COMETS, PETROGLYPHS AND SUPERNOVAE

CAUTION: Some of the ancient Southwestern Visual Astronomy research
material on this website may be harmful to one’s Comfort Zone. Portions of this avocationalist research were effectively banned in Farmington
and Taos, NM, in 2008 and 2009, respectively, as the author, under curious circumstances, was not permitted to rent a vendor’s site at the
yearly conferences of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico (ASNM) organized by the powers that be. Indeed, a friend of theirs, a noted rock
art surveyor in central New Mexico, told this author/researcher in rebuttal after her talk and PowerPoint presentation in an ASNM conference in
Albuquerque in 2007 that: Galileo did not know the earth went around the sun until 1520…er…1530 [sic], and the Indians [sic] did not know what
was in the sky before that [sic]. Note: Subsequent research in 2010 by this researcher into the amazingly datable Visual Astronomy ideography
appearing on Greco-Roman coinage is to be found on this website by scrolling to the button halfway down and to the left.

Please also see: http://www.astronomy-on-coins.com
Note: since the writing of PDFS 2008/9, author's e-mail
has changed to: suzan5025@q.com

http://www.jliprints.com/gallery/Bradford/open_editions.htm

Great March Comet 1843 Kreutz Sungrazer with longest recorded tail.

Great March Comet of 1843, Kreutz
sungrazer with the longest recorded
comet tail.

Buckhorn Wash. pictograph possible split kreutz progenitor.

Possible split, Kreutz progenitor,
Natl. Reg. of Historic Places,
pictograph, Buckhorn Wash, UT

A website for analyzing and comparing visual astronomy recordings and commemorationsin the ancient American Southwest, paying particular attention to the grea andiconographically-interesting comets of the past, eight historical supernovae, and fearsome meteorite strikes of the 11th c. fireball flux. These considerations arefound by recent research to be freely depicted on tribal and group petroglyphs,
pictographs, and vessel designs—sincere in their pre-scientific time-periods to bewitness of awesome transitory sky events which were sometimes almost like deities.

"Like Deities"
A Ute lady in the Four Corners area
was asked this question in 2007:
Did the Old Ones think about comets?
"Oh, yes! The comets mean change ... they
[the comets] were like deities ... they [the Old
People] weren't afraid of them ... and at the
old cemetery they used to put images on the
graves to show what the stars and the skies
were like when they passed on."

COMETS HAVE BEEN WITH US LONGER THAN WE HAVE BEEN

Unfortunately
we cannot get to the truths of the North American Indians’ use of astronomy through
written evidence, for they had no written language. Yet the many marks and lines left
on cliffs and walls and hilltops are an objective language of deeds, which can be
read as evidence that is probably more eloquent and compelling than spoken words or
repeated tale, however sincerely told.John A. Eddy [Krupp 1978:136]

Have you ever heard of the Great March Comet of 1843?  This great comet was watched 48 days
(see Yeomans/ NASA web list) while it grew, changed, split and then stretched out with the
longest recorded tail for a comet: the distance from the Sun, to the orbit of Mars.  Even though
they have a small nucleus (with their ices and debris burning off and pushed away in the solar
winds during a perihelion visit near the sun) comets can be the largest measured entities in the
solar system.  Traveling with their own agendas, comets are the supreme shape-shifters and
migrators known throughout human existence, cosmic serpents who hibernate, reproduce, and
can slither silently past or attack the earth with vengeance and destruction.  They were like
deities in the old days and they could mean Change.
        It will be helpful for us to get more petroglyphic and pictographic examples under our
belts, but it may be plausible to some modern souls that the Ancestral Puebloans and other early
sky watchers in the ancient Southwest, witnessed the huge progenitor comet which the comet of
1843 and many other of the "Kreutz Family of Sun Grazing Comets" broke off of in their turn.
The comets in this distinctive group (named for the astronomer who first noted the similarities
of several of these comets) have fragmented and split off of each other like a true family tree
with pairs and fragments sometimes returning in perihelion orbits hundreds of years long and
dozens of years apart.
        The Greek historian Ephorus saw a theorized progenitor of all the "Kreutzers" split "into
two planets" in the winter of 371 B.C., and the alert skywatchers in Utah and New Mexico
may have commemorated this awesome event also, but in a visual symbols language which a
schoolchild can understand, given some pointers along the way.
       Research papers on this website are added to weekly, monthly, and yearly by its avocationalist artist/author who began rock-art research in Colorado in 1996 and has
persevered with more focus since moving to New Mexico in 2003. She is hugely indebted
both to the writers, chroniclers, photographers of ancient Southwestern culture and artifacts,
and more recently, to the amiable research climate and open-mindedness of the Executive
Director Larry L. Baker, Curator/Education Coordinator Nancy Sweet Espinosa, Diane Hayden,
and staff at at the Salmon Ruins research center and library, Bloomfield, NM. [Dec 2009]

