主要观点总结
本文介绍了古代人类对宇宙的理解与解读，包括史前人类对天文现象的观察、对时间的理解以及他们对宇宙的神学观念等。通过考古学、人类学家的研究和历史文物，展示了古代人类如何理解星空，如何利用天文现象进行导航、计时等生活活动。文章以北欧的萨米人和他们的故事为例子，详细描述了他们对宇宙的独特理解。
关键观点总结
关键观点1: 古代人类观测星空的需求和背景
史前人类为了生存和导航的需要，开始观察天文现象。随着社区规模的扩大，简单的天文观测成为生存的关键。
关键观点2: 萨米人的宇宙观
萨米人有着独特的宇宙观，认为星空背后隐藏着神灵的领域。他们通过观测星象来理解时间和进行导航。
关键观点3: 史前人类的天文观测成果
通过考古发现，如内布拉星象盘等文物，证明了史前人类已经开始接触并试图认识天体。一些社区甚至将观天导航技术提升到了新的高度。
关键观点4: 古代人类对时间的理解与想象
无论是现代还是史前人类，对时间的本质都有着不同的理解。萨米人的时间观念深受环境变化的影响，呈现出循环性，与现代线性的时间观念有所不同。
正文
图片来源：
NASA Hubble Space Telescope
on
Unsplash
仰望夜空是一种几乎所有时代的人类都曾做过的事，这种抬头仰望的本能可能与人类的诞生一样久远，甚至更古老。今天的我们要怎样才能知道，古代祖究竟如何看待他们所看到的天文现象？这些现象又如何影响了他们的生活方式？要想回答这些问题，就不得不提到一门学科——考古天文学，它揭示古人是如何观天测星，又是如何理解宇宙奥秘的。
古人的宇宙观多种多样，以北欧土著居民萨米人
（Sámi）
为例，萨米语短语 ipmiliid áibmu 意为“众神的领域”。在古代萨米人看来，它就隐藏在漫天繁星的背后，而星星便是通往众神之地的窗口。
萨米人有两个非常重要的神，分别是太阳神 Beaivi 和月亮神 Mánnu，因为太阳和月亮一直在为人们带来光明。萨米人是欧盟唯一正式承认的原住民，他们祖祖辈辈生活的地方横跨了四个国家：从挪威中部和瑞典中部开始，穿过芬兰的拉普兰地区，一直到俄罗斯的科拉半岛。这里有郁郁葱葱的广阔森林，也有高地草原、无树平原和北极苔原。
这些地方都在北极圈附近，在一年的大部分时间里都被积雪覆盖。夜空浩瀚无垠，萨米人的神灵似乎一直在进行一场光明与黑暗的较量。夏季极昼期，太阳神 Beaivi 压制着月亮神 Mánnu，日光常驻。但到冬天，太阳隐去光芒，夜幕长久地降临，月色笼罩大地，北极光幽灵般的身影时隐时现。
萨米人会告诫孩子们：“不要对着北极光吹口哨，它们可能会攻击你。”在东部萨米人的传说中，极光是遇害者的魂灵。
直至今日，萨米人的居住地依然地广人稀，但这片土地正面临着被征收为工业用地的压力。现代社会的便利性无疑可以改善萨米人的生活，然而，他们的文化仰赖于相对原始、未受破坏的自然环境，在外人看来，这片土地或许有如荒原，萨米人却能在这里可持续地生活，他们保留了基于土地的谋生方式，也让传统知识仍有用武之地，比如，几个世纪以来一直指导着萨米人生活的天文概念就被保存了下来。
早在望远镜诞生之前，人类就已经开始探索宇宙了。当他们抬起头仰望星空时，他们会想到什么？
匈牙利考古天文学家埃米莉亚·帕斯托尔
（Emília Pásztor）
花了数十年时间，研究了 5300 年前至 3200 年前（欧洲青铜时代）欧洲人与天文现象的联系。
在现代，人们可以借助各种空间望远镜窥探遥远的星系，见证恒星的诞生和死亡。除了日食和雷暴这种较为震撼的现象，人们几乎不会留意天空中的活动。然而，史前人类没有先进的天文学观测工具，好在他们头顶的天空也没有受到人造光源的污染，想了解天气，就必须仔细观察天空中的各种现象。
史前人类很早就注意到了太阳和月亮的周期性运转，发现太阳在一年中有两个极端位置：冬至和夏至。他们还观察到，有些恒星和星座永远不会消失，有些则会季节性地出现。
帕斯托尔在研究中发现，欧洲青铜时代的太阳符号形式多样，有些形状和结构实际上反映的是更为独特的大气光学现象，比如日晕
（sun halo）
、幻日
（sun dog）
和日柱
（sun pillar）
等。
这些早期的天文观测成果，有时会以出人意料的方式体现在青铜时代人们的生活中。帕斯托尔在匈牙利南部的蒂尔·伊斯特万博物馆
（Türr István Museum）
工作时，就经历过一次激动人心的发现：在博物馆的保护专家工作室里，她看到了一个来自青铜时代坟墓的琥珀吊坠。当她把吊坠对着窗户，在光线下仔细检查时，突然发现暗红色的琥珀里有一个深色的十字符号，这是一个青铜时代的太阳符号。
在陶器、鼓和其他物体上也发现了装饰性的天体符号，比如最著名的考古天文学发现之一：内布拉星象盘
（Nebra sky disk）
，其历史可以追溯到大约 3600 年前。这是一个直径约 32 厘米的青铜圆盘，于 1999 年在德国的米特尔贝格山上被发现，上面装饰着金色的天体符号。包括许多研究人员认定为太阳、新月和星星的图案，还有一组被解释为昴宿星团的星群，以及一个弧形符号，根据不同的解读，它可能代表船只或彩虹。
学界普遍认为，内布拉星象盘是人们最早对天空及一些天文元素进行的写实性描绘。但这件文物是由不太可靠的宝藏猎人发现的，考古天文学家们缺乏研究该文物的重要线索，比如圆盘被发现的具体位置、与其一同出土的其他文物等信息。因此，内布拉星象盘的确切年代和符号含义仍然存在争议。
文物在时间和空间上的起源存在不确定性在考古学中相当常见。而内布拉星象盘的存在至少可以说明，在大约 5300 年前至 3200 年前，生活在欧洲的史前人类已经开始接触并试图认识天体了。
