Margaret Boone Rappaport

When Hominins First Looked Up and Saw Constellations

Abstract

Enrico Calzolari presented on constellations dating back to 5500 BC, at INSAP III, Palermo, 2001, in his paper, ‘Paleo e Archeoastronomia’. Others have found astronomical images in archaeological sites dating around 30,000 to 31,000 years ago in Europe. Since 2001, scholars have begun to integrate archaeology with cognitive science and psychoneurology. We (co-authors Corbally and Rappaport) review the cognitive capacities needed for hominins in the genus Homo to interpret the skies as constellations. Until they could project their religious beliefs on the ‘flat surface’ of the sky dome, as on the walls of a cave, they could not interpret collections of attached stars as animals or mythological beings. We point to cognitive analogues in the archaeological literature that might suggest a capacity to interpret stars as constellations. While incorporating the critique of archaeologist Wynn and psychologist Coolidge (2009, 2010), we consider whether the making and stringing of beads is such an analogue. Beads are found widely in sites from Africa's Middle Stone Age. We ask: what are the cognitive capacities that beads imply? We borrow from the cognitive and psychoneurological literatures on modern use of beads in mental testing, and ask if bead-stringing could be transferred to constellation-making by the early human mind, much as we transpose writing on paper to writing on a blackboard. When did bead-making and stringing evolve, and for what purposes? Finally, are the images of constellations in the Caves at Lascaux probably the very earliest we can expect to find, or are other findings of archaeological depictions of constellations likely?

Biography

Margaret Boone Rappaport, PhD is a cultural anthropologist who works as a futurist, lecturer, and science fiction novelist in Tucson, Arizona. As President, Policy Research Methods, Incorporated, Falls Church, Virginia, she was a contractor to federal and state agencies for over twenty years. She lectured in Sociology and Anthropology at Georgetown and George Washington Universities. She earned her doctorate at the Ohio State University in 1977. Her dissertation was on the adjustment of Cuban refugee women and families. Dr. Rappaport is a prize-winning short story and poetry writer.