[Missionaries and early ethonographers may have ridiculed, censured, or otherwise been
unaware of indigenous people's conceptualizations of comets and celestial/atmospheric apparitions as
being both like deity, related to Starmaker-Trickster Coyote, yet also interesting natural phenomena,
and so the surviving decendants of the early artist-recorders may have to a large extent quit talking to
strangers about comets and their knowledge of the visual astromomy of yesteryear. Photo credits: Jim Blazik,
Starmaker Coyote dot-linked to large comet-shape; comet-shape with bowing humans, from an on-line URARA Vestiges issue ]

The American Indians … are remarkable for acute and critical vision, and also for their retentive memory of what they have once seen. When significance is once attached to an object seen, it will always be recalled…. The American Indians have developed great facility in communicating by signs, and also in expressing their ideas in pictures which are ideographic though seldom [for this purpose] artistic [sic].

--Garrick Mallery, Picture Writing of the American Indians, 1888-89
Report to the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution,
Vol. I & II, Dover Edition 1972: 583, NY.

       The hypothesis of this researcher and this website is eight-pronged and that it may become
generally acceptable is perhaps greatly dependent upon our finding a good many more examples
in the ancient American Southwest cultural materials which might plausibly support the following
propositions:

(a) All the eight historical supernovae ( ¹distantly exploded stars) were eye-witnessed and artistically
       recorded and were probably important to the oral traditions of their day.
(b) Most if not all the "Great Comets in History"² were watched, day-counted in many cases, and
       commemorated in rock art and basketry and pottery designs.
(c) Additional iconographically interesting and distinctive comets of the historical past were also
       recorded in the ancient American Southwest—and this in a visual symbols language (with
      constructs and artistic usage of the natural terrain and textures as media) which we
      are slow to conceptualize and credit.
(d) Comets were understood as independent, migratory entities with, in some cases, repeatable
       orbits, conceived as straight lines with hair-pin turns at either end, and with configurations
       which displayed anti-solar, or always-away-from-the-sun, tails, as early as 695 years before
       this understanding was published in Europe.
(e) Constellations were recorded and commemorated in rock art by the commandeering of cracks,
        textures, and holes which mirrored and mimicked the constellations and star
        patterns overhead in their dark night skies—and these constellations are quite apparent when
        partnered with the historical supernovae symbols—for comets move and supernovae stay
        put.
(f) Representational visual astronomy recordings were created when comet, supernova, and fireball-
        flux and meteorite imagery were placed above appropriate natural cracks to provide the local
        horizon-line and, to some degree, show proper perspective and realistic scale of a transitory
        celestial event.
(g) Intriguing tell-tale mythic hosts are often found attending ancient commemorations of new
        guest stars and stupendous comets: such as pecked and painted Starmaker-Trickster Coyote
        figures, the glyphists’ apparent selection of Cosmic-Serpent-shaped outcrops for visual
        panels, and energetic accompanying Flutists and Ritualists.
(h) Ancient Southwest celestial symbologies and signs are found which seem to have been shared
        with, or similar to Aztec, Mayan, Chinese, and even Celtic cultures’ celestial-events
        iconography.

      Is this writer and independent, avocationalist researcher capable of putting all this into a
proper and publishable book format – like a symphony which starts, builds, and then ends
accordingly? No, probably not. So, some of this author’s editorial fits and starts and essay-
like constructions in the form of PDF files will have to do here, in hopes that other researchers
and avocationalists can fill in the chinks—or find this over-all hypothesis compatible to what
they have already researched and written:
      that world-class records of events in the history of visual astronomy are well-recorded in
the ancient American Southwest and can contribute to our understanding of those events in
largely graphic- and visual-art terms—made by the honest eye-witness recorders of their day.

¹ Clark and Stephenson, The Historical Supernovae, 1977: (count at least 8) the Veil supernova in Cygnus recently
redated to about 5000 years ago; AD185 between Alpha and Beta Centauri; the 4^th c. Chin Dynasty supernovae—one in
the Tail of Scorpius (in AD393) and the other seen rising each night in the east; "Arab Supernova" of AD1006 to the
right of Scorpius; the distant star explosion of AD 1054 creating the "Crab supernova remnant"; and the supernovae near
Cassiopeia in AD1181 and 1572.
² reference the NASA-Yeomans web-site of this name and this present website’s version of the "Great Comets
in History," as it is edited to great comets pre-AD1600 as their appearances fall within the Pecos Southwest classification
periods.

