THE WORLD'S OLDEST LUNAR MAP?

Image from usgs.gov.

From before the origin of the Hominin lineage the Earth’s sun was the arbiter of the passage of time and the pace of life for each day. “The sun’s rhythm may have set the pace of each day, but when early humans needed a way to keep time beyond a single day and night, they looked to a second light in the sky. The moon was one of humankind’s first timepieces long before the first written language, before the earliest organized cities and well before structured religions. The moon’s face changes nightly and with the regularity of the seasons, making it a reliable marker of time.” (Boyle 2019) The sun is pretty much invariable in the sky, it looks much the same today as it did yesterday, or last week. The moon, on the other hand, changes from day to day in a repeating cycle, a perfect conception for the passage of time.

“It’s an obvious timepiece,” Anthony Aveni says of the moon. Aveni is a professor emeritus of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., and a founder of the field of archaeoastronomy. “There is good evidence that [lunar timekeeping] was around as early as 25,000, 30,000, 35,000 years before the present.” (Boyle 2019) By projection then, if they practiced lunar timekeeping did they represent that concept in pictographs or petroglyphs?

Cairns "S" and "T" at Loughcrew ("T" is in the background). Online image, public domain.

In 1980, Brennan and Roberts experienced a rising sun alignment at a County Meath, Ireland, mound called Cairn T. On March 17, 1980, Martin Brennan and Jack Roberts saw a beam of light from the rising sun illuminate a carved stone at the back end of the rock-lined passage in the great mound called Cairn T at Loughcrew, County Meath. Two weeks later, on the evening of the first of April, Brennan and his colleagues watched the rising moon from the same spot. As the moon appeared over the horizon a shaft of light was projected along the passage and onto the same carved stone.” (Stooke 1994)

Aerial view of Knowth, County Meath, Ireland. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Having experienced these alignments at Cairn T, Brennan looked to the great passage mound of Knowth to see if this phenomenon was general. “The great passage mound of Knowth, also in Meath, contains two rock-lined assages, one facing east, the other west. Brennan observed the setting sun shine into the western passage on September 13, 1980. Attempting to observe sunrise on the following day, he found that the view of the rising sun from the eastern passage would be blocked by trees and the current level of the ground. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the eastern passage was also originally intended to be penetrated by light from the rising sun and moon. Although solar alignments have been described at many neolithic sites in Western Europe, less attention has been paid to lunar alignments, despite the fact that at certain times the moon can rise or set at any location on the horizon which may be occupied by the sun.” (Stooke 1994)

“Artistically, Knowth contains a vast amount of megalithic artwork, ranging from the "typical" ancient Celtic symbols of spirals and lozenges (diamond or rhombus shapes), both usually believed to represent the cycle of the sun or seasons. Once more, due to these pre-Christian geometric patterns—ones that have been frequently uncovered in pagan Celtic spaces—a correlation between the movement of the sun and the use of the mound seems likely. The ogham writing of the early Irish people also abounds on the megaliths, though these writings are from about two thousand years after the geometric shapes were likely carved. Not only do these inscriptions reveal the site was returned to and once again valued, but it was between the period of spirals and lozenges and the ogham writings (the Neolithic period and early Iron Age, respectively) that Knowth went through its most significant transformation.” (Winters 2022) A large number of the stones at Knowth have carvings including the kerbstones and large stones in the passage and interior chamber.

In 1994 Stooke did a study of the astronomical implications of Knowth and found a lunar connection. “Brennan's experience, described in his 1983 book ‘The Stars and the Stones,’ suggested that these Irish neolithic sites might have had some connection with the moon as well as the sun. I have identified another connection, previously overlooked by Brennan and others working at Knowth. If moonlight were to shine on the back stone of the eastern passage at Knowth, it would illuminate a map of the moon itself, the world's oldest known depiction of the lunar maria.” (Stooke 1994) So, Brennan posited  astronomical references in the Knowth carvings. Indeed, in his study of a number of Neolithic Passage Tombs at locations in Ireland Brennan (1983) basically identified every arc and curved line as a lunar symbol. In 1994 Stooke added the concept that the stone at the end of the passage portrayed lunar maps. This concept was never brought up by Brennan.

Orthostat 47 with its markings highlighted. Image courtesy of carrowkeel.com.

Closeup of orthostat 47 with its markings highlighted. Image courtesy of bbc.co.uk.

“The carved stone which forms the end wall of the eastern passage was called Orthostat 47 by George Eogan, who excavated Knowth in the 1960s. The design has three sections, superficially similar but oriented differently. The right-hand section appears to be nothing less than a map of the lunar maria, as becomes clear when it is compared with a naked-eye map of the moon. At least a dozen points of correspondence are immediately obvious.”  (Stooke 1994) Now I would expect a map of the lunar maria to be blobs spaced inside a circle and roughly corresponding with their placement on the moon itself, not arcs. Stooke is suggesting that the original carver of the stone portrayed not the static lunar maria, but the arcs that they describe over the hours as the moon arcs across the sky. Would this artist have portrayed, not a bird but the arc of his path across the sky, or not a fish but the line of its path through the water. To me, this concept just doesn’t fit right.

Stooke's diagram illustrating his idea that the carvings represent a lunar map. Illustration from Stooke, 1994.

Stooke (1994) explained that in this way. “The remaining two sections of the carving are simpler but crudely similar to the first, sharing the overall arc shape of the maria surrounding the lunar central highlands as well as an isolated spot representing Mare Crisium. Why were they carved in different orientations? I believe they depict the apparent rotation of the maria on the disk of the full moon as it crosses the sky in the course of a night. Watch the full moon one night. The arc of maria opens to the right (like a letter C) as the moon rises, opens downwards (to a northern hemisphere observer) as the moon crosses the meridian, and opens to the left at moonset. The disk appears to rotate like a wheel, an illusion caused by our motion on a rotating Earth. We compare the moon with our apparently fixed horizon, but the plane of the horizon actually rotates with the Earth to trace out a cone in space.” (Stooke 1994)  So the question is, why would the carver wish to portray the arcs of the movement of the maria instead of just showing the maria themselves? And where are the circles representing the outline of the moon itself? Stooke argues that the outlines were done in paint or chalk although no traces of such remain. While his thesis is possibly true I am not convinced that it is accurate. As I said, it seems more likely to me that the Neolithic or Iron Age carvers would have portrayed the moon as a circle with blobs for the maria in their proper places when not portraying the moon as a crescent. I fear I have to be skeptical of this claim, but this still represents an example of the fascination rock art provides – the room for many theories.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Boyle, Rebecca, 2019, Ancient Humans Used the Moon as a Calendar in the Sky, 9 July 2019, https://www.sciencenews.org. Accessed online 13 November 2022.

Brennan, Martin, 1983, The Stars and the Stones, Ancient Art and Astronomy in Ireland, Thames and Hudson, Inc., New York.

Stooke, Philip J., Dr., 1994, Neolithic Lunar Maps at Knowth, https://knowth.com/lunar-maps.htm. Accessed online 13 November 2022.

Winters, Riley, 2017, Mystifying Megaliths: Knowth, Keeper of Ancient Tombs, 30 September 2017, https://ancient-origins.net. Accessed online 13 November 2022.