Echoes of the Ancient Skies : The Astronomy of Lost Civilizations

by E.C. Krupp

All over the world, through countless centuries, people have looked skyward for inspiration and guidance in their lives and activities. How vast this heavenly influence was, and how awesome the human achievements it engendered were, are illuminated in this extraordinary work of investigation and discovery. With hundreds of illustrations and photographs, Echoes of the Ancient Skies is a sweeping look at the world of archaeoastronomy from the prehistoric megaliths of Stonehenge, to the medicine wheels of North America, to the Aztec "Calendar Stone." The intriguing field of archaeoastronomy - the study of ancient peoples' observation of the skies and its role in their cultural evolution - seeks to explore the "universal evidence that people have used astronomy as the model for injecting order and predictability on their behavior and on life." Examining this phenomenon, Dr. E.C. Krupp takes the reader to sites throughout the world (most of which he has personally visited) - from Egypt, China, Babylonia, and Greece, to Turkey, Scotland, Wyoming, and Mexico. He interprets the significance of celestial observation and its relation to the earthly experiences of our ancestors, from practical applications of farming and the measurement of time to philosophical queries into our particular place within the universe. He goes on to cover such fascinating topics as how we see the seasons in the sun and stars, possible ancient and prehistoric observatories such as the megalithic monument at Kintraw in Scotland, and sky gods and myths around the world and throughout history - from the Egyptian goddess Nut to the myth of Phaethon and the golden chariot of his father Helios. This edition also includes anew introduction that brings the research completely up to date. A fascinating and authoritative exploration, this around-the-world survey shows how the sky was woven into virtually every aspect of civilization and opens our eyes to the powers that shaped the human past and contin

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Astronomy, Science, Africa, Unfinished

Hardcover

First published March 1, 1983

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although the beginning of this book is of some interest, describing as it does some of the order of the luminaries in our skies as is apparent to the sedulous observer, most of it simply gives one case study after another of how various peoples ranging from the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians and Greeks to modern Amerind nations have depended upon and interpreted the cycles they observe in the heavens. After several of these the book became, for me, tedious.

[Linda Malcor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Krupp covers the world in this text about how ancient civilizations viewed the lights they saw in the nighttime sky. It is truly amazing how much our ancestors knew. A major reference for Barber and Barber's When They Severed Earth From Sky, this book is not light reading, but it is very informative.

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly good anthropologist study of archeoastronomy my on the cultural and mythological end of things less on my naked eye astronomy end. Not exploring ancient skies is a much better book on the naked eye aspects of archeoastronomy.

update 12/27/2021 Newgrange, Stonehenge, Maya, near east archeoastronomy. I think In Search of Ancient skies does a more thorough job,

[Pejman Norouzi · Rating 1 out of 5]

یکی از بدترین انتخابها برای خواندن. عملا کتابی است پر از غلطهای مفهومی و‌چاپ و ترجمه‌ی بسیار بد.

[David Baer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up on a visit to the Griffith Observatory in LA. Not coincidentally, perhaps, this observatory is briefly mentioned in one of the later chapters. I round up to 4 stars; the reality is that I found myself skimming some sections, particularly in the later chapters.

The last chapter, titled The Universes We Design, is the only one where I felt the content to be a little dated: the copyright date is 1994. Back then, competing estimates for the age and extent of the universe resulted in a wide range (10 billion to 20 billion years) of estimates. As this is a very minor aspect of the book I would not mention it at all, save for a related stylistic peculiarity: the author consistently refers to the Big Bang as "the explosion". I infer a certain academic prissiness that prevented him from embracing a universally-understood but juvenile-sounding term.

Despite the wealth of detail that, in aggregate, over-matched my attention capacity, I appreciated several big, satisfying ideas. I bought the book because I've always been fascinated by the inherent mystery of ancient megalithic structures like Stonehenge and many others. Amazingly old, they offer only tantalizing hints about their true purpose and significance for those who built and used them. (Fun fact: Cleopatra was born closer in time to the invention of the I-phone, than to the construction of the pyramids. Those things are old, man. And Stonehenge is way older than that). I appreciate Krupp's overall approach to this uncertainty, which is to acknowledge it throughout, while describing the known parameters.

