As the sun set on the shortest day of the year, Munson, a former Mesa Verde park ranger and researcher, watched as the sun appeared to plunge into Sun Temple, an enigmatic structure perched on a promontory atop Chapin Mesa across the canyon from his vantage point.1
Munson and his colleagues may have been looking at one of the most advanced astronomical observatories in the ancient world, according to recent studies by data scientist Sherry Towers.
- 1. “It was amazing to think that maybe I was the first western person to see this event in nearly 800 years and recognize it for what it was,” Munson said.
Towers’ research uses computer modeling to theorize that Sun Temple is shot through with sight lines pointing not just to the rise and set of the sun at crucial dates, such as equinoxes and solstices, but to lunar cycles and an array of major stars that figure into Pueblo cosmology that may have its origins among the Ancestral Puebloans.
Towers has also further developed theories that Sun Temple’s construction incorporates advanced geometry, including a standard unit of measurement, and walls built to the proportions of the golden rectangle and Pythagorean 3:4:5 triangles.1
....
Tuwaletstiwa, as a geodetic surveyor, helped measure the orientation of ancient buildings in Chaco Canyon, a major Ancestral Puebloan cultural center in northwestern New Mexico. His measurements helped form the underpinning of research hypothesizing that Chacoan buildings were also built around numerous astronomical alignments.
He hasn’t made up his mind on Towers’ theories, saying the Sun-Watcher system was so effective without advanced architecture that he believes sites like Sun Temple — or the Sun Spiral, an apparent astronomical observatory on Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon — may have been places for communities to collectively celebrate solar and lunar cycles rather than to strictly measure points on the calendar, such as the winter solstice on Dec. 21 this year.
The cyclical nature of time speaks to a mindset Tuwaletstiwa wishes modern researchers could better grasp: that to Pueblo and Hopi people, places like Mesa Verde are not abandoned. 2
....
- 1. “It’s sheer genius,” Towers said of Sun Temple’s construction. “The architect did this with no known writing or numerical system, no computers. They laid it out with yucca cords and sticks. They were the Michaelangelo of their time.”
- 2. “We don’t like that word, abandoned,” he said. “We don’t think in terms of the time between events. We have migrated many times. We didn’t vanish. We were many places before Mesa Verde, and many places after. I visited the veterans’ cemeteries in Normandy, and I treated them with respect and gratitude. In Chaco and Mesa Verde, those are my ancestral people. I need to treat them with respect as well. To us, these are living, breathing places.”
