Indian Solar Gardening Calendar

I will have to edit this when I get home.  My apologies at this time, as we are driving in and out of cell towers and I need to close while I have a bar! From Sedona, south on 179 to highway 17. Go straight under the freeway and continue south on the windy paved road of the V-Bar-V Ranch. Watch for signs to the rock art or maybe it was rock drawings. Get back on highway 17, going south. Montezuma Well and Montezuma Castle are also well worth visiting.

Two days ago, we visited an Indian Rock Art site south of Sedona.  The ranger at the actual rock site must hate his job (lol) as he loved questions so he could give great detailed explanations. And, I love to learn new things.

These Indians were agrarian which leads to the marvelous ingenuity of this specific rock. Looks like a bunch of graffiti, huh?  Or, maybe story-telling?  But, it's much more than that, it's a growing calendar.

See the 3 rocks in the upper right corner, 2 of which are struck by the sun.  The 3rd rock is just a "cornerstone."  Also, notice the sliver of rock on the right that looks like it was wedged between our calendar rock and the big right on the right.  Notice the difference between the photo above and this one:

And this one:  

See the shaft of light?  It's moving up into a near horizontal position at this time of the year and will be horizontal on the winter solstice.  The light is NOT striking any of the figures or symbols on the lower part of the rock at this time.  That is because it is past the autumn equinox.  By now they had harvested their 3 Sister's crops and cotton.



In the spring, at spring equinox, the sun shaft would be striking the left side concentric circles (7 different circles) in a certain way and they knew it was time to start their gardens.  The light shaft hit in some particular place at summer solstice and the process would reverse with the shaft returning to the horizontal position.  In addition, the stairs marked off the growing months between spring and fall equinoxes.

Oh, remember the skinny slab of rock stuck between the 2 big rocks?  See how it started throwing a ridge of shadows on the rock?  Well, the shadow matches a row of mountains miles north of this site when the gods reside.  When the garden season started, they would call upon the gods to come down to their gardens and bless them.  Then the gods would return to the mountains up north until they were needed again.

There are more symbols on the rock that have really neat meanings.  The turtle symbols at the top are like an endorsement that this rock was gospel, the turtles representing the water people more northward.  Sort of like a new church being blessed by the bishop, designating it as an authentic site.

WOWOWOWOW. So cool! Thanks, Sanderson.

Thanks Sanderson, know what one of my stops will be this winter. Thanks again

John

glad you liked it. Oh, wait, it had to do with gardening. I need to fix it tonight but this is a start.

VERY interesting!!!  Kinda like their own version of a Mayan or Inca calendar....

Can you imagine the work that when into making that......?

My PC at home is broken. Will try to fix photos later today.

I know, Marie, that is what I kept thinking....and how many seasons and years it took to come up with the guidance that then got carved into that stone and the alignment of the rocks...wow. Ancient knowledge=observational science=rocks.

I did a little editing on the original post tonight.

Also, 2 other must see on Highway 17, Montezuma's Well and Montezuma Castle.

Is Montezuma's Well a crater lake? Looks like it. Amazing pics, Sanderson!

+1!  Looks like you're having a LOT of fun!

SR, collapsed limestone sinkhole. http://www.azheritagewaters.nau.edu/loc_MontezumaWell.html

Marie, I took my 3 kids to the Well, Castle and a different set of boulders with petroglyphs/petrographs some 30 years ago during the summer. This time I took Ken. When the kids and I were there, we took the pathway down to some level with the Ranger. It was cool, moist and mystical with a parallel outlet canal. This trip, the path was closed for repairs due to a break in the parallel canal that was undermining the path.

October is a great time to visit desert areas. We traveled 2,300 miles in 8 days.

There must have been one moment in time when some person, male or female, made an observation and placed a rock. I wonder how many thousands of years ago?

Like in my own valley, someone made the observation not to plant non-hardy plants until the snow on the two lots of twin peaks within sight , were clear of snow. I make use of this particular observation when I want to plant out tomatoes. We talked about it in some other thread fairly recently.

Husband built me a solar calendar last Dec. Today, Oct 20, is on the Feb 20 mark like it should be!! I only have 2 other light marks on it, Dec twenty something and March 24. Nov 20 should be good for Jan 20, when I should start the spring seedlings indoors. Let's see if I can be more diligent for the missing months.

sanderson wrote:Husband built me a solar calendar last Dec.  Today, Oct 20, is on the Feb 20 mark like it should be!!  I only have 2 other light marks on it, Dec twenty something and March 24.  Nov 20 should be good for Jan 20, when I should start the spring seedlings indoors.  Let's see if I can be more diligent for the missing months.    

Solar Calendar !? How it works.. ?

Raj,  Each month starting with Dec 20, Winter Solstice, the sun starts to move from the south sky to the north sky, with June 20 Summer Solstice being the longest daylight in the northern hemisphere.  Dec 20, the sun is at the lowest in the south (right end of board).  The shadow the metal makes at mid day will be far to the left (north).  Each month the shadow gets closer to the 2 wood pegs and metal bar.  In June it actually is up in the north sky, throwing the shadow to the right.  Then it reverses as we move closer the winter.  My goal was to mark where the shadow line is each month on the 20th of the month.

This is just a fun project because we have calendars to tell the date and therefore the different times to do different gardening projects.  The American Indians in the state of Arizona used the sunlight on the rock to mark when to plant the beans, corn and winter squashes, when to harvest each of them.

Add: I lined the board up in a north-south direction using a compass

Kelejan wrote:There must have been one moment in time when some person, male or female, made an observation and placed a rock. I wonder how many thousands of years ago?

Like in my own valley, someone made the observation not to plant non-hardy plants until the snow on the two lots of twin peaks within sight , were clear of snow. I make use of this particular observation when I want to plant out tomatoes. We talked about it in some other thread fairly recently.

Yes, I remember that!  People did what they had to with what they had.