Science: Diggers

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In Plateau, published by the Museum of Northern Arizona. William C. Miller of Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories reported a novel collaboration of astronomers and archaeologists. Miller's avocation is to look for Indian remains in Arizona, and he was immediately interested when a survey party from the Museum of Northern Arizona found two Indian rock drawings, each showing the crescent moon and near it a large round object. Crescents are rare in Indian drawings, and the round objects were hard to explain.

Miller discussed the drawings at his observatory, and visiting Cosmographer Fred Hoyle of Cambridge University, England had a bright idea. Maybe, suggested Hoyle, the large object in the drawings is the supernova* of A.D. 1054, the enormously brilliant "new" star that outshone all the other stars in the sky and was plainly visible in daytime. Europe was too backward in astronomy in 1054 to pay much scientific attention to the event, but Chinese and Japanese astronomers recorded it accurately. The supernova appeared over China on the morning of July 4, 1054, and its position was close to the bright star Zeta Tauri. The Indians of the U.S. southwest must have seen the supernova too, said Hoyle, and they may have recorded it in their rock inscription.

Right Answer. To check the theory, Miller got help from Astronomer Walter Baade of Mt. Wilson and Palomar, who computed the phase and position of the moon at the time when the supernova could first have been seen in Arizona. The answer came out right. The moon was a crescent, as drawn. In northern Arizona it would have risen shortly before dawn on July 5th, and the supernova would have been close to it. The sight must have been striking; the supernova was probably the brightest object, other than the sun, ever to be seen by historic man.

Miller's next step was to find out whether the sites could have been occupied by Indians in A.D. 1054. At one site (White Mesa) he found a few potsherds that probably date back 900 years. At the other site (Navaho Canyon), a deep cut in the canyon floor exposed a great number that are as old or older.

Properly cautious, Miller says: "The rather stringent conditions for a favorable answer seem to be met and strongly suggest the possibility that the two pictographs actually depict . . . the supernova of A.D. 1054."