Email this article

Winter Solstice in the Four Corners

Elaborate, artful systems thousands of years old mark in sunlight and stone the shortest day of the year

By Amy Maestas

Found in: | Outside | Beyond The Four Corners | Where to Go |

Solstice Markers

Winter solstice is an annual event when the sun appears to halt in its incremental journey across the sky and changes little in its position during this time. At this time, the sun is farthest from the tilting Earth's celestial equator. Derived from Latin, “solstice” means “sun stands still.” This, the first day of winter, is the shortest day of the year and there is the least amount of daylight between sunrise and sunset. In 2005, winter solstice will occur on December 21 at 11:35 a.m. (MST). There are many known winter solstice markers in public monuments and parks throughout the Southwest region. Some markers are sites of celebrations this year. Here are brief descriptions of only a sampling of solstice markers. To visit these markers, first contact the park or monument offices to find out when and if they are open to the public during the winter solstice. Ute Mountain Tribal Park, Cortez, Colorado In recent years, archaeoastronomers discovered three solstice markers in this park, which is in Mancos Canyon adjacent to Mesa Verde National Park. The “Butterfly Panel” is a complex series of symbols, mostly from the Hopi creation story, existing to identify only winter solstice. Adjacent to a pointed rock, the sun hits the edge of the rock and casts a long, sharp shadow as it moves across. “Sun Fields” is the only discovered-to-date marker that indicates both winter and summer solstices. The marker's prominent feature is a spiral, which sits atop horizontal and vertical lines thought to signify gardens and the need for rain. “The Bear” is an effigy shadow seen only during winter solstice. Nearby irregular cliffs create a shadow that takes a bear shape as the light lowers. Eventually, the shadow of the bear shows the animal sticking its nose in a hole. Visitors to the Ute Mountain Tribal Park must be accompanied by a guide. Guides for tour groups are available. On December 18, the park is offering a winter solstice event guided by Virginia Wolf, archaeoastronomer and anthropologist from Chico, Calif. Wolf and her colleague Ed Wheeler discovered the solstice markers and have been studying their significance for more than a decade. For more information: (970) 565-3751 ext. 330, Click Here. Chaco Culture National Historical Park Nageezi, New Mexico The Great House of Wijiji sits at the east end of Chaco. Part of the building aligns with a notch on the eastern horizon. Two weeks before winter solstice, the sun rises at the northern corner of the notch. Two weeks later, on winter solstice, the sun rises at the south end of the same notch. Also at the east end of Chaco is a Navajo Sun Symbol. The stone on which the symbol is etched lies at an angle against the sky. As the sun rises, the edge of the rock follows it for nearly 40 minutes. Fajada Butte sits at the south entrance to Chaco Canyon. The butte holds a known 13 markings at three different sites. Each marking can be seen when a pattern of shadow and light appears on a petroglyph at a key point during solstice. Pueblo Bonito holds an unusual corner doorway opening that functions as an astronomical marker. When the sun rises on the morning of winter solstice, sunlight passes through this opening and hits the opposite corner of the room behind it. For more information: (505) 786-7014, www.nps.gov/chcu/ Wupatki National Monument, Flagstaff, Arizona Calendar Wall sits near the Crack-in-the-Rock pueblo (see photo and illustration, opposite page bottom). The wall has a portal, through which the sun appears at its exact center on winter solstice. Hiking to Crack-in-the-Rock requires you to go with a ranger. For more information:(928) 526-1157, www.nps.gov/wupa/index.htm. Edge of the Cedars State Park, Blanding, Utah Though not an ancient solstice marker that sits in the rugged canyons of the Southwest, a unique contemporary man-made sculpture sits at the park's museum. “Sun Marker” was created by Bluff, Utah artist Joe Pachak. Strategically placed to act as a learning laboratory, the marker lets visitors witness unplanned solar interactions. The cylindrical sculpture opens up to the north and south. Cut into it are common petroglyph symbols, like spirals, concentric circles, animal tracks, mountain sheep and kokopellis. The sculpture sits such that sunlight casts varying shadows and images depending on the day. During both summer and winter solstice, Pachak's creation showcases intentional interactions with the sun and shadows. For more information: (435) 678-2238, Click Here.

