Portrait

Andromeda

Andromeda, Gustave Doré, 1869

In Greek Mythology, Andromeda is the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, King and Queen of Ethiopia. Her mother boasted that she herself (or, in some stories, her daughter) was more beautiful than the Nereids (sea nymphs). To punish the queen for her arrogance, Poseidon sent a sea monster named Cetus to ravage the kingdom.

The desperate King consulted the Oracle of Ammon, who announced that no respite would be found until the King sacrificed her daughter Andromeda to the monster. She was chained naked to a rock on the coast.Perseus was returning from having slain the gorgon Medusa, when he found Andromeda. Perseus was still wearing the winged sandals of Hermes that he had used in the task of decapitating Medusa, while watching what he was doing only through a mirror. He asked what had happened to Andromeda, and then when he heard, he promptly offered to rescue her by killing the sea monster, but on condition that her parents give her him in marriage. They agreed.

And so, Perseus showed the head of Medusa to the sea monster, which immediately turned to stone.  Then he unchained the princess and brought Andromeda back to her parents. Unknown to Perseus, Cepheus had already promised Andromeda to her uncle Phineus. At the marriage feast for Perseus and Andromeda, Phineus showed up with a group of armed supporters and demanded that Andromeda be given to him. However, Perseus once again used the head of Medusa and turned Phineus and his men to stone.

After her death, Andromeda was placed among the stars as the Andromeda constellation.

Collage

Lascaux: The secrets in the wall

It’s not the first time it has been known about an antique civilization with advanced knowledge. Many people could imagine the first civilizations as groups of human beings wearing clothes made of animal skins and living in caves. They learned to create the basic products to live. They traveled to find food and water and finally established to found the future nations.

Regarding Lascaux, why aren’t specialists convinced by the ideas of Chantal Jegues? Because apparently they think that people of yesterday couldn’t have represented the constellations without the support of technology. In this aspect, it would be possible to visualize the panorama with a different perspective. Let’s see an example:

Every day we need a variety of products, like cell phones, to communicate with each other people. We know how to use them but few ones know how the systems and processes make possible the communication. As technology grows we live more comfortably but the intelligence tends to remain the same.

Rather than thinking in how the “prehistoric astronomers” did that advance without technology, sometimes we should focus in making things with our brains as they did in the past. Obviously they understood the nature better than any regular person in the present and these are the basis of the actual knowledge.

After all, the purpose of humanity has been to register events like the moon phases and the equinoxes and solstices, because contemplating the nature and describing it let us know our history. In fact, the environmental conditions have influenced many decisions along the time. These dictate for example, the best season to sow some vegetables, the best way to construct buildings, and even, the way clocks of artificial satellites are programmed. The calendars were created to reveal what we have learned in the past, in the present, and to forecast what is going on in the future.

The curiosity of exploring Earth and taking a look around the cosmos is an inherent condition of us. Now we use modern and sophisticated tools, computers and programs to register all the observations. 20, 000 years ago, they used their minds as the principal tool and express the night skyscape as cave art. It’s brilliant because it’s an artistic and very difficult way to show the information.

Lascaux is an interesting point to visitors and investigators, not just for the technique used to draw the images but for the message inside of it. Of course, at first sight, many people deny the existence of a kind of astronomic observatory because it is not supposed to be there. So, the question is: How did the so-called “prehistoric astronomers” represent constellations as accurately as they did? The mystery remains.