VALLE DEL ENCANTO
Elementos posiblemente relacionado con la astronomía
PROMISING ARCHAEOASTRONOMY INVESTIGATIONS IN CHILE
Extracto de una publicación a Oxford VI
2.4. Valle de El Encanto (IV Region)
Valle de El Encanto (71°15' W, 30°35' S, 200m) is a superb archaeological site in the Limari river region characterized by the amazing beauty and variety of its rock art. The place was inhabited by the El Molle culture in the first few centuries A.D. Archaeologists (Ampuero, 1992) have registered 80 blocks with petroglyphs, 83 with cup stones and seven with pictographs. The zone of interest is 2km long with some rocks of huge dimensions (up to 20x20m of base and 12m high) which could have been a first (visual) factor in the selection of the place by the Indigenous people because it certainly looks like a demonstration of power from Mother Nature.
The petroglyphs exhibit two artistic techniques: deep carving and pecking. These deeply carved petroglyphs are actually quite unique in Chile: they are usually formed by lines 5 to 15mm deep and often require very special conditions of light (and the shadow left in the grooves) to be seen. The deep carving petroglyphs are located mostly on stones with a dark patina. On the contrary, pecked petroglyphs are always carved on brown/reddish stones: although their readibility is usually improved when the sunlight comes with a grazing angle, they are visible all day long. These statements constitute, on their own, an evidence that the El Molle artists were aware that solar light would often decide whether the pieces of art could be seen or not. This in turn sounds like a logical way to mark a specific time: hour of the day or day of the year. We measured the direction pointed out by petroglyphs and the inclination of the rocks where they are carved. Our initial sampling of 54 petroglyph stones spread over the entire site don't show any significant tendency (all azimuths are faced). The clearer orientation pattern is that most of the rock art is actually looking at the water stream (i.e. the petroglyphs north of the stream face southward and vice-versa): the artists seemed obliged to give the actors of their pieces of art (80% of all petroglyphs have an anthropomorphic style) a visual connection to the water.
By their numbers, the cup stones are the other important characteristics of Valle de El Encanto. These are holes cut in stones, usually located within 15m of the river: they vary from 2 to 16cm in depth and have circular (5 to 16cm in diameter) or elliptical shape (up to 20x40cm). The quantity of cups in the rocks vary from 1 to 44, the most common occurrence being 1 to 3. The fact that some cup stones are located in the riverbed, and consequently are sometimes underwater, tells us that one of their uses was probably to contain water or other liquids. Menghin (1982) has published a rather complete overview of the "cup stones" phenomenon. Among many applications, he mentions the representation of stars. The largest cup stone in Valle de El Encanto is about 3m2 and contains 44 holes with, apparently, a random distribution. The second stone of interest is only 15m away from the former. It has about the same area but it contains only 16 holes. At the first sight, we recognized the familiar shape of the Scorpio constellation, like the one printed on any celestial maps and the even more familiar shape of the Southern Cross: 4 holes respecting very closely the asymmetry of the famous constellation. At night in early June, standing right in front of the longer axis of the stone and looking straight across to the sky above the horizon we saw the constellation of Scorpio undergoing its heliacal rising and, some 45° above it, the constellation of the Southern Cross, both groups of stars being almost exactly in the same relative position, as what the cup stone illustrates. It was then easy to recognize two additional cups as the very bright a and b Centauri, still following precise relative orientation.
In the eastern sector of the quebrada, we found a large stone, quite unique in the local scenery because it is easily seen standing off the ground. The rock long axis is roughly north/south. It is about 1.7m wide, 3m high and 4.6m long. Several wide flat surfaces of the rock are the result of natural fractures along the cleavage planes. The northern upper face is carved with two mysterious petroglyphs whose style is not found elsewhere in the site. The technique used is pecking although quite deep (up to 5mm) and requires special grazing light to be seen. The drawings represent a circle with exterior ramifications (a sun rayed with arms and fingers?) and a small body with legs and wings, half-human and half-bird. The stone is located in a unique place for conducting ritual dances, protected by a ring of rocks, allowing entry and exit of people and possessing a superb 360° view of all the Limari valley.
Several other natural coincidences occur at that site and we think that the local shaman became aware of them and decided to use the place as an important ritual plaza. Looking at the large stone from the center of the plaza at midday, one has the impression of seeing a huge toad and surprisingly, at sunset, one can hear a loud recital of toads in the river down the hill. The only other group of petroglyphs (showing unique "dancing men") in that sector is found at the bottom of the hill, on the eastern side from where one can perfectly see the "toad stone" in between two triangular rocks forming a pronounced V-shape. There are typical signs of ceremonial landscape all around the plaza: the two highest summits (by far) on the 360° horizon are located north and south and are respectively only 10° off to the east and 3° off to the west of the perfect north-south line. The rest of the horizon is absolutely flat at the exception of a hill in the southwest, which stops the sun's southward journey precisely at the summer solstice sunset.
The angle of tilt of the petroglyph surface on the toad stone (and the general angle of the stone) is 36°. It therefore points closely into the direction of the south celestial pole. If the shaman ever conducted ceremonies at night and stood in front of his petroglyph, he would probably have noticed that the celestial vault appears to rotate around a fixed point indicated by the stone. Our discovery gathers many features typically searched for by an archaeo-astronomer! We realize that the concept of "axis mundi" has mostly been associated to the vertical axis among ancient people. The terrestrial axis of rotation is an observable element and we intend to search systematically all the El Molle sites to see if this presumed knowledge of the celestial pole axis and interest in the constellations repeat elsewhere.