Butterfly Panel

Rick Hayes, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe member and Tribal Park guide, explains the significance of Butterfly Panel. The petroglyph panel is a winter solstice marker. On solstice day in December, the sun sets in the West, hitting the edge of a nearby rock. The light casts a shadow onto the panel, which has various ancestral Puebloan symbols. In the foreground, the first symbol is Grandmother Spider, a significant figure to Native Americans. In one of the Hopi’s creation stories, Grandmother Spider is the “mother of all that shall come,” helping people during their emergence into the world. According to Hayes, she is believed to have created the moon and plays an important role in hunting and agriculture. The next symbol is a spiral, which figures significantly in native solstice markers.

Flip your calendar open to the month of December. There, on December 21, are small-pixel letters, noting the first day of winter - or, more specifically, winter solstice. For some people, this is about the most observance this day will get from them, often lost in the hubbub of holiday frenzy. It's an annual event, so the day may come and go with only a quick thought that it is the shortest day of the year.

That small text, even though it may fall in the shadow of a gorgeous photographed landscape, has great meaning in the context of history. Where we have endless cues and clues of weather, time and space, people living thousands of years ago relied on a more elaborate, even artful, system, many of which exist today worldwide, and remarkably so in the Southwestern United States.

What was simple for them seems today to be complex to us. What would those inhabitants say today seeing a spiral-bound calendar marked with black type? Can your laptop withstand the historical awe of the Stonehenge? Does that photo on your iPod compare to the petroglyph in Chaco Canyon? Will our calendars today, with their ink-stained paper, even last centuries into the future to leave our contemporary legacy of time? Or are we doomed to be a forgotten generation that relied on a hand-held BlackBerry e-mailing gadgets to tell us the time of year without us ever even raising our eyes to the sky - where it all originates?

THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE

For time eternal, looking skyward has been the most reliable and accurate means of telling time. Peoples of all origins drew on the sun, moon and stars as a way to get through life, helping them plan their societies and survival. To do so, they moved rocks or chipped symbols - actions that they may have thought were as impermanent as some of their homesteads. Ironically, their celestial-tracking tools have outlasted them by centuries.

In the Four Corners, archaeologists and archaeoastronomers have sought out, found and documented some of the world's most impressive and awe-inspiring sun markers. Markers in this region stand equal to such ancient calendar systems of the Mayan peoples of Mesoamerica, who also had complex predictive powers and sophisticated observational and recording techniques.

Many markers in this region are in national parks and monuments, sitting square in the middle of countless Native American relics that represent invaluable history lessons. Archaeologists predict that probably all ancestral Puebloans marked summer and winter solstices. As an agrarian society, observing the sun, moon and stars was crucial to planning planting and harvesting activities, as well as hunting.

"People all over the world have needed calendars, but no society needed to be as time conscious as we are," says Virginia Wolf, an archaeoastronomer and anthropology teacher at Butte Community College in Chico, Calif.

CULTURE OF COMPLEXITY

There are perhaps dozens of known solstice markers in the Four Corners, with perhaps hundreds more unknown. Ancestral Puebloans inhabited this region for thousands of years, leaving behind them both subtle and obvious clues about their lives. Their solstice markers carry some of the greatest intrigue, and they also provide some of the most perplexing implications.

Today, archaeologists note that in contemporary science, astronomy is the most purely observational of sciences; whereas, in the world of native peoples astronomy was the most accurate means of prediction.

One of the most prolific symbols of solstice markers, Wolf says, is the spiral. Acting as a sort of sun-tracker, a spiral has tremendous significance but little is known about them, she explains. Archaeologists rely on databases to help them study and explain various symbolism and uses of relics. Given the frequency of their appearances, Wolf says much study remains to fully understand them.

Some of the lesser known but nonetheless spectacular markers, Wolf says, rest in the Ute Mountain Tribal Park, in Mancos Canyon some 20 miles south of Cortez, Colo. In the early 1990s, Wolf, who had just completed her master's degree in archaeoastronomy, set out on foot in the 125,000-acre park to find evidence of solstice markers. The park, relatively obscure and less commercialized than its neighboring Mesa Verde National Park, fascinated Wolf since the time it opened in 1981. She and colleague Ed Wheeler started with a "clean slate" of knowledge of any markers that may exist. Notably, they looked for spirals in petroglyphs.

