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Rock Art and Astronomy at Las Flores, Puerto Rico

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Rock Art and Astronomy at Las Flores, Puerto Rico ROCK ART AND ASTRONOMY AT LAS FLORES, PUERTO RICO Duane W. Eichholz ABSTRACT At Las Flores, Puerto Rico, material engineered for astronomy gives knowledge of forms that can regulate observation during the seasonal year. An array of pecked lines on bedrock locates the apex of a trend of features to a distant mountain horizon. Two lines assembled of rounded, river boulders focus the field of vision to the sun and moon in the midwinter sky. Pocked and groove marked stones placed within in this trend make base lines that diverge to stellar elements and are identified. This structure can determine periods of seasonal rain. Correlation of the declination of the sun with phases of the moon can indicate a possible lunar or solar eclipse. RESUMEN En Las Flores, Puerto Rico, material diseñado para astronomia da conocimiento de formas que pueden regular observaciones durante estaciones del año. Un arreglo de lineas esculpidas en roca localiza el ápice de una variedad de formas en las montañas enel horizonte distante. Dos lineas arregladas o hechas con cantos de rio enfocan la vista del sol y la luna en el cielo a medio invierno. Puntos y rayas esculpidas de iqual manera sobre piedras localizadas dentro de este arreglo están dirigidas hacia estrellas y éstas pueden ser identificadas. Estas estructuras pueden determinar periodos de lluvia temporal. Correlaciones entre la declinación del sol y las faces de la luna pueden indicar eclipses de sol o de luna. RESUME A Las Flores au Porto Rico, le matéiel arrangé pour l'astronomie porte connaisânce sur les formes qui peuvant régler l'observation pendant les saisons de l'année. Un étalage de lignes picotées sur roche localise le placement originel d'une variété de traits en direction vers un horizon montagnard au loin. Deux rangs de roches de rivière mettent au point la vue sur le soleil et sur la lune au fort de l'hiver. Des pierres grêlées et creusées placées dans cet arrangement forment des lignes de base qui se divergent aux éléments stellaires et qui sont identifiées. Cette construction peut determiner les périodes de pluie saisaonnière et la possibilité d'éclipsés lunaires ou solaires. KEY WORDS: Constellations, Puerto Rico, Rock Art (Petroglyphs), Seasonal Astronomy. INTRODUCTION The site at Las Flores is bounded by the Coamo River where it provides a continuous mountain vista on the circle of the horizon. While the orientation, dimensions and natural surface of the land allow little variation for placement of man-made elements, the location of a bedrock outcrop and significant petroglyphs coordinated with stone lines on a leveled plaza makes a purposive pattern over 400 m long. All artifacts are located in a trend to the easterly mountain profile that motivates the questions this site would ask (Figure 1). What possible regular system can there be to account for the layout at Las Flores? Straightforward observation of details with a compass, maps and photographs, shows that the placement of site features, with relationship to the surrounding natural features, indicates a possible structure that can function as an observatory to see coherent astronomy. 3 4 Proceedings of the 17th Congress for Caribbean Archaeology If some accountability can be made for this connection, what science can provide the source and perhaps the content of the site layout? Two stone lines coordinate a rayed rock carving aligned to the midwinter sky. This data postulates one mandate or purposive activity performed by those who used this site was to notice the apparent motion of celestial bodies within this trend and relate this ratio of place to regular intervals of local, seasonal events. The site was discovered in 1972 after a flood exposed a midden at the bounds of the site (Eichholz 1976). Analysis of excavated objects derives a long record of occupation that illustrates: a red-on-white shard that dates from the late first millennium B.C. (Wilson 1991:195-196), Cedrosan Saladoid pottery and a three-pointed object from about A.D. 400 to 600, and an Ostionoid zemi from A.D. 900 to 1200 (Rouse 1992:Figure 26). The site permits a study of the structure, pattern and design of sites in the Caribbean that contain rock assemblages. These questions are inferred through perceptual attributes that we know by introspection and observations were used by prehistoric man for real explanation and are to be accounted for by surface measure, archeology, and astronomy. The goal of this project is to provide an analysis applied as a user test to show that practical construction, psychology of perception, and engineering for special purposes can account for this site and situation. The test will demonstrate the appearance