Anna SofaerBesprekingen
Auteur van Chaco Astronomy: An Ancient American Cosmology
Besprekingen
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This book is a collection of papers discussing the “sun dagger” and other astronomical phenomena related to Chacoan culture. Sofaer is the principal author on all the papers, which originally appeared in a variety of scientific and archaeological journals. Sofaer and her coauthors claim to have found astronomical alignments at various Chacoan sites related to the solstice sunrises and sunsets and lunar major and minor stillstands (moonrise or moonset at the furthest north or south positions). Other than the “sun dagger” petroglyph and a few related petroglyphs, the alignments are defined by walls in various Chacoan sites, or diagonals from one corner of the site to the opposite.
There’s some controversy about all this -little is noted in the papers. The slabs defining the “sun dagger” have shifted since their discovery, so the phenomenon is no longer as dramatic. Tourism is blamed, but I wonder how the slabs maintained their positioning over the millennia if tourists shifted things that much in a few years. I also wonder about the various proposed alignments; although the Chacoans were skillful builders their level of technology dictated that walls aren’t that straight and corners aren’t that sharp; a little wishful thinking on the surveys could generate alignments that weren’t really intended.
Still, though, it’s pretty clear that Mesoamerican cultures were fairly adept at astronomy, and that they had contacts with the Chacoans, so I suppose it’s possible. Certainly worth more research.