A Walk in the Dark . . .

 

The story of the constellations is as old as humankind itself. It’s quite likely that some of the identified constellations date back to that forgotten time when our ancestors still lived in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa. In any event, some of the figures we see in the sky are consistent across all cultural bounds. 

Humans are especially prone to see faces and human figures, and this capacity would form much of the basis for our later cultures. Perhaps the oldest recognized constellation is Orion with his shining tristar belt and two brightest stars, Rigel and Betelgeuse. Everyone recognizes Orion’s figure as that of a man in the sky --- whether a warrior, a king, a hunter, a giant, or a god can vary, but he is always a male human figure. Virgo is also very ancient, always a woman, and usually bearing a burden --- sometimes corn, sometimes wheat, sometimes a spear, sometimes a tool, and sometimes the scales of justice (Libra), but she is always a woman. It must have been reassuring to early man and woman to see themselves reflected in the heavens above. 

Constellations are pareidolias. Pareidolias are images seen in otherwise random patterns, and human beings are neurologically hard-wired to see them. This was nature’s survival mechanism for the human race. People, lacking large claws, huge fangs, any horns at all, and the ability to outrun a charging predator, were peculiarly vulnerable, and so our brains evolved the ability to distinguish patterns --- like the stripes of a crouching sabre-toothed tiger --- from background --- the tall savannah grass he lay concealed in. 

For this adaptation to work effectively, we also had to evolve the ability to see numerous shades of color --- to tell the difference between the tiger’s tawny fur against the tawny color of the savannah grass as it swayed in the breeze drenched by a tawny-gold westering African sunlight that could confuse most creatures’ eyes. Human beings can see more than three million shades of seven primary colors, more than any other living thing on the Earth. 

Since this overwhelming mass of visual information meant nothing unless it could be sorted out, human beings developed the capacity to distinguish and to categorize data, a basic building block of intelligence. Since those humans who couldn’t tell grass from sunset from tiger got devoured, this ability reinforced itself genetically. 

And because we were always on the look-out for the sabre-toothed tiger in the grass or the dire wolf in the trees, sometimes we were wrong. The first woman who claimed to have seen a giant tree sloth over there when it wasn’t over there was the first human being to imagine something --- to envision a thing. 

Humans see patterns --- ugly faces on tree trunks, and beautiful angels in the cloud tops, and Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich. And because we are neurologically predisposed to discount randomness in favor of patterning, the most imaginative of us became storytellers who explained how that ugly face came to be on the tree trunk --- a demon lives in that tree --- and why angels dance on cloud tops --- they dwell in heaven near the gods. As to why Jesus appeared on a grilled cheese sandwich . . . you got me. 

The same thing happened in the night sky. Some of our oldest sky stories perhaps date back to a time when Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens coexisted. Our heroes of legend and myth, our gods, our greatest leaders, we put in the sky. That which was important was catalogued above us --- The Man Who Brings The Water After The Dry Season, The Fearless Lion That Represents Our People, The Great Bird That Carried Us To This Good Land --- all appear in the night sky. 

These people and creatures became even more important, more organized, and more mythological when some ancient genius realized that the great red star that is the eye of the sky-bull rose above the land at the time when the grapes grew heavy and had to be harvested. That certainly didn’t seem random. And so she watched, and was amazed when the star rose again in the same place at the same time the next time the grapes were fat. It was not random! It meant something! Ah! And she told the elders, “The sky-bull’s eye is red. Just like our grapes. The sky-bull is the god that blesses our wine!”
Soon this observant woman was asked whether the next harvest would be good. She studied the sky, and she looked at the earth, and little evidences told her that the rains would be heavy and the grapes not so good. It seemed magical, but her skill at reading the stars had freed her from most mundane work, and she had time to listen to the voices of the wind in the trees and the patterns and movements of the night sky, awake and aware in a place most people feared --- the dark. She was in fact an astronomer and because her predictions were usually right she also was a teller of fortunes written in the stars --- an astrologer, and a little later, the high priestess of her clan. 

We, as modern humans, have lost that intimate connection with nature, the ability to recognize patterns in the sky, the sea, the wind, and the movements of animals. Instead, we try to command nature, and though we have small, costly victories, in the end the world defeats us. Ultimately, the climate change we stubbornly deny will resolve itself, after the natural world creates enough disasters and pestilences to winnow us down to small numbers or none at all. The Earth is not endangered. We are. 

For millennia we depended on the night sky to tell us when to sow and when to reap, and how to get from place to place. The stars listed in the Nautical Almanac all belong to once-familiar constellations. Most of us don’t even recognize the night sky anymore, blocked from our view as it is by light pollution produced because, at heart, we still fear the dark. 

There’s no need. Let’s take a walk in that dark . . .

Hypatia (died around 415 AD) was an Egyptian Greco-Roman philosopher / scientist / astronomer / mathematician and occasional astrologer, who led an academy of Natural Sciences in Alexandria. She was renowned for her understanding of the workings of the world, had many students, and was murdered at the hands of a Christian mob who found her reliance on logic and science to be "godless."

Hypatia faced a particularly horrible death: Sliced by a thousand cuts with shards of oyster shells, she was dragged naked and bleeding through the streets as the crowd jeered. Taken to the town square, she was drenched in seawater and then burned alive. Because, y'know, Jesus.

Her death led to activism on the part of thinkers throughout the Eastern Roman Empire, and for some time even the Church Fathers decried the "superstitions" that many had tolerated among their early congregations.