and function of this class of objects to try to discover how the world was comprehended and explained within a system of nature and the sum of what was known within their social reality THE ENVIRONMENT Las Flores is located in south-central Puerto Rico, 3.3 km south of Coamo on Highway 153. On the United States Department of Interior Geological Survey map, USGS COAMO, PR, the Las Flores site is situated, across from the Coamo River, some 600 m west from where it intersects with Highway 546, at 18° 02' 54" North Latitude and 66° 22' 24" West Longitude, with an overall elevation of 80-110 m. The magnetic declination was 7 degrees west of True North when the corrected datum was set at 91.62 m by Gary Vescelius (USGS 1960). An artesian system of hot springs at Baños de Coamo, Puente de aguas tamales, is 1.4 km away. There is visual communication to an extensive cave system with pictographs located 4.8 km away (Eichholz 1995). At 4.7 km from the intersection of Highway 154 with Highway 153, an unimproved road runs 2 km southeast to a spring where there are indigenous surface finds and clay pits. Weathered shell scatter is found on Camino Rio Jueyes, from Las Flores through Rio Jueyes, 24 km to a coral bay with mangrove swamps at Bahia de Rincón. The Coamo River is the perennial confluence of three rivers that flow to the Caribbean Sea and provide inland communication to rain forest products. The river is a swift switch back on the north, east, and south limits of the site. The river bed consists of rounded boulders one half to 5 m in diameter. These boulders are made from a tufaceous conglomerate of the Coamo formation, which weathers to dark green, greenish black, reddish brown and purple, and a post-Cuevas formation of sandstone and siltstone, which weathers to pale orange or brownish gray. The site is a Quaternary, terraced, alluvial fan, of Cuevas pink limestone and post-Cuevas material, 20-30 m deep, with outcrops of Coamo conglomerate (Glover 1961). Rain falls in May and June and August to October for 50-100 days with some violent downfalls. In intervening months intermittent showers fall in no definite pattern for a total annual Eichholz 5 average below 50 inches. There are spectacular double rainbows that rise in radiational mist over the site after midwinter sunrise. Hurricanes have passed over the site in September and October, about every twenty years since 1900 (United States National Oceanic and Atmosheric Administration 1978:1129-1160). Flat, open, alluvial soil support drought resistant grasses, thorny shrub and cactus cover. Level topography begins a gradual elevation about one kilometer distant to mountain elevations of 250-370 m that surround the site. Ten kilometers northerly, elevation reaches the Cordillera Central at 840 m and rises to 1340 m at Monte Joyuya, where small tracts of rain forest still exist. Southerly, the terrain drops to a low plain and shallow bay with mangrove swamps. THE ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY AND PERCEPTUAL SKY "All celestial bodies of which man has knowledge are in motion" (Bowditch 1966:351 ). The trend of a situation to the ESE horizon satisfies conditions for perception that would observe these bodies in apparent motion due to the rotation of the earth and revolution of the solar system. Observation will notice an apparent motion of the solar system due to the polar tilt and rotation of the earth that causes stars to shift westward nearly 1 degree and rise about four minutes earlier each night. Thus, different stars are associated with different seasons. This general precession of the equinox does not substantially affect the apparent motion of the solar system in accuracy, obliquity of the ecliptic, orbit of the moon, or planetary configuration. Long observation will also notice a slow retreat in the declination of stars and raise time of stars on the equator nearly 1 degree in 60 years due to the spin of the poles during galactic revolution. This proper motion does affect correlation of rise time and declination of stars to constructed calendars of star data that are beyond this epoch (1900) and it must be calculated for each star (Bowditch 1966:369, 373, 955). The sun appears to follow the declination of the earth during the seasonal year. The moon follows the sun in a course that will vary about 29 degrees from this path. Planets have their own configurations. On or near the focus of the trend of the site, one or two solar eclipses can be observed every 18.6 years, in a narrow band of latitude, at midwinter. The cycle repeats with minor differences for 56 years (Bowditch 1966:381). The cycle repeats at the midsummer sun and the composite cycle repeats every 111 to 114 years. A lunar eclipse will occur whenever the ecliptic limits of the sun and moon coincide wherever the Full Moon is visible.
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