Homer and Navigating by the Stars in Prehistory

[Samra]

Dear All,

I'll have much more to say about this in an upcoming publication but as someone with the relatively rare experience of having rowed, sailed, and navigated large open wooden boats I feel obligated to, at least briefly, bring some clarity and practical insight to those with little or no exposure to basic seamanship and navigation with the unaided eye - "non-mariners". There are several highly counter-intuitive aspects to seafaring that typically are only acquired through experience and/or with the guidance of a master. When it comes to "all things nautical" very smart people with the best of intentions are capable of creating great falsehoods and myths when using only their intuitive thinking in a vacuum of experience. The most erroneous idea ever conceived regarding Mediterranean prehistory is that the cultures in the west (Iberia, Sardinia, etc.) originated and developed in total isolation from any maritime contact with those in the Aegean and east. The only way this concept can have any validity is if prehistoric humans were physically incapable of voyaging over these distances and/or they could only take to the sea blindly, unable to accurately navigate across open waters. The only credibility either of these assumptions has is in the beliefs and ideologies of non-mariners. They are completely fallacious and utterly unfounded in confirmable evidence.

Here's a passage from Book V of Samuel Butler's English prose translation of Homer's Odyssey (Od. 5.270-275) from 1900:

"Moreover, she made the wind fair and warm for him, and gladly did Ulysses spread his sail before it, while he sat and guided the raft skilfully by means of the rudder. He never closed his eyes, but kept them fixed on the Pleiads, on late-setting Bootes, and on the Bear - which men also call the wain, and which turns round and round where it is, facing Orion, and alone never dipping into the stream of Oceanus - for Calypso had told him to keep this to his left. Days seven and ten did he sail over the sea, and on the eighteenth the dim outlines of the mountains on the nearest part of the Phaeacian coast appeared, rising like a shield on the horizon."

Homer is describing a long-distance voyage, most probably in "winter", across the vast open sea conducted mainly at night by visually navigating with the stars. According to the isolationist "myth" a voyage of this kind in the Bronze Age was impossible. Yet this is exactly how I would have undertaken such a journey but with one very important addition. It's obvious that Odysseus was no "master mariner" for if he was he would have known of the "home" stars as referenced by the Bootes constellation that would have accurately guided him to the "latitude" of his beloved Ithaca. This would have allowed him to steer a direct course home. As described he was merely travelling generally to the east by putting the celestial north pole on his left shoulder. No master mariner would ever have been so imprecise.

Accurate navigation at sea with the unaided eye is based on the very simple observation that stars that pass directly overhead of you through the night at one location are not the same stars that pass overhead at another location with a different latitude. This can easily be confirmed today by anyone willing to patiently study the motion of the stars at night. I don't know when this observation was first made but everything was in place by the end of the Mediterranean's Cardial Neolithic coastal expansion (the late 6th Millennium BC) for this knowledge to be recognized and begin to spread.

Accurate prehistoric maritime navigation with the unaided eye in the Mediterranean was all about "latitude" just as it was for the Polynesians in the Pacific. So the next time someone tells you that ancient mariners knew their direction only by timidly clinging to coastlines you will know that the speaker is doubtlessly a "non-mariner".

Kindly,
W. Sheppard Baird

Official Website
Art Galleries
Etc.

"Like most humans, prehistoric people were simply born into a different cultural and technological environment. They were us."

[E.P. Grondine]

Congratulations once again.

I am looking forward to your full publication.

I am pretty sure you have the other constellations which were mentioned in the Odyssey all noted, and the sailing distances worked out as well. What did 18 days sailing/rowing distance amount to then?

[kbs2244]

One of the most damaging inventions of the "Industrial Age" has been the overly common corner street light.
It has made the spectacle of the heavens unknown to the common man.

Remember it didn't always need water.
The "Ships of the desert" traveled at night as well.

[Minimalist]

We're not supposing that anything written in the Iliad and Odyssey actually happened, are we?

[kbs2244]

A story can be complete fiction and still have accurate technical details.

