
¹¹
This indicates that there was much activity at Nabta Playa during earlier epochs, which is in any case confirmed by many radiocarbon dates, with most clustered around 6000
BCE.
¹²
On this basis, and also on the dating of circa 6200 BCE obtained from the corrected calculations, we reject the notion that none of the megaliths at Nabta Playa could have predated terminal Neolithic time, because most of the field evidence shows that parts of the ceremonial complex were indeed created before the terminal Neolithic.

SIRIUS, THE CIRCUMPOLAR STARS, AND ORION

We now felt that we were in a good position to integrate our and the CPE's field findings and derive from them the most robust interpretation that fits the context of Nabta Playa. The findings that emerge from this integrated analysis are:

1. There are at least nine megaliths that form the three lines—A1, A2, and A3—that point north. These track the star Dubhe in the Big Dipper over a considerable period of time.
   
2. There are at least six megaliths that form lines B1 and B2 pointing southeast. These track the bright star Sirius at two epochs.
   
3. Sirius also coordinated simultaneously with the star Dubhe in the Big Dipper so that their alignments formed an approximate 90-degree angle. (This curious connection also had been noted by Wendorf and Malville; they commented that the megalith builders of Nabta Playa had “a fascination with right
   angles.”)
   ¹³
   

This possible simultaneous observation of Sirius in the east and the star Dubhe in the north was of particular interest, because we know from our studies of ancient Egypt that the very same simultaneous observation of Sirius and Dubhe was performed in the alignment rituals of pyramids and temples since the beginning of the pharaonic civilization. This encouraged us to test for the simultaneous observation of Sirius and Dubhe at Nabta Playa, where we found a remarkably accurate and consistent repetition of this pattern of observation. Indeed, an observer at Nabta Playa in about 4500 BCE would have noted immediately that the stars Dubhe and Sirius could be aligned simultaneously with megalith lines A1 and B1, for precisely when Sirius appeared to rise on the eastern horizon and was thus aligned with megalith line B1, the star Dubhe could be seen in the northern sky, directly above megalith line A1 (at an altitude of 33 degrees).

Yet could this be a coincidence? We needed to find further evidence that this was the deliberate intention of the ancient astronomer-priests in order to eliminate the possibility that simple haphazard was at play in the observations. We found that the same simultaneous observation of Sirius and Dubhe with the same right-angle separation took place with two other megalith lines—A3 and B2. This not only confirmed the deliberate intent of the ancient astronomer-priests to delineate this particular simultaneous observation but also proved that they tracked the stars across several generations, from at least 4500 BCE to 3500 BCE. Further, it meant that they were aware of precession and even tracked its effect more than three millennia before the Greeks were supposed to have discovered it. Clearly, the people of Nabta Playa were anything but primitive.

The simultaneous alignments of Sirius and Dubhe at Nabta Playa were amazingly precise for the context and conditions of that distant epoch.
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Using our measures of the average azimuths of the megaliths lines, we found that today the angle made between lines B1 and A1 is 91.11 degrees, and the angle between lines B2 and A3 is 91.65 degrees. Precessing the sky back to 4500 BCE, we calculated that the azimuth difference between Sirius and Dubhe when the former was on the horizon was 91.2 degrees. Moving forward in time to about 3500 BCE, the azimuth difference became 91.5 degrees; so the stars matched the stones uncannily well at both dates, which were a thousand years apart. In addition, Dubhe, with a declination of 66.9 degrees in approximately 3500 BCE, had just become an eternal circumpolar star as viewed from Nabta Playa—which means that on its daily journey around the celestial pole, at its lowest point in the sky, Dubhe due north was just skimming the horizon before rising back into the sky to travel around the celestial pole again. This may be significant with regard to why the Neolithic builders monumentalized specifically this date in the alignment.

So far we have explained four alignments of the six megalith lines—A1, A3, B1, and B2—and have found that they work in pairs so that A1 and B1 and A3 and B2 define simultaneous right-angle observations of Sirius and Dubhe in 4500 BCE and 3500 BCE, respectively. Still left to review, however, are lines C1 and A2. In their original reports Malville and Wendorf claimed that line C1 had targeted Sirius in 4820 BCE and that line A2 had targeted Dubhe in 4423 BCE. Yet according to our corrected azimuths for these lines, we determined the date for Sirius to be 6100 BCE, which matched, at a simultaneous right angle at that date, not Dubhe but another bright star in the Big Dipper called Alkaid, located directly over line A2 at an altitude of 22 degrees, when Sirius would have appeared precisely on the horizon and in alignment to line C1. In other words the megalith lines C1 and A2 worked in exactly the same way as the pairs B1 and A1 and B2 and A3 but at the much earlier date of 6100 BCE. We nonetheless asked ourselves why Sirius was observed simultaneously with Alkaid in 6100 BCE, but much later, in 4500 BCE and 3500 BCE, Alkaid was replaced with Dubhe. We will see in chapter 6 that part of the answer, as amazing as it might seem, can be found at the step pyramid complex of Djoser at Saqqara, near modern Cairo and some 1,000 kilometers (about 621 miles) away from Nabta Playa.

