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- Beautiful.

- Oh boy.

- Yeah.

- Welcome to After Dark Online, Winter Solstice. Thanks for joining us again as we continue to explore our world through science, art and conversation. My name is Sam and I'm a program developer as part of the team that helps produce After Dark. And though this program is virtual, the Exploratorium is located on Pier 15 in San Francisco, an unseated territory belonging to the Ramaytush Ohlone. We recognize that we are guests on this land and we honor the stewardship and conservation the Ohlone have offered for the ecology we inhabit both past and present. This whole month at After Dark Online, we've been looking at the theme of celestial. How the movement and alignments of the sun, earth and moon affect what we perceive and experience on our planet. Tonight, we're looking at the winter solstice which is coming right up on December 21st. This is the longest night of the year the shortest day of the year, where the sun is very low on the horizon for most of the day. How do we experience that? How does that work? We'll look at these questions tonight in this program. First, we'll share a short film by David Hill that visually evokes the light and shadow and mood that occur in San Francisco over winter solstice. Then we'll move to an expansive conversation with cultural astronomer, Alonso Mendez and Isabel Hawkins about how the solstice and other solar observations are integrated into ancient architecture and current cultures. But first, please enjoy San Francisco: Winter Solstice by David Hill. Thank you, David, for sharing your film with us. It offers a beautiful sense of place for our urban landscape in San Francisco, where the light and shadow of the solstice play off the buildings. Though sometimes urban environments are an obstruction to larger solar observations, between the light pollution and the tall buildings, we can't always get a true sense of the cycles and rhythms and movements that we can witness in the sky. So now we turn to a conversation with cultural astronomer Alonso Mendez and Exploratorium astronomer Isabel Hawkins. Using the winter solstice as a starting point, Alonso and Isabel share their experience and research on how observers from thousands of years ago marked the position of the sun and the moon in architecture. These markings are critical to agricultural rhythms, rituals, and celebrations and even political structures. Now, astronomical appreciation in the story is woven throughout culture through time and space, through mythologies and migration. I learned so much from Alonso and Isabel. Most importantly, that celestial observation is available to any of us in any place. Dr. Isabel Hawkins is an astronomer and project director at the Exploratorium. She received her PhD in astrophysics at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1986. She worked for 20 years at the university of California at Berkeley as a senior fellow on several NASA satellite projects. And as the director of science education at the Space Sciences Laboratory. Her work focuses on collaborating with integrity with indigenous knowledge holders and Western scientists to broaden access to science and enhancing participation by all communities to the appreciation of the cultural roots of science. Isabel received eight NASA awards between 2004 and 2008 for her work on NASA education and public outreach. Alonso Mendez is a Tzeltal Maya cultural astronomer who has spent more than 20 years researching the astronomical knowledge of the Maya. Alonso attended Middlebury College in Vermont, graduated in 1987 with a degree in fine arts. In 1997, he joined two archeological projects in Palenque during which he produced drawings that documented the new discoveries and developed 3D reconstructive drawings of the site. And he discovered astronomical alignments in the major temples, as well as new understandings of the hieroglyphic texts. Alonso has participated in educational programs with focus on indigenous science and knowledge through NASA and the Smithsonian. We hope you enjoy this conversation. Well, thanks for joining us Alonso and Isabel, as we talk more about the winter solstice. In just a few days as we know, it's gonna be the 21st of December which means we're at the solstice. And most of us know that as being the shortest day of the year, the longest night of the year. Many of us have a sense that it's a time of transition into the winter time. It's a time of transition into getting more sunlight thereafter but there's actually a lot more to observe about the winter solstice that it's just one marking point amongst many that we can make as citizen astronomers. And both of you are astronomers. Alonso, you're a cultural astronomer and Isabel, you work with the Exploratorium as an astronomer.

- Yes. And first of all, thank you for inviting us to this dialogue. And it's a pleasure to be here and an honor to be once again, working with Isabel and being in your group and discussing these important issues. I call myself a cultural astronomer now, after almost 15 to 20 years of working in Mesoamerican sites, the Maya which is my heritage. This was an opportunity to touch back to my heritage and explore some of the things that I knew from my studies that the Maya were very, very important as a civilization. And so I wanted to learn and to explore along with many others. So we're doing that at the time the archeological evidence that was left behind by a great peoples of the Americas.

