When I visit the Chitactac-Adams County Park a few miles west of
Morgan Hill, I always wonder about the ancient petrogylphs etched
into the soft sandstone boulders by Uvas Creek.
When I visit the Chitactac-Adams County Park a few miles west of Morgan Hill, I always wonder about the ancient petrogylphs etched into the soft sandstone boulders by Uvas Creek.
No one knows the real reason why the Ohlone Indians carved these puzzling concentric circles. But pondering the mystery, I’ve developed a wild idea to explain the carvings: Perhaps they’re connected with the summer solstice.
Perhaps the petroglyphs marked the annual astronomical event when the sun reaches its farthest northern point from the celestial equator.
The summer solstice – the first day of summer – will occur on Sunday.
In ancient times, before our modern calendar, the summer solstice served as an important annual milestone aiding in human survival.
Prehistoric people, dependent on hunting and gathering food, used it as an astronomical marker signifying the height of the harvest season. It warned: better get on the ball gathering and storing food or you ain’t gonna survive the coming winter.
Watching every year for the summer solstice became a matter of life and death. So over time, the celestial event developed religious and cultural significance. Powerful rituals developed to remember it.
In the desolate Salisbury Plains of southern England, the grey stones of Stonehenge stand as ancient monuments to the summer solstice. Its builders first began the project around 2750 B.C. They lifted 13-foot rocks weighing tons in precise alignment with the summer solstice rising sun.
Most ancient civilizations throughout the world also have monuments and sites dedicated to the summer solstice. Sumerians, Egyptians, Persians, Mayans, Aztecs among many other ancient people all exerted great effort in building temples and pyramids precisely aligned with the sunrise on summer solstice.
In recent years, archaeologists have unearthed a temple built by a Jewish sect called the Essenes at Qumram where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. The temple is aligned on a longitudinal axis so rays from the setting sun on summer solstice pass through to illuminate an altar at the eastern wall. The ancient historian Josephus wrote the Essenes were sun worshipers.
An interesting side-note: some historians suggest Jesus and John the Baptist might have been a members of this religious group. Could that suggest the source of the symbolic connection with Jesus’s death and resurrection and that of the sun’s setting (death) and rising (life)?
The Catholic Church celebrates June 21 as the feast day of St. John the Baptist. He was the harbinger of Jesus whose birth we celebrate near the winter solstice.
In Britain, Germany and the Nordic regions, winters are long, dreary and psychologically draining. When spring arrives and the weather turns warm, it truly is a time of celebration in these far northern latitudes.
Until recent times, these regions marked May 1 as the first day of summer. The summer solstice was called “Midsummer.”
May 1 was a joyous time as villagers gathered flowers and prepared bounteous feasts. May 1 was also the time to dance around Maypoles – vestiges of ancient fertility rites. (This being a family newspaper, I won’t get too descriptive of what Maypoles symbolize.)
Midsummer – the summer solstice – was considered a day for madcap romance and weddings. William Shakespeare famously dramatized this in his hilarious “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Even in our modern world, June still is the most popular month for weddings. And Nordic cultures still celebrate Midsummer as a time for dancing and feasting. On June 26, the Swedish-American Patriots League will hold its annual Midsummer Celebration at the Sveadal resort in Uvas Canyon west of Morgan Hill. There’ll be Maypoles, feasting, dancing and romancing.
In North America as well as Europe, the summer solstice is historically important as a time of fertility and celebration. In Canada and the United States around 600 BC, various Native American tribes built large mounds, called “Medicine Wheels,” as astronomical observatories aligned with the rising sun on summer solstice.
In the American Southwest, the Anasazi Indians, around the year 1000, built complex temples with near perfect east-west alignment. The dawning sunlight on June 21 entered a window and illuminated an alcove niche.
And on a desolate canyon wall, the Anasazi carved a solstice marker which looks remarkably like the concentric rings at Chitactac-Adams County Park. On summer solstice, light from the rising sun passes through two boulders and creates an effect like a “dagger” cutting through the heart of the Anasazi marker.
Concentric ring carvings are a common religious symbol throughout the ancient world. Perhaps to the ancients, this symbol represents the circle of life and death.
Sunrise, sunset – the circle of the day.
Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall – the circle of the year.
I doubt it’s simply a coincidence the Chitactac-Adams petroglyphs resemble the concentric circles carved by the Anasazi. The Native-Americans traded throughout the continent, so maybe astronomical information passed among the various tribes.
I can’t believe the petroglyphs are idle carvings made by a bored Ohlone one lazy afternoon.
I also highly doubt that this Sunday at sunrise you might see some dagger of light pass through the Chitactac-Adams petroglyphs. The boulders most likely have moved over the centuries due to erosion.
We modern people have the rude habit of looking down on ancient cultures because they don’t have the advanced technology we do.
But those cultures – including the Ohlone – were clever enough to develop tools to survive for many centuries.
I have the feeling the Ohlone at the Chitactac-Adams site were clever enough to use the summer solstice in a remarkable calendar to mark the harvest seasons and thus survive the years.
Martin Cheek is the author of ‘The Silicon Valley Handbook.’