King djoser and Alkaid

At the step pyramid complex is the so-called serdab monument in which is found a statue of King Djoser gazing through peepholes toward the star Alkaid in the north at the precise moment when the star Sirius rose in the east. Perhaps the correspondence at Nabta Playa may explain why King Djoser chose to monumentalize himself peering at Alkaid (with Sirius rising) rather than peering at Dubhe. At Djoser's complex in Saqqara (ca. 2650 BCE ), Dubhe was at altitude 32.5 degrees and azimuth 22.5 degrees and at near a right angle from the rising Sirius, whereas Alkaid was 112 degrees from Sirius, too far off to be considered a representation of a right angle. Both Alkaid and Dubhe are of the Bull's Thigh constellation; Alkaid is at the hoof end and Dubhe is at the top of the thigh. One possible factor for why King Djoser chose Alkaid instead of Dubhe is that it was closer to the meridian, the most natural place in the sky to view and measure star transits. Now we know another reason. Perhaps King Djoser was monumentalizing the time when his distant ancestors at Nabta Playa around 6100 BCE initiated the ritual of using the Bull's Thigh constellation to track the rising of Sirius with Alkaid. Indeed, the step pyramid complex at Saqqara, built by Egyptian third-dynasty King Djoser and designed by the genius astronomer-priest Imhotep, is the first major gigantic monumental architecture project of the Old Kingdom and a natural place to expect to find that these Egyptians would have monumentalized the origin of the astro rituals that they had inherited from their distant ancestors.

Figure 4.8. Left, ancient Egyptian depiction of the Big Dipper as the Bull's Thigh; middle, photo of constellation; right, constellation as sculpted on the Denderah zodiac ceiling

For now we could see that part of the answer for the 6100 BCE choice of the star Alkaid to mark the rising of Sirius can be found by considering the long-term astronomical changes in the sky. The precession cycle causes the equinox points (March 21 and September 22) to move along the zodiac at the rate of about 1 degree every seventy-two years and to occupy each zodiacal house or sign for about 2,166 years.
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This cycle also causes the north celestial pole to perform a large circle through a group of constellations in the northern sky. Today the star Polaris in the constellation of Ursa Minor is our Pole Star around which the starry sky rotates every twenty-four hours. In 2500 BCE the Pole Star was Thuban in the constellation Draco. Going back further in time, around 12,000 BCE the Pole Star was the brilliant Vega in the constellation Lyra. As the millennia passed, the celestial pole migrated away from Vega in a circle centered on the neck of Draco, through the shoulders of the constellation Hercules about 9000 BCE. By 6100 BCE there was no Pole Star, but the star Alkaid was some 17 degrees from the celestial pole and was thus a circumpolar star.
^†18

Dubhe, on the other hand, which was 38 degrees from the celestial pole in 6100 BCE, was not circumpolar, because every day it traveled far beneath the horizon, into the underworld. It seems logical to conclude that for this very reason the astronomer-priests at Nabta Playa in 6100 BCE used Alkaid to mark the rising of Sirius but later, around 4500 BCE, switched to the star Dubhe when it grew nearer the celestial pole.
^‡19

The C1 megalith line consists of at least six megaliths in a set that is plus-or-minus 1 degree around azimuth 130 degrees. Given that the Nabta Playa ceremonial complex was used and developed over many centuries, perhaps even thousands of years, it is possible that the megaliths may have incorporated more than one meaning by being directed not only to Sirius but also to other stars such as those of Orion's belt. This possibility was in fact suggested by Malville, Wendorf, and their coauthors in their 2001 report and was discussed in our previous
publication
¹⁴
in which we showed that the C1 line may have targeted Orion's belt near the epoch of 6100 BCE. Interestingly, at that same date the C1 line also marked a very special and unique occurrence for Orion's belt in the precession cycle: its heliacal rising at the spring equinox. This meant that Orion's belt rose together with the sun on the first day of spring (March 21). This is extremely significant, because it is perfectly consistent with the hypothesis that the Calendar Circle used Orion's belt as a sort of teaching device for the short- and long-term cycles of this special group of stars.

A Star's Vernal Equinox Heliacal rising

The vernal equinox heliacal rising of a star is also essentially the halfway mark between the star's northern culmination when it is seen farthest north on Earth and the star's southern culmination about thirteen thousand years later, when it is seen farthest south on Earth. As the people of Nabta Playa used and constructed the playa basin to teach about, study, and employ in ritual ceremony the starry sky and heavens, there were certainly smaller, temporary stone constructions there all the time. When the primary asterism they used to conceptualize how the sky moves, Orion's belt, passed that special time in its cycle—vernal equinox heliacal rising—the time was best to create monumental megalithic alignments that would last through the ages. At the time of the height of the Calendar Circle at Nabta Playa, Orion's belt and Sirius were separated in declination, and so rising azimuth, by an angle of less than 2 degrees. Consequently, they passed horizon alignments separated by only a couple of hundred years.