A Hohokam Petroglyph Record Of The AD 1006 Lupus Supernova?

A Hohokam Petroglyph Record Of The AD 1006 Lupus Supernova?

In the late spring of the year AD 1006, a bright supernova appeared in the southern constellation of Lupus. The event is found in astronomical records from east Asia as well as Europe and the Middle East, yet thus far there is no rock art record of the event from North America.

In 1993 while on a day trip to the petroglyph site in the White Tank Mountains Regional Park west of Phoenix, AZ, I came across a particular set of glyphs which may represent an eyewitness record of the event.

Here's the original image, scanned from a photographic print. Comparison with a later image of the same rock (see below) shows little evidence for alteration by defacing in recent years.

This is my tracing of the glyphs on the rocks, to highlight the "scorpion" and the other figures.

And a recent (May 2006) photo:

So how well does this match what skywatchers in ancient Arizona would have actually seen?

This composite was made from two sources: (1) a rendering of the night sky at the location of the glyph, looking south, at midnight on 1 May 1006, matching the date of the first reports in Chinese sources, and (2) the true profile of the horizon as viewed from the site. The horizon image has been registered properly in azimuth to recreate the appearance of the sky on the night of the event with geographical accuracy. Now compare this to the picture above, perhaps advanced a few hours to match the geometry of the rock glyphs a little better. There are some things I notice; for example, with a little imagination, you can make a small birdlike figure out of the stars in eastern Centaurus that resembles the figure below and to the right of the star. Is this a depiction of the Hohokam sky map for this part of the sky? (Thanks to Gil Esquerdo for creating the composite photo.)

Is this depiction of what appears to be a scorpion at all consistent with a constellation meaning? If the "star" near the center is meant to be a starlike object in intended meaning, could the scorpion indicate a relative position in the sky to the constellation we now call Scorpius? It's not an unreasonable proposition since many ancient cultures, Western and non-Western, identified the asterism we call the constellation Scorpius with either actual scorpions or dragons. Another criterion for the likelihood of my theory is whether the area was occupied by people at the time the event happened, and the time the glyphs are thought to have been carved. The Maricopa County online guide to the History Of The White Tanks Area states:

"Eleven archeological sites, occupied during the time period A.D. 500-1100, were located within the boundaries of White Tank Mountain Regional Park. All of these sites can be attributed to the Hohokam Indians. The White Tanks were apparently abandoned by the Hohokam about A.D. 1100. There is no further indication of human occupation until the historic period, when the Western Yavapai controlled the area."

So the timing is right for the glyphs, although it is speculated that they could be considerably older, say, up to 10,000 years old. Chemical analysis of the desert varnish inside and outside a glyph can establish the approximate age of a carving, so that would be one way to test it.

I did find on the web another image of this glyph. Interestingly enough, the photographer refers to this assemblage as "multiple sun symbols", but the "scorpion" doesn't look like a sun symbol to me. Usually sun signs are "hollow" in the center and stars are solid.

So... a glyph strongly resembling a scorpion near one representing a bright star at a site occupied in AD 1006... coincidence? Perhaps. But then again, so perhaps is the Chaco Canyon painting depicting the 1054 Crab event:

Clearly, just two generations later within the southwest, people were moved to record a similar sight. But then why don't we have a ubiquity of records of either event? Probably because the events may not have been viewed as auspicious unless they coincided with near-simultaneous external events (flood, fire, famine, death of certain community members, etc.) If this is something like a sky map showing the position of the SN, why did the artist choose to include the surrounding constellations? Locating it on the sky must have been important for some reason.