早期的科学研究认为，内布拉星象盘是一种仪器，可以通过测量日出或日落时的太阳位置来确定日期，但这些理论后来均被否定。如今，一些德国学者提出，内布拉星象盘实际上是一种助记装置，通过将圆盘上的金色天体符号（如新月和疑似昴宿星团的符号）与真实夜空的相对位置进行同步，古人可以利用它来校准基于太阳周期的阳历和基于月亮周期的阴历。
帕斯托尔不认同这些理论，因为将内布拉星象盘用作校准工具所需的数学知识水平，远超目前已知的青铜时代欧洲人的数学水平。她推测，这个圆盘很可能只是古人对宇宙的象征性描绘，承载的更多是精神意义而非实际功能。
欧洲和世界其他地区的青铜时代考古遗址显示，这一时期与考古天文学相关的文物明显变多了。这与研究者们的观点相符，即当时社会结构变得更加复杂，出现了一个不断增长的富裕阶层，他们能够负担金饰等奢侈品，可能还会使用这种与太阳光辉相仿的贵金属，以及其他被赋予天文学意义的珠宝，来标榜自己与神灵的联系，展示权力和权威。
到了青铜时代，古人的生活方式开始发生改变。人类逐渐摆脱了小规模的游牧生活，转而组成更大的定居社区，这些社区以农业和畜牧业为生。随着社区规模的继续扩大，简单的天文观测成为生存的关键。通过观察月相的变化规律、季节性出现的星座，或地平线上云朵形状和颜色的变化，人们能在导航、预测天气甚至计时方面占据优势。
一些社区将观天导航技术提升到了一个全新的高度，这些技术在今天仍然可行。例如在 1000 年前，一支波利尼西亚航海队继承了他们的祖先拉皮塔人
（Lapita people，南太平洋地区的古代航海民）
的传统，利用一种名为“导向”（wayfinding）的海洋导航方法，不借助任何工具，仅通过观察星星、太阳、风、波浪和其他自然现象来确定方位，实现了大规模的跨岛航行。
帕斯托尔提醒道，我们不能将现代天文学知识强加于古代文化上。尽管如此，无论对现代人还是对过着农耕生活的史前人类来说，“时间的本质是什么”都是一个引人深思的问题。而古人对时间的理解与想象，可能与我们完全不同。
如今，萨米人的计时方式在很大程度上和世界其他地方保持一致，但他们的传统时间观念仍独具特色，呈现出循环性。这种时间观念深受驯鹿生命周期的影响，更依赖环境的变化，而非线性时间。在萨米文化
……
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How Ancient Humans Interpreted the Cosmos
Rachel Feltman:
There are few human experiences more universal than gazing up at the night sky, and the urge to look up is probably as old as our species, if not even older. But how did our ancient ancestors feel about what they saw in the heavens, and how did it influence the way they lived their lives?
For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to Episode Two of our three-part Fascination miniseries on unusual archaeology. In this segment, Kata Karáth, a science journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Ecuador, introduces us to archaeoastronomy, the study of how people in the past experienced and explained the phenomena of the cosmos.
Ante Aikio:
We have many different universes, dimensions—for example, ipmiliid áibmu, it’s the realm of the gods. The Sámi, ancient Sámi, they taught that it’s kind of behind the stars so that they are the holes to that dimension.
Kata Karáth:
That’s Ante Aikio, an Indigenous Sámi storyteller and reindeer herder who lives in Levi, which is in northern Finland, some 150 kilometers inside the Arctic Circle. A moment ago, you heard him joiking. That’s a traditional vocal technique among the Sámi that’s used to evoke, for example, a feeling, place, person or animal. Ante said he created this melody during a long summer storm that started suddenly as he was herding reindeer.