- And where are you now doing some of this research?

- Well, it happens that I've traveled on northward. Like many of my ancestors, I've made a migration to the North, up to the Southwest and reside now in New Mexico where my youngest son is going to high school. And so being up here is also a very unique opportunity to participate in some of the studies and explorations that are being done in ancient sites, such as Chaco Canyon and the Chaco Cultural Heritage Zone. So I've been lucky enough to participate in some observations here, as well as participating in the writing of astronomical primarily to the study of astronomy by the ancient peoples but also participate as well in the living Pueblo culture, attending some of the festivals which we know are very important evidence of that knowledge. It's still alive and well today in this region.

- And Isabel, you've also traveled to Chaco Canyon, then as part of the Exploratorium staff helped with some research projects that happened there, is that correct?

- Yes. As a matter of fact, we worked in collaboration with local Pueblo knowledge holders in the region and the park service some of the interpreters there that have been in the area for 30 years, working together with them to understand the alignments of the sun and the ancestral structures within the context of the winter solstice. And so we were there a one, December, 2004 and it was absolutely freezing. And to be able to observe sunrise, winter solstice sunrise in relationship to both the horizon features but also to observe these expressions of the sun through light and shadow inside some of the ancestral buildings. It was really amazing. And we learned a lot about the living culture. We learned a lot about this beautiful site which is iconic of this house, Western region and it's something that is part of our heritage. As a matter of fact, some of the living pueblos like Taos or Acoma are the oldest continuously occupied cities in North America, more than a thousand years.

- Yeah. I've been learning so much from YouTube. We've been in conversation over the last week preparing for this. And it's really exciting to get to share a lot of the stories with our viewers tonight. So Isabel, I was wondering if you could help ground us first in understanding what exactly the winter solstice is astronomically.

- Yeah. Well, actually as you mentioned earlier, you have been noticing outside your window. You know, we as citizens of this planet we're in relationship with the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets. If we're lucky enough to have dark enough skies, we can see a lot of the beauty of the universe above us. And that connection is really something that we live through the year. Sometimes we notice it more than others but I think now is a particularly noticeable time because it is getting quite colder and the Northern hemisphere, it is also a time in which daylight is very short, you know in the 24 hours of the day, only less than 10 hours or so will be dedicated to the sun and then the rest will be dedicated to the nighttime. And so it's something that we do notice as people doing our daily concerns. But also astronomically, the solstice is the time when the sun will actually be seen from this latitude 38 degrees North. Where I'm standing in San Francisco, the sun will always be seen toward the South and it will arc from East to West as it rises and sets very low in the horizon during the winter solstice as a matter of fact, the lowest. So we get the least amount of daylight and things are colder because the sun will spend a much shorter time above the horizon. But also if we are dedicated to the practice of observing for example, sunrise or sunset from day to day for a long period of time, you will also notice that the sun actually rises or sets at a different point in the horizon from a fixed observation point. So let's just imagine that we are standing outside our doorstep, looking East at sunrise and that we are seeing the sun rise against a particular feature, either the horizon or if we are in an urban landscape perhaps behind a building or next to a telephone pole. And then the next day we might get up and see the same thing again, stand in the same spot, look at sunrise, and then you'll see that the sun will have moved a little bit and so on. And so every day that you go out, you will see the sun moving up to a point in which it gets to what we call an extreme or its maximum excursion. So the sun will actually stand still for four days at a given spot. And that is the moment of the solstice. So in this case, we're watching the summer solstice because we're looking East and the sun will be setting at its Northern extreme. And then as we continue throughout the year in this journey of the earth around the sun, the sun rise, the point of sun rise will move the other way in the horizon until again, it will stand still for about four days and this is the time of the winter solstice. And so basically we have divided the horizon into sections that divide the trajectory or the excursion of the sun into a well-defined position in the horizon. And that is another way for us to experience not only the solstices, but also the equinoxes. So for example, here it is even to see that the sun has gone through the horizon in a cycle that the complete from December solstice to December solstice it will take a full year, 365 days. And it's interesting that these kind of observations have been done by original peoples all over the world for thousands of years. So it's something that you can do yourself today to connect yourself astronomically to the solstices and equinoxes but it's something that is part of our heritage too.