Reading the entry-level accounts of ancient monuments has always been a source of frustration for me, because inevitably they explain the purpose of the structures as "places for rituals". This is frustrating because it pretends to explain while truly explaining exactly nothing! While Krupp does not provide answers to unknowable questions about prehistory, the book provides valuable nuances to the notion of "ritual uses". For instance, just because a structure may exhibit alignments with solstice or equinox, does not mean it had to be an "observatory" for making precise timing determinations. All it means is that in the builders belief system, these things had some significance. In a chapter dedicated to describing various recorded rituals, Krupp usefully notes that "temples are the places reserved for ceremonies, and in an unsecularized [ie, ancient] age, ceremonial uses can have broad meaning that today might be considered political, social, or economic".

I somewhat increased my astronomical knowledge in learning about the 18.6-year cycle displayed in the northernmost and southernmost annual extremes of moon-rise and moon-set. Some sites, such as Carnac in France, seem inescapably oriented in a manner that shows awareness of this cycle. The modern mind naturally wants to jump to the conclusion that, because precise understanding of this cycle can be used to predict eclipses, that such alignments imply a "scientific" endeavor by the ancient builders for just this purpose. While not impossible, it seems much more likely that in their belief system, the moon's "rambles about the notch in the horizon" could have been meaningful, and the arrival of the moon at its standstill position significant. Krupp posits an analogy: suppose you are an archaeologist from thousands of years in the future, and you have no idea whatsoever of the story of Christ, the crucifixion, and all of the attendant belief system. Excavating an ancient cathedral, you would have no idea about why the floor plan is organized in a cruciform manner.

Even though we can never know the cultural and social context that surrounded ancient megalithic structures having astronomical alignments, their sheer ubiquity across ages and continents tells us that "our relationship with the sky is an old, old religious response. It is not a byproduct of culture but something that makes culture the way it is. It started long before we became farmers, is at least as old as the cave paintings, and probably reaches back to the origins of consciousness itself".

Fun fact: we have seven days in the week because there are seven wandering bodies in the sky. That is, the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The etymology of our weekdays is in each case traceable to one of these. Now that, is a big idea!

[Stephan Naro]

Very unsatisfactory. I don't know the background subject matter so cannot rate the book's presentation of it, but I feel like giving it 1 star: "did not like it".

All I'm going to mention is his frequent use of the word 'sacred', with the worst case being where he translates "muy delicado" as "very sacred". I don't know Spanish, but for some reason that just looked wrong, and though I know that Google is fallible, I find it interesting that Google Translate claimed it means "very delicate". As to his other uses, he never defines the word or tells us why he uses it. Does he mean "magical", "special", "meaningful", "important", or maybe something else? I don't know and that makes the book really disappointing.

[Mark Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in archeoastronomy, this book provides a good introduction, with explorations of ancient cultures around the world and evidence of their interests in and beliefs about the heavens. Mesoamerican, Incan, Egyptian, ancient British, and Chinese cultures get mentioned repeatedly, but many others are included, too. The first edition is somewhat outdated; I know there are more recent findings about Stonehenge, for example. I don't know if later editions of the book have been updated. The book is organized into chapters on conceptual topics -- myths, observatories, calendars, cosmology, etc. -- with multiple cultures examined within each chapter. The result is such that the book would work well for browsing starting almost anywhere.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a literature major, I'm quite impressed by the amount of knowledge presented in the book. The style of writing is accessible for an average student in search of information required for their MA thesis.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is terrible. Facile and simplistic, as well as outdated and sometimes just wrong.

[Terri]

All over the world, through countless centuries, the peoples of our planet looked skyward for inspiration and guidance in their lives and activities.