"In the beginning, we searched high and low," Wolf explains. "Much of what we found were about 100 feet high off the ground, making it more difficult to get to."

Scouring acres of land for days on end in June and December, Wolf calls their first discoveries "pure luck." Of course, finding rock art with spirals or other clues did not always net a marker. And those that did hold promise required sometimes years of observation before declaring it an actual solstice indicator.

For four years Wolf observed the sun and moon phases at the Butterfly Panel. Only when she saw the full moon phase did she conclude that Butterfly Panel was indeed a winter solstice marker. This long panel, with several native symbols, is the grandest of Wolf's and Wheeler's discoveries so far, weaving many native figures with meanings as the shadows and natural light interact with it.

Butterfly Panel is, Wolf explains, now considered a shrine for the Hopi people.

"It's pretty sacred," she adds.

Wolf has returned several times to the panel with Hopi elders. Together they study the panel's symbols and imagine the role it played for those who created it and those who came later. With all of the historical knowledge to work with, Wolf says the markers in Mancos Canyon and in the Southwest still remain open to much interpretation.

"I sometimes wonder if Butterfly Panel could have been a panel for the native kids to learn from," she explains. "Sometimes I even feel that these panels could have been a backup system for the Sun Priests, who observed the sun and moon to chart time."

Different as the interpretations may be, Wolf and other archaeologists often align in understanding that the Hopi dwellers relied entirely on the Earth's shifting process to help them prepare for ceremonies and rituals performed to live successfully. Rain and crops were mutually vital, especially if the inhabitants were to remain in a vibrant society, and the power to different gods who made these things possible must be given to them.

"WE ARE ALL RELATED"

"There is a reason for all of this," says Rick Hayes, a Ute Mountain tribal member and park guide.

Hayes guides visitors in the park, taking them up and down ladders to various ancient sites. As he explains the few solstice markers in the canyon, Hayes emphasizes the understanding of native practices and the relationships of human beings to their environments.

"It is about how we treat our world, and how we treat each other," adds Hayes.

Throughout history, humans have observed the seasonal winter solstice milestone, creating spiritual and cultural traditions to celebrate the emergence of sunlight after the darkest period of the year. Today, religion experts report seeing more traditional religious groups celebrating solstices for ecological reasons. Despite the thousands of years since past, those celebratory reasons align with the native peoples of the Southwest, making Hayes' words resonate as if the time span does not exist.

Nor do cultural gulfs seem to exist. Many other ancient cultures relied on important ceremonies to bring together the cycles of the sun and the moon. Romans celebrated a weeklong December feast, Saturnalia, honoring the god of Saturn. They honored Mithra, an ancient Persian god of light. In Iran, celebrants kindle a bonfire at sunset during the Zoroastrian festival of Sada, symbolically stimulating the sun to get stronger. On different soil, solstice megaliths rise with grandeur. In the Yucatan, the sun's rays create a rippling shadow of Quetzalcoatl on the stairway of the El Castillo pyramid. At Ankor Wat in Cambodia, a similar light affects contrasting scenes of a battle between gods and demons.

"We are all related. We all built by one god," says Hayes, explaining the bonds of solstice celebrations and markers worldwide.

Today, the Hopi people still honor and rely on Sun Watchers. They continue the tradition of watching the horizon to observe the rising sun at certain points before the winter solstice. Though Hopi Sun Watchers or other contemporary pueblo people don't always return to known solstice marker sites, their ceremonies and rituals still expend human energy to ensure that spiritual forces in the world act as desired.

Even without being part of contemporary ceremonies, solstice sites remain as evidence of sophisticated astronomy, says Wolf. "There are a lot of areas that still can be explored. But what we have now gives us just a little inkling of what [ancestral Puebloans] needed and who they were. By seeing them we are stepping out of our own world a little bit."

Amy Maestas is a contributing editor of Inside/Outside Southwest Magazine.