- One of the things actually I wanted to mention though and it's important when we're talking about geography and the location is that peoples of the ancient world were astronomers that used the horizon as a basis and as a fixed element in their cosmovision. And so the use of the horizon line is what we call horizon-based astronomy. And this is common throughout all the Americas with the ancient peoples. And the other really important thing to mention is that we're talking about cultures that had a geocentric perspective. And so what we're seeing is the movement of an astronomical body through the skies not necessarily to our knowledge, these people knowing that it's the earth actually that's turning rather than the stars in the sky and the planets. And so the perspective is, and the idea is that these astronomical bodies were very important participants or characters in a great story being told. And oftentimes the sun and the moon being the brightest of the objects, those took precedence over many of the other astronomical bodies and so to regard them as deities was not an uncommon thing, and this is what we have to bear in mind. Often as we're engaged in watching the sun or the moon at ancient sites to see what their interaction to the sites was for people who regarded them as a great, life giving and always present, omnipresent beings. So in Chaco, much like in many other sites, the people of Chaco chose this location very carefully. And it seems that the orientation of the canyon itself embodies many of the alignments that are being represented in many of the buildings. So in other words, the Canyon itself allowed for observations, significant observations to take place and then as structures being placed within the Canyon began to tell a story about the relationship between different structures, the relationship between a structure and the horizon. This is a very significant aspect of Chaco and one that for sure, sort of guided the ancient peoples to create a ceremonial center of such magnitude as the Chaco Culture National Park. What we see on the horizon oftentimes is the locales and the various points of importance for solar alignment. And so from various building structures, this ones such as the one in Wijiji, viewing the sun at the winter solstice was associated to various features on the horizon. And the sun would emerge from the base of a mesa, for instance, or an alignment to a prominent feature of the horizon, such as a column or oftentimes a group of stones that were placed in a particular order. We, see these time and time again with reference to a particular building. And in the case of building structures themselves oftentimes there are features within the building that were purposefully placed so that the sun would interact in the interior of a building. So as to mark a specific moment in time, a seasonal change in the course of the sun's path and we can imagine the ancient astronomers waiting for those shadows to align themselves within an interior space. We see this occurring here in Pueblo Bonito, for instance with a corner window projecting a beam of light into a a corner of the interior structure. Other features such as Casa Rinconada which is a large kiva, would allow the sun to penetrate the kiva on only a particular time of year which presumably may have been on a marker and a moment when people could guide themselves to initiate a particular ceremony or a particular activities such as agriculture.

- I just love what you're saying there Alonso. I guess it just reminds me of this key relationship between place, time, structures that we build to be in connection with place and our daily living, you know? And I just always wanna encourage people and encourage myself, remind myself that we have an opportunity to do just that in the environment wherever we live, even if it's an urban environment, if it's a rural environment, we have the opportunity to really notice these changes in nature, to notice the cycles of the sun because it's important. It's important to feel connected to a greater purpose and to a greater universe. You know, I always kind of like to get a little bit poetic and share just that there are opportunities for us to think beyond our daily routine because it helps us. It helps us do a better job in our daily lives, it helps us connect with other people, it helps us have greater perspective about other cultures. And I think what you're sharing now, it's just bringing all of these feelings inside me and remembering the time when I was there freezing on a cold morning on December, 2004.

- Well, one of the things that I'm thinking that you expressed very well Samuel is that, you're very sensitive to those changes in the seasons. And so these things are palpable in ceremonial centers, especially because they were created in such a way to hallmark these moments in time. And so entering into a site that was carefully aligned to those particular moments, you can really feel the aspect that the ceremonial centers served as a solar observatory or a calendar of sort for the moon and the sun. One that mark the meter of the seasonal changes that occurred on the planet. And so it's easy to feel that at a ceremonial center harder to feel in a more urban setting but those are things that I think as we remember, and begin to apply those same principles into our lives, we can begin to really make more significant our relationship to the place and time that we inhabit.

