The Neolithic Rock Art Camel Site in Northern Arabia as Astronomy:
Interactive Lesson #1:
Where does the Camel Stand?
It Stands on the Celestial Equator
Our interactive decipherment begins with a clip of the section of sky that we regard to be represented by carved figures and cupmarks at "The Camel Site"
-- figures and holes carved in stone to mark bright stars viz. star groups.
The starry sky corresponding to the stars represented by the Camel Site is found
in the image below -- applying to stars ca. at or above the Celestial Equator on which the camel stands ... carrying the heavens. Our image clip from Starry Night Pro astronomy software is the year 4800 B.C., close to the dates of ca. 5600 to 5200 BCE estimated by archaeologists for human inhabitation of the site.
THE STARRY SKY SECTION REPRESENTED AT THE CAMEL SITE
MARKS STARS AT AND ABOVE THE CELESTIAL EQUATOR ca. 4800 B.C.
Image clip 2021 A.D. by Andis Kaulins via Starry Night Pro astronomy software
Click on the image to view a larger image version.
(image updated on 7 October 2021)
The Celestial Equator in the star map above is the red nearly horizontal line running through the Vernal Equinox. The Celestial Equator at the Camel Site is the line drawn below -- and identified by us -- upon which the camel stands:
THE CAMEL SITE CELESTIAL EQUATOR ON WHICH THE CAMEL STANDS
Click on the image to view a larger image version.
That line provides the foundation for the astronomical decipherment. Once such an important astronomical parameter is correctly identified, the rest follows.
See if you can now identify the stars represented at the Camel Site without referring to our decipherment. You have the star map above.
This posting begins a series of experimental interactive
presentations of our recent, independent, and unaffiliated
archaeoastronomical decipherment of the so-called archaeological "Camel
Site" in Northern Arabia...
as that site is described by the following authors
Maria
Guagnin, Guillaume Charloux, Abdullah M. AlSharekh, Rémy Crassard,
Yamandú H. Hilbert, Meinrat O. Andreae, Abdullah AlAmri, Frank Preusser,
Fulbert Dubois, Franck Burgos, Pascal Flohr, Pascal Mora, Ahmad
AlQaeed, and Yasser AlAli...
in their article
Life-sized Neolithic camel sculptures in Arabia: A scientific assessment of the craftsmanship and age of the Camel Site reliefs,
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2021, 103165, ISSN 2352-409X
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.103165 as found published online at...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X21003771.
More Camel Site photos are also published at Artnet.com in Thousands of Years Before the Pyramids, Neolithic Peoples Were Carving Camels into Saudi Arabia’s Rocky Desert, an article by Sarah Cascone online at :
In
order to avoid copyright image issues -- we make our own drawings for
use in the course of our decipherment and refer readers to original
photographs in the above cited sources for review. We have no
affiliation with any of the above.
We now look at the Celestial Meridian and Celestial North Pole in Lesson #2, i.e. the next posting. The question is: What is the Camel Carrying?