Nearly 1,000-Year-Old Rock Carving Appears To Depict An Ancient Total Eclipse
- 7 years ago
Many are looking forward to the rare total solar eclipse that will occur on August 21, and it appears modern humans aren’t the only ones who get excited about such an event.
Many are looking forward to the rare total solar eclipse that will occur on August 21, and it appears modern humans aren’t the only ones who get excited about such an event.
An ancient petroglyph, or rock carving, in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon is believed to represent a similar total eclipse that occurred nearly 1,000 years ago.
A University of Colorado Boulder report about the finding notes that the image, “carved in a rock by early Pueblo people—is a circle that resembles the sun’s outer atmosphere known as its corona, with tangled protrusions looping off the edges.”
It is suggested that, “One tangled loop jutting from the petroglyph circle may illustrate a coronal mass ejection, an eruption that can blow billions of tons of plasma from the sun at several million miles per hour during active solar maximum periods.”
Researchers from the U.S. and Spain have researched that possibility through a number of scientific means, including examining tree rings for carbon-14 content.
They found the levels for the year 1097 were low and indicative that the sun was quite active at that time. That means it would have been capable of producing the ejections possibly represented in the rock carving.
Kim Malville, one of the researchers, commented, “I think it is quite possible that…people may have congregated around [the rock that features carving] at certain times of the year and were watching the sun move away from the summer solstice when the eclipse occurred.”
Many are looking forward to the rare total solar eclipse that will occur on August 21, and it appears modern humans aren’t the only ones who get excited about such an event.
An ancient petroglyph, or rock carving, in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon is believed to represent a similar total eclipse that occurred nearly 1,000 years ago.
A University of Colorado Boulder report about the finding notes that the image, “carved in a rock by early Pueblo people—is a circle that resembles the sun’s outer atmosphere known as its corona, with tangled protrusions looping off the edges.”
It is suggested that, “One tangled loop jutting from the petroglyph circle may illustrate a coronal mass ejection, an eruption that can blow billions of tons of plasma from the sun at several million miles per hour during active solar maximum periods.”
Researchers from the U.S. and Spain have researched that possibility through a number of scientific means, including examining tree rings for carbon-14 content.
They found the levels for the year 1097 were low and indicative that the sun was quite active at that time. That means it would have been capable of producing the ejections possibly represented in the rock carving.
Kim Malville, one of the researchers, commented, “I think it is quite possible that…people may have congregated around [the rock that features carving] at certain times of the year and were watching the sun move away from the summer solstice when the eclipse occurred.”