Time Is of the Essence to Scientists in Ohio Studying Ancient Astronomical Markers

An ancient tribal priest peered down from a high bluff along a stream that centuries later is called the Little Miami River.

As the summer sun rises, he watches for a shadow to fall across the length of a carefully positioned stone called “Sun Serpent.” Then, as his vigil is rewarded, he turns and pronounces it is again time to begin the sacred ceremonies celebrating the approach of the harvest.

Dr. John White, a Youngstown State University anthropology professor, has that scene fixed in his mind because he has studied the serpent-shaped mound of stones, which he dug from the silt of the Little Miami’s flood plain.

Scientific Memorials

White believes the 66-foot Kern Sun Serpent, located at Camp Kern, a YMCA camp in Warren County near the village of Morrow in southern Ohio, is one of two unique astronomical alignments that were used about 800 years ago to mark the summer and winter solstices.

It also is his and his colleagues’ opinion that artifacts like the ancient Sun Serpent are memorials to the scientific sophistication of prehistoric Native American Indians.

The colleagues include J.M. Heilman, curator of anthropology at the Dayton Museum of Natural History; Dr. N’omi Greber, curator of archeology collections at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and Dr. Ray A. Williamson, an archeoastronomer and editor of Archeoastronomy in America.

Heilman discovered another unusual set of 800-year-old astronomical markers at the museum’s Incinerator Site village, which he is excavating and slowly reconstructing at the south end of Dayton.

Skilled Sky Watchers

Greber is investigating whether a series of large, geometric earthworks near Chillicothe, Ohio, are actually a complex system of astronomical alignments.

The four scientists say prehistoric inhabitants of this country were skilled sky watchers who devised many ways of sighting and marking annual astronomical events such as the summer and winter solstices and spring and autumn equinoxes.

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year and marks the beginning of summer, while the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year and marks the beginning of winter. During the spring and autumn equinoxes, day and night are of equal length.

Williamson’s 14 years of research have taught him that the sun and its relationship to planting and harvest times was the central interest of most of the ancient sky watchers.

Sacred Ceremonies

“To really get a more than slight inkling of it, you have to begin to think of their world,” he said. “There was very little difference between the secular and the sacred. Keep in mind they set up a calendar because they began to notice regularity in the sky. Perhaps first they set it up to mark a planting cycle, then they got more interested in timing ceremonies. But the ceremonies, which were quite sacred, were related to agriculture.”

“The important thing to be trying to get people to understand is that if we didn’t have city lights and television and went out and looked at the sky regularly, the things we are talking about are very easy to see if you’re studying the sky,” said Greber.

“When people knew these things, when they were part of the culture which surrounded (the people), I think most people knew a lot of things about the sun, moon and stars--like we know a lot about automobiles. They knew.”