If you know anything about square rigged sailing watch some of the old, black and white pirate movies.
The sail handling, anchor hauling, etc is well done technology wise.

But the historical accuracy of the plots is suspect.

[Minimalist]

Yeah....I'd say so.

and when he was quite alone, the old man prayed deeply to Lord Apollo, the son of bright-haired Leto: ‘Hear me, Silver Bow, protector of Chryse and holy Cilla, high lord of Tenedos: if ever I built a shrine that pleased you, if ever I burned the fat thighs of a bull or goat for you, grant my wish: Smintheus, with your arrows make the Greeks pay for my tears.’

So he prayed, and Phoebus Apollo heard him. Down he came, in fury, from the heights of Olympus, with his bow and inlaid quiver at his back. The arrows rattled at his shoulder as the god descended like the night, in anger. He set down by the ships, and fired a shaft, with a fearful twang of his silver bow. First he attacked the mules, and the swift hounds, then loosed his vicious darts at the men; so the dense pyres for the dead burned endlessly.

Bk I:53-100 Achilles and Calchas speak

For nine days the god’s arrows fell on the army, and on the tenth Achilles, his heart stirred by the goddess, white-armed Hera, called them to the Place of Assembly, she pitying the Danaans, whose deaths she witnessed. And when they had assembled, and the gathering was complete, swift-footed Achilles rose and spoke: ‘Son of Atreus, if war and plague alike are fated to defeat us Greeks, I think we shall be driven to head for home: if, that is, we can indeed escape death. But why not consult some priest, some prophet, some interpreter of dreams, since dreams too come from Zeus, one who can tell why Phoebus Apollo shows such anger to us, because of some broken vow perhaps, or some missed sacrifice; in hopes the god might accept succulent lambs or unmarked goats, and choose to avert our ruin.’

Iliad Bk !

[Frank Harrist]

Aliens!

[Samra]

I hope everyone enjoyed this. The passage from Homer is the oldest known written account (at least to me or any of my colleagues), whether fictional or not, of the use of the stars to navigate a direct course over open water in the Mediterranean or anywhere else for that matter. I was fortunate enough to have the very best of experts vet the passage for accuracy in the original Greek. We could find no inaccuracies in the description of the star patterns mentioned. Its worth is in the mind of the beholder.

One of the main points of the piece was to explain how simple it was/is for anyone, in prehistory or today, to accurately find their "home" stars (latitude) by carefully studying the stars that parade directly overhead of them throughout the night with the unaided eye. For instance, the star Arcturus which is the primary (brightest) star in the Bootes constellation (which was mentioned in Homer's passage) and the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere has a declination that corresponds to the latitude of the southern coast of the big island of Hawaii. Every expert I've discussed this with thinks Arcturus was used by the ancient Polynesians to navigate to the islands from the southern seas. This includes modern indigenous Hawaiian and Polynesian reenactors. Also, it was an effort to try to finally put to an end the absurd and completely unfounded myth of total maritime isolation between the east and west in the Mediterranean throughout prehistory.

We are working on producing star maps that would correspond to what an ancient navigator would have seen just after sundown for the 22nd day of each month, which would coincide with the four solar solstices and equinoxes, in the year 1325 BC. This is the time when after navigating less accurately by the sun during the day they would get the first accurate fix on their desired "star-latitude" and make any corrective course changes needed.

If Homer's passage is in any way a reasonable reflection of reality there aren't many islands to the west of the coast of Greece with no intervening land masses to chose from. Perhaps the (now connected) islands of Thapsos or Augusta on the eastern coast of Sicily are possible candidates. The distance from one of these islands on an easterly course to western Greece is about 350 miles.

Happy Holidays, Sheppard Baird

[Tiompan]

We are working on producing star maps that would correspond to what an ancient navigator would have seen just after sundown for the 22nd day of each month, which would coincide with the four solar solstices and equinoxes, in the year 1325 BC.