- And that's something that's, as Isabel mentioned is available to us now. And it's really neat to see these images from Chaco Canyon. It's so beautiful. And even though it looks cold, it's a place it looks like I'd like to visit. But this is a later culture that employed some of these codification of solar alignments into their architecture. A lot of your research background goes to even earlier cultures, Alonso. Can you tell us a bit about site at Palenque?

- Well, yes, it's a very great honor of mine and pleasure to go back home to the tropics. It's a very different feeling from the North where there's the Ostia and severe environment is the direct opposite to what you see in the jungle setting of a zone like Palenque. So for me, it was a return back to what I considered almost as an origin point for me and my culture. I was immediately drawn to the ancient cultures from a young period. And so when I was able to return to Mexico, now as a scholar and not as an artist I was immediately drawn to Palenque as the focus for my investigations. And so I began working in Palenque in the '90s, '93, '94 and began working as an artist on the projects developing maps and drawings of the site and excavations as they were happening. And so I was lucky enough to begin working in iconic sites or structures like the Temple of the Inscriptions and the Cross Group where my work as an artist allowed me to spend long hours in the temples and making detailed drawings of the architecture and the art. From those drawings, I began to really, began to extrapolate some of the more difficult subjects like astronomy and translation of the hieroglyphs, things like that really began to play a key in our understanding of the ancient sites like Palenque. We lived basically through a time of great learning and understanding as the knowledge of the hieroglyphs began to be deciphered. And so unlike Chaco which has beautiful structures, beautiful architecture on a surrounding that is a significant in geographic terms, Palenque has an added feature of having a language, a written language, and one that allowed us to peer into the history of the site. And through that understanding, we were able to glean a lot of details about astronomical relevance of certain dates, the significance of those dates to a building or a series of buildings with relationship to a real astronomical knowledge that was being expressed. And so I began to focus on structures that showed these particular alignments and look to the written corpus to find evidence of a possible significance for that building to be aligned in that way. And sure enough, we began to see that in buildings such as this one, how to see in The Palace, you have art which graces the facade of the of the building, you have writing that is incorporated into the steps of the building. And in that writing, we began to see that important dates correspond to important solar events. And so this was a great confirmation of our suspicions that these temples were built for a purpose. And that purpose is really comes from a deep relationship to a history of agriculture and the foundations of a civilization being built on the framework of agricultural society. And this is really one of the key understandings that we had, that we developed over time, because what we're seeing is that the ruler himself is drawing from a history and a mythology that involves deities who were associated to the sun and moon. These areas of course, being very critical in the process of agriculture and the development of agriculture. And so the ruler himself is beginning to associate himself to the deities. His buildings are in a sense his own creation and much like the gods in the sky created the earth and their movements through the sky influence life on earth, the ruler had to elevate himself to a position where he could also say that he was of such significance that the world depended on him to be in that crucial and critical role as a pillar of the society. And so we began to see in places like the Temple of the Inscriptions the promotion of the ruler as this pivotal figure in his environment.

- I think that's so fascinating to learn about the overlap of astronomy and culture and politics. And I'm envious of your position as a cultural astronomer to kind of take this holistic view and get to put all these clues together. That is not just a coincidence. It's not just one piece of the sunlight through the building, but you're also learning this through the language, the mythology and you can kind of use these clues to reconstruct with a very good guess how these people kind of aligned themselves with, again the star and their own positions of power.

- I think that's a very--

- Yeah. Palenque has so much--

- It's very human element to try to utilize anything within your grasp to make yourself and your whole community to elevate your community to a stature that was enviable around your locale. And this is what we see it happening in both Palenque and many sites as we traveled northward presumably following the path of corn because corn and these ideas go hand in hand, they are carried in the migrations over time to new locations. And in these new locations, either some of the story is being adhered to and preserved modified over the course of time as well because you're dealing with different latitudes and different locations where corn developed differently. And then you see that evidence in the beautiful varieties of corn that emerge over time.

