Homage to a Star

Archaeologist George Michanowsky first came upon the strange, incomprehensible markings in 1956. Inscribed on a large flat rock in a remote bush region of Bolivia, they seemed to be connected somehow with an annual festival held on the site by Indians who gather from hundreds of miles around for several days of drinking and debauchery. Yet no one, including the Indians, could offer any explanation for this yearly orgy, which seemed to have its roots in the dim pre-Columbian past.

Now, with a clue supplied by NASA astronomers, Michanowsky thinks that he may have found an explanation for both the festival and the inscriptions. The rock carvings, he argues, are apparently a record of a long-forgotten celestial event: a supernova, or exploding star, a spectacle that would have awed primitive people and perhaps frightened them into paying homage to it by staging an orgiastic celebration.

Supernovas are rare events, taking place every 50 or hundred years in galaxies similar to the earth's Milky Way galaxy. When one occurs, it gives off more light than all of the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined. It is thought to leave behind a glowing, expanding cloud of gases at the center of which is a small, rapidly spinning, incredibly dense neutron star (or pulsar) that gives off regularly spaced radio signals. Only four supernovas have been recorded in the Milky Way galaxy since the year 1000. The best-known one was witnessed by Chinese astronomers in 1054 and has since expanded into the famed Crab nebula; the last two took place within 32 years of each other around the turn of the 17th century.

The only known evidence of earlier supernovas in the Milky Way are the pulsars they left behind. One of the closest to be detected is in the Gum nebula, which is in the constellation Vela and only 1,500 light years away. Thus, when the star that formed Gum exploded--some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago (an estimate derived from the current signal rate of the pulsar)--it probably flared up briefly in the sky as bright as a quarter-moon. It also may have showered the earth with enough dangerous radiation to have produced significant mutations in terrestrial life.

On the assumption that some primitive man might have carved his impressions of the great event--markings that could be archaeologically dated to determine more precisely when the Vela supernova occurred--NASA Astronomers John C. Brandt, Stephen P. Maran and Theodore Stecher last year issued an appeal. They asked archaeologists to be on the lookout, especially in the Southern hemisphere--where the Gum nebula can be best observed--for any unidentified ancient symbols that might have been painted or carved to represent the supernova.

Reading the astronomers' request (TIME, March 27, 1972), Michanowsky immediately recalled the odd markings he had seen years before in Bolivia. Searching his records, he found that the carvings showed four small circles--similar to the so-called "False Cross" star grouping in the constellations Vela and Carina--flanked by two larger circles. Michanowsky identified one of these larger circles as a representation of the bright star Canopus. The other circle, which was even bigger, had no existing counterpart in the sky. But it was approximately at the site of the invisible pulsar. Could the second circle be a primitive drawing of the supernova?

Returning to the site of the markings in Bolivia, Michanowsky noted that the region of the sky in which the Gum nebula lies does not look remarkable to the naked eye. Nonetheless, it has long been called Lakha Manta (The Gateway to Hell) by the Indians, for reasons they are unable to explain. More tantalizing still, Michanowsky found that among some lowland tribes this humdrum part of the sky is known as the Region of the Chase of the Celestial Ostrich, a bird revered in Indian mythology. According to Indian lore, the ostrich was driven across the sky by two voracious dogs and finally killed in the constellation Vela. Michanowsky also learned of some possible connections between Indian star lore and the site of the annual orgy. In Indian dialects, the site is called mutun (very hot stone), which could perhaps refer to some ancient heavenly fire.

Although his evidence suggests that the primitive peoples of the region did record the supernova, Michanowsky wants more proof. He will soon begin a search for similar markings in other locations--especially higher up in the Andes, where in the thin mountain air the supernova would have appeared even more brilliant. Perhaps the exploding star inspired other primitive artists to record its fiery appearance.

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