Happy Holidays, Sheppard Baird

At that date , the the day after the solstices would not be 22nd of the month . What matters is the declination of the sun .
For 1325 BC the solstice declination for the winter solstice was -23.8 and the date fwiw , in Julian terms would be the first of January .
If at a point ,say 230 Km east of Syracuse then the sun would sink into the sea at 239 degrees , Saturn would be visible and would be due east, an hour and twenty minutes after sun set .

George

[Samra]

Hi George,

We were referred to Your Sky by John Walker, the AutoCad co-author, which allows you to use universal time as far back as Julian day 0, January 1, 4712 BC. Give it a try. If there's something better you could recommend I would happy to hear of it.

The only declination I'm referring to is that for star coordinates in relation to earth's axis of rotation as in celestial declination (which defines latitude on the earth's surface) and right ascension (longitude). The 22nd day of each month is simply an approximation for the corresponding seasonal solstices and equinoxes.

Not really sure what you mean by "the sun would sink into the sea at 239 degrees". Is this longitude or right ascension?

Cheers, Sheppard

[Tiompan]

Hi George,

We were referred to Your Sky by John Walker, the AutoCad co-author, which allows you to use universal time as far back as Julian day 0, January 1, 4712 BC. Give it a try. If there's something better you could recommend I would happy to hear of it.

The only declination I'm referring to is that for star coordinates in relation to earth's axis of rotation as in celestial declination (which defines latitude on the earth's surface) and right ascension (longitude). The 22nd day of each month is simply an approximation for the corresponding seasonal solstices and equinoxes.

Not really sure what you mean by "the sun would sink into the sea at 239 degrees". Is this longitude or right ascension?

Cheers, Sheppard

Hello Shepard ,
Yes , most programmes allow use of Julian dates as far back as you like , but the point is that the solstice is defined by the limiting declinations not a date .This changes due to obliquity . In our epoch it happens to fall around the 21st of December but that was not the case in prehistory .

The declination for the setting sun on 22 December 1325 BC , 230 Km east of Syracuse = -23.510 whilst for the 1st January it is -23.854 which is extreme as it is possible to get for the period .

The 239 degrees was the azimuth as seen from the observer .

George

[kbs2244]

And the “home star” over the island would be ???

This whole concept of a island having a star equal to it’s location is key to many ancient navigation concepts.
It is just a matter of scale.

Is it the Mediterranean’ or the South h Pacific or the Sahara?

An idea of solving navigation problems across to either a sand oasis in a desert or an island in the sea spread
how far??

[Tiompan]

And the “home star” over the island would be ???

In the case of the mythological boat 230 km east of Syracuse , then Enif would due west and setting over Syracuse about two hours after sun set .

[Samra]

Yes I agree with your statement on obliquity but my understanding of the YourSky program is that the dates are corrected to align with the seasonal solstices and equinoxes. Perhaps I'm wrong. What dates do you think would align with the solstices and equinoxes in 1325 BC? I would really appreciate a reference - a celestial mapping program would be great. Thanks!

Dear kbs2244 - I'm not sure what your question is but a star's celestial declination defines the latitude on the surface of the earth it passes directly over. It could be an island, a desert, the ocean, etc. it's simply and purely a latitude.

[Tiompan]

Yes I agree with your statement on obliquity but my understanding of the YourSky program is that the dates are corrected to align with the seasonal solstices and equinoxes. Perhaps I'm wrong. What dates do you think would align with the solstices and equinoxes in 1325 BC? I would really appreciate a reference - a celestial mapping program would be great. Thanks!

An example of a programme would be Starry Night Pro .

For 1325 BC
Winter solstice as mentioned would be 1 January
Summer solstice 4th July
The solstices are defined by their limiting declinations ,equinoxes have various possible definitions but if we take it as declination = 0 degrees then
for 1325 BC Spring equinox =April 1
Autumn equinox =4th October .

But as mentioned the dates are not important, it is the declination . Look at Your Sky for 1325 BC for 0 declination and I doubt it will be 20 March or 23 September .