- This is an image that Isabel took. And I think you actually have this corn with you, right Isabel?

- That's right. I mean, I feel that corn kind of reflects the biodiversity of place but it's also a reflection of the biodiversity of the cultures, depending on your latitude and your particular ecological location. And here's that corn

- Way to travel, right?

- I actually have it. I actually have it. And so this is from Peru, these over here and this is from the Yucatan. This one is from the Southwest. No, I'm sorry, this one from the Southwest and this is from Oaxaca. So, corn is a beautiful way of reminding ourselves of that biodiversity.

- And I hope you declared that corn as you were traveling across.

- Yeah. That's right. Everybody asks me, oh, did you just sneak that corn in through customs? But actually I declared every time because it is perfectly fine to bring corn in as long as it doesn't have bugs. So one time I was, I declared the corn but I called it maize in the hope that the customs official will think it's something else. Or sometimes I say popcorn, which is exactly true. And so they take me into the back room and they take the corn out and put it on a piece of white paper and then just knock against it to see if there's any little bugs that come out. And if it's clean, I can just bring it home. So don't be afraid of declaring actually, that's been a lesson hard one for me.

- Well, back in the old days, corn you didn't have to declare corn at the borders. You probably gifted it along the way. And you were carrying heirloom seeds like the ones that Isabel is showing us. Corn is a very beautiful and a hardy plant that can travel well like that in seed form. And so I believe that corn was moved up and down the continent and the evidence for that is just the beautiful varieties that we see in South America and North America. This year we had the opportunity to grow a little bit of Hopi corn on Taos Pueblo this year. And some of the ears were just so beautiful and really makes us feel a part of, and connected to the earth ear.

- And corn is an essential nutrient and meal. And so it sounds very foundational to kind of for civilizations to flourish but it's also wrapped into some of their storytelling. Isn't it?

- Well for the Maya, definitely this was probably the most prolific of the topics in the art and iconography of the Maya. And we see the story of the corn god being told on time and again as a crucial and very pivotal moment in the creation mythology. And we see that depicted in the beautiful vessels such as this plate from the Peten it's showing the three deities that are pivotal in the creation myth. The first, father and the hero twins, the twins that are associated to the sun and moon. These twins are the second arrival of twins after their fathers were destroyed in the underworld. And so this is the myth of corn and the regeneration of corn out of the earth, which is represented as a turtle. You see at the bottom, this kind of crisscrossed carapace of the turtle, also reminiscent of the earth in a milpa. As we plant our corn, we planted in a grid-like pattern so that the corn can flourish and develop properly. And so what we see is a really important story being told about the emergence of the central tree or as corn was viewed in the ancient times as this vertical trunk of a tree that emerges out of the earth, tended to by the sun and the moon which their movements and their appearance on earth really is the formative moments of creation. These deities that were very important to people and agriculture move into the sky much like we represent walking through the sky. And so their movements through the sky really are a key element in the description of their appearance and the development of time through their movement, as well as opening up the sky or lifting the sky into its place by what we interpret as a movement to the extremes of the horizon, as well as the vertical extremes and in the zenith and the nadir. And this is a really beautiful story that's told about in the temples of Palenque where the establishment of this vertical axis, the axis moon day that we say, it's a tree that was a sacred tree to the Maya, the yaxche, or the green tree, or the ceiba. The ceiba was the world tree for the Maya, much like the pine was a world tree for the Northern peoples. And throughout the world, I think many cultures have regarded trees as these central icons that held the sky in place. And so the movement of the sun is related to the lifting of the axis, which held the sky in place. And we talk about still to this day in modern Maya culture that the sun passes through the horizon, through the trunk of these great trees that stood on the very corners of the world. And so Isabel has the many experiences of these celebrations in the Yucatan, for instance. It's very, very prominent.