2009
PDF
DOCUMENTS

2010
PDF
DOCUMENTS

"GREAT COMETS
Basketmaker II
thru Pueblo III"

ABOUT THE
AUTHOR

GRECO-ROMAN
COINAGE
CELESTIAL
IDEOGRAPHS
2010

23 WONDERS

   Hand-coiled and greenware blanks painted by the author with comet, supernova, constellation,
   and Milky Way images from the ancient American Southwest's realistic and representational-
   geometrized cannon.  Centipede-leg and dot-group counter-motifs indicate days-visible counts
   that agree for the different celestial-entities with observations from other cultures across the
   globe.

2008 PECOS AND GENERAL HANDOUT PRINTABLE PDF's

ARCHITECTURE	ANTI-SOLAR TAIL	BARRIER CANYON STYLE COMET DEITIES	BARRIER CANYON STYLE COMET SHAPES	BARRIER CANYON STYLE: POTENT DEITIES AND TEN SUNS
BLAST LINES, AD1054 SUPERNOVA	COMET BY VENUS	COMET DESCRIPTIONS OF ANCIENT INDIA -BCS STYLE?	COMET HALLEY'S SOUTHWEST ICONS of 9th-12th c.	COMET ICONOGRAPHY CHECKLISTS FOR KIDZ OF ALL AGES
COMET SPIRAL/ MIMBRES ICONS 11.6MB	COMET TAILS- LARGEST MEASURED ENTITIES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM	COMETES-LES VAGABONDES DU CIEL	COMETS ALA 19th c.	COMETS AND CONSTELLATIONS
COMETY NAVAJO GLYPHS CHACO CULTURE NHP, NM	COSMIC SERPENT	CONCENTRIC CIRCLES	FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS	FIERY RED DISK
FLUTIST-COMET CONNECTIONS IN THE ANCIENT SOUTHWEST	FOLLOW THE TEXTURE	GLOSSARY http:// webhostinggeeks .com/ science/supernovae-petroglyphs-eu	GRAFFITI-OUT	"GREAT COMETS IN HISTORY" ICONOGRAPHY CHEAT SHEET
GREAT COMET OF AD1106?	GREAT COMET OF 1132	GREAT COMET OF 1471-72	GREAT COMET OF 1743-44	GREAT COMET OF 1861, TEBBUTT's COMET
HALLEY'S COMET OF 1835 www.Wordcraft.net	"JUST THE GREAT COMETS, MA'M"	KREUTZERS	MEANING OFTEN LURKS	MEANING OFTEN LURKS, II
MEANING OFTEN LURKS, III	MEANING OFTEN LURKS, IV	MEANING OFTEN LURKS, V	MEANING OFTEN LURKS, VI	MEANING OFTEN LURKS, VII
MEANING OFTEN LURKS, VIII	MEANING OFTEN LURKS, IX	MEANING OFTEN LURKS, X	MEANING OFTEN LURKS, XI	MEANING OFTEN LURKS, XII
MEANING OFTEN LURKS, XX	MIMBRES CONJUNCTIONS, PUEBLOAN RITUALS	METEORITES— BOLIDES	MYSTIC CAUGHT UP IN COMETS	NAVAJO COMETS?
NOISE CRACK	ORBIT: THE LONG ROAD HOME	PERSEUS HOLMES	PLAINS INDIAN COMET HEADDRESS	POINTING THE VIEWER
SCORPION MAN	SEMIOTICS	SHE SAID, HE SAID	SIX-FINGERS ROCK ART IN THE SOUTHWEST?	STARMAKER/ TRICKSTER COYOTE
TAURID DEBRIS AND FIREBALL FLUX	TWO-TAILED COMET	TYCHO AND COYOTE	UNDULATING LINE SHOWS MOTION AND COUNT	VISUAL ASTRONOMY HEADLINES IN THE SOUTHWEST
WE SAW THE COMET	WHICH IS A MIMBRES 4- TAILED COMET HALLEY, AD1145?	ZIG ZAG
ALL COMETS COLORING BOOK	COLOR ME CENTIPEDE. COLOR ME COYOTE	12 HOUSE AND ALL THAT JAZZ	CELESTIAL ROCK ART MOTIF INDEX	IF IT LOOKS LIKE A COMET