- Yeah, in the Yucatan it's extremely prominent especially just the noticing the passage of the sun kind of straight overhead because it's interesting that as you move South from here in San Francisco, you know eventually you cross the Tropic of Cancer and when you're within the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn is when you start to notice that the sun is actually much higher in the sky at all times of the year but particularly two times of the year when the sun will be directly overhead which is an experience that we don't have here in the Northern hemisphere. So by going South I learned so many different things about connection and this kind of sense of verticality that you have within the tropics that you don't experience at more extreme latitudes for both South and North.

- So, you stood underneath the tree and were able to look straight up while the sun was also right above you?

- Exactly. And then my own shadow kind of was like I was stepping on it, right? So it was in the Yucatan I remember in one of the archeological sites called Chichen Itza. At noontime, I just basically saw my own shadow disappear. And then you just look around you and you see that everyone else is standing in the same way. We're just walking around and there's no shadows anywhere for that instant. And it is a very eerie moment in which you see all these people walking around and there's no shadow behind them. So it was pretty cool.

- And I think it's important to mention that in the tropics much like in the North territory so where you have the solstices marking the waxing and the waning of life in general, you know the agricultural seasons and the swamps and coldness those really mark the Northern territories but in the tropics, zenith and the nadir mark the waxing and waning of the rainy seasons and thus, they become the markers of life as well in the tropics. And so we began to see a relationship to that a particular event in many of the sites because that was the moment that you began your, the zenith was the moment that you began your agricultural season and the zenith was also the moment that you were able to harvest your corn. So this really begins to be a very significant feature of ancient Mesoamerican alignments, the watching of the zenith, the marking of the zenith and also because it played into the story behind the creation myth whereas zenith and nadir were the two primary moments that vertical access was established in the creation.

- So, explain that a little bit more about, you mentioned zenith and you mentioned nadir, so if you can just, I can understand zenith just by being there and observing the sun directly over my head and my shadow disappear. So how would I know about nadir, which is the polar opposite underneath when the sun straight down?

- It's a very interesting question and one that we often times disregarded for many, many years and not really appreciated the amount of connection that the ancient peoples had to this underworld place. The underworld was a place where our ancestors unnecessarily had to travel through in order to defeat the lords of death and to reemerge into the sky, to join the ancestors in the sky. But so we regard the underworld as having a sky much like the overhead sky, the dome of the daytime sky. And so what does the sun do when it travels past the horizon? Where does it go? Those were questions that the ancient peoples were asking themselves. And so through projection and through geometrical understanding of the horizon, it was possible to predict the path of of the sun through into the underworld. And so people, it seems very, very carefully and very efficiently could predict what was occupying that central portion of the sky. And we call it the nadir. This is the anti zenith. The zenith being the point overhead, nadir being the plane directly under foot.

- And then they happened like six, and they happened like six months apart. Is that right?

- Well, it's actually in that area of Mesoamerica, it functions as the cross quarter. So much like the image that you saw in the beginning where we were explaining the solstices being opposite of one another, and the equinoxes being opposite of one another, well, in the tropics they fall exactly between the equinox and the solstices these moments of time. And so we call them cross quarters because they divide the time between the equinox and the and the zenith or the equinox and the solstices. And so these moments were also a division of quarters of time and space, literally. And so zenith of course is much more visible because you're able to monitor it through the shadows that are produced by a vertical object. And so anything that is in broad daylight during the mid day hours of the zenith passage will show no shadows but also we're tracking it through tubes, underground tubes, such as the one we see in Monte Alban and Chichen Itza had one as well. There were other sites that employed these observatories to mark the moment of time when the sun was passing directly overhead. And these were critical moments that could be celebrated and observed very carefully and monitored very carefully.

- I remember you telling me that you could actually like experience zenith over a very long period of time by just kind of walking in latitude from South to North for example.

- This is a--

- So that you could, Yeah. So can you share the story about walking with the zenith as you came North? I remember that story.

- This is a really interesting phenomenon that I was drawn to because of the pilgrimages that take place in Mexico. And it was a very prominent part of the society and culture as well as in many Northern places. For instance, in Chaco, we have the evidence of great roadways that connected sites together. What were these roadways used for? In the Yucatan, we have the sacbes that were crisscrossing the peninsula. And so it's possible to walk from site to site. And what we discovered was, what is understood is that the zenith is an event that takes place at a particular site or at a particular latitude at a particular date. So as you're traveling from the Equator, going to the North you will begin to experience zenith at a different time. As you're traveling North, the zenith gets closer and closer to the solstices. At the Equator the zenith that takes place on the equinox. So only one zenith taking place, oh, two zenith taking place on each equinox. As you travel further to the North, as you get closer to 23 degree latitude of the Tropic, the Northern Tropic, then the zenith begins to get closer and closer until you're at the tropics when that coincides with the solstices, with the summer solstice. We see a site in the North on 23 degree latitude which is the Tropic of Cancer. That site, it's zenith passage coincides with the summer solstice. And so those sites like Altavista were placed there intentionally I believe in order to mark that locale and that zenith for the particular date and time that it was built. And so what we began to see is this kind of a gradual progression of, it's almost like a shadow that tracks from South to North. As you're traveling, you could put that potentially be on a zenith's site for each of your stopping moments. As you're traveling northward, it's almost about 1,000 kilometers, 100 kilometers, I'm sorry for each of the zenith dates. So you could walk 100 kilometers, stop. And then the next morning you would see the same event, the zenith event, and then pack it up again, travel another a hundred kilometers North and then watch another zenith occur.

- And that sounds like that just happens by noticing your own shadow. And you can take note and record of when that happens but it sounds like to mark some of these sites that there's intention in the architecture to also track where the sun is in any given position. Can you talk about the different ways that the sun can be tracked through architecture?

- Well, what we were beginning to see in many of the sites as we study them going northward, what we're seeing is that many sites are aligning their structures to the local zenith passage. This structure, for instance in Dzibilchaltun not a zenith passage but an equinox, shows you how certain buildings can interact with the sun on a particular day. These events, we call hierophany from the Greek meaning hieros as sacred and phainein as to reveal. Revealing the sacred nature of a building is really embodied in this philosophy where you could align a building so that at a particular date that building would burst into resplendent nature and show that it was indeed built according to a divine law. And so a second type of hierophany is seen in the interactions between a particular temple and the sun on a specific date or an important date, such as the the Temple of Kukulcan or El Castillo at Chichen Itza. On the equinoxes at the appearance of a triangular shaped pattern on one of the balustrades of the temple shows this appearance of a Kukulcan, the feathered serpent. And it said to descend down the temple during the very important equinoxes of the springtime to indicate that Kukulcan is coming down from the heavens and entering into the earth to replenish the earth of the very much needed rains. And so this is the second type of hierophany where interactions between the temple and the sun are very important and make for a very, for a display that would be visible by a multitude. Many people gathered in a sacred space in a plaza like Chichen Itza.

- That's an amazing photograph there. And just seeing all the people interacting with this moment and enjoying this moment. I remember being there during this time of equinox and it made me realize that I could be more intentional in noticing these patterns back at home. I took the learning that I could do this at home and try and find my own alignments. And I started to notice things like, for example when you open my door in the garage to turn to the side, at certain times of year there's this shaft of light that comes from the staircase. It's just this collimated beam of light. And it just happens there during the time between the summer solstice and the equinox. And so that gives me my own little solar alignment that I started to notice and it's just the happenstance, you know? But I wonder if it's this combination of noticing and being intentional. And I remember one time I was recently also in Guatemala for the December solstice, December 21st at this town called Santo Tomas Chichicastenango in Guatemala. And Santo Tomas is a church, is a feast, is as a town, a celebration, but as you can see in all the people that are standing on the stairs going up to the church, it kind of looks almost like a pyramidal shape because this Catholic church by the Spanish colonizers was actually built on top of a Mayan temple. And this is actually an astronomical observatory for the winter solstice. You might notice like behind the church is a very bright, well, that is East. And I think that what we did is we used one of these modern apps that overlays the sky but leaving the image in front of it. And you can kind of see that basically the sun at sunrise is aligned precisely with that church. As seen from another Catholic temple which is connected to this main church through this roadway. And it's almost one of these sacred roads. And that other temple was also built on top of Mayan ancestral, a site of ritual. So it's just fascinating that the contemporary structures that we see sometimes are cloaking every deep connection to place and to astronomy. So that was very fascinating for me to be able to see this firsthand during the winter solstice at Chichicastenango.

- And so these hierophanies are still present in contemporary cultures and recognizing the sacred. And there's a third type of hierophany, isn't there, Alonso?

- Yeah. The last hierophany that we can identify is a much more private one in nature. And when that occurs on the interior of these structures oftentimes a window or a doorway will allow sunlight to penetrate into the depths of the structure and a mark on a wall or a corner of a building, the moment that presumably the astronomers were waiting for. And so during the course of the year you would see that shadow get closer and closer to that mark, that important feature in the interior. And finally, when it arrived there, of course the viewers would announce the arrival of the winter solstice as is the case in Chaco Canyon.

- So here we are back in Chaco Canyon at this winter solstice date. And I love that we've seen these different codifications of hierophanies as I learned of how to kind of capture or celebrate or highlight the sun in these buildings and in these architecture in three different ways.

- Yeah. And it would be a very palpable event to both the leaders of the ceremonies, the important priests or rulers that were watching for that moment. You could see in a very tangible way the effect of sunlight pronouncing the arrival of that date and on the exterior of the building, of course, the throngs of people that were attending could also be sort of in awe of the alignment of that temple to that particular event. And oftentimes the ruler himself would emerge out of the mouth of the temple to be bathed in the sunlight of that important moment. And so you can imagine that being a very theatrical moment that could be utilized in a political way.

- I remember being in awe of observing some of these alignments. I remember Alonso, you and I, and some of our other Pueblo colleagues and Shelly Valdez is featured here in a photograph. We were there together for an equinox a few years ago maybe 2008 or somewhere, and also have been there to witness celebrations like solstice celebrations with other members of the living pueblos, who still celebrate these times of alignment with the sun through their dances and ceremonies at Chaco Canyon. That was one of the most fun and beautiful moments at the site. I don't know if you remember when we were there--

- Yeah of course. And seeing all the feathers and headdresses and costumes that they're utilizing in their ceremonies. This is a direct connection to the Mesoamerican as well because what we're beginning to see is, and through the archeological evidence in Chaco Canyon, we see the evidence of important exotica that was brought to the North from Mesoamerica, things such as chocolate with possibly some of these shards of vessels where was served in, or was stored in macaw feathers, which are very, really, very much used in the ancient past, but also today in Pueblo culture.

- That's an incredible link that of crossing cultures and evolution of these civilizations. And it does remind me kind of how it brings us back to what we can do now, we can still celebrate it, we can still notice the solstice sun or the sun at any given point. Thanks for bringing some of that kind of perspective. And I think like you say it really, I do feel connects us across cultures and the observations we can make.

- Well, thank you for inviting us and having us on. I'm really hopeful that this program and further observations will enrich young people's lives and encourage them to follow the path of the sun and moon and watch the cycles occur and celebrate like ancient peoples used to do.

- Absolutely. Thank you. That's just such a great opportunity for us as the winter solstice approaches, just a few days we can perhaps be motivated to get up early in the morning, even though it's cold but sometimes it's so beautiful outside of that time and try to wait for that sunrise. And remember these very old and deep connections that were began in the same way just by noticing one sunrise on one horizon, perhaps.

- Well, thank you so much for the reminder of how we too can be observers of the sun and connecting us back to these cultures that preceded us and still are living with us today. Noticing, it really has sparked my curiosity and I've learned a lot. Thank you Alonso for joining us today and Isabel as always, thank you for helping us understand more of the world around us.

- Thank you.

- You're very welcome, thanks.

- I am so grateful for that conversation and inspired by the new ways that I learned to observe, consider, and be in a more direct relationship with the sky. Thanks so much Alonso and Isabel again for your time. And thank you for learning with us again this week. We'll be back with After Dark Online, starting January 7th. Until then, enjoy the winter solstice. Stay curious.