Aikio:
There are two really important gods, which are Beaivi, the sun, and Mánnu, the moon. And of course, it’s logical because the sun has been giving light for us, and also the moon has been giving a lot of light for us.
Karáth:
The ancestral lands of the Sámi, the European Union’s only recognized Indigenous people, include parts of four countries, from central Norway and central Sweden across Finnish Lapland to the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Some land here is covered in lush woods. Other parts are home to green highlands, treeless plains or Arctic tundra.
For more than half the year, much of the landscape is covered in snow. The sky is vast, and the Sámi people’s gods seem to be locked in a fight between light and darkness. In summer Beaivi, the sun, dominates Mánnu, the moon, and daylight stretches beyond 24 hours. But in the winter the sun cedes its gains to the vast folds of night, which cast the land in moonlight, sometimes tinged with the ghostly specter of the northern lights.
Aikio:
My grandmother, or my mother even, they said, “Don’t whistle for the northern lights because they might attack on you.” Then I heard that the Eastern Sámi had legends that they were kind of spirits or souls of murdered people.
Karáth:
Even today the homeland of the Sámi people is sparsely populated, but the area is subject to many industrial land-use pressures. While the comforts of the modern world certainly aid the lives of the Sámi, their culture depends on the area’s relatively unspoiled nature. That landscape may look like wilderness to some, but it’s in sustainable use by the Sámi.
The traditional knowledge of the Sámi stays alive in the land-based livelihoods still practiced today. Thus concepts about celestial bodies in the sky, which have guided the lives of the Sámi for centuries, have been preserved, too. Long before humans had telescopes, people all over the world nonetheless endeavored to understand the cosmos. What did they think about when they looked up?
To begin to answer these questions, I’m going to take you into the world of archaeoastronomy. It’s a field that studies how ancient people thought about what they saw in the sky. It explores how they understood celestial phenomena and what that meant for their understanding of time and space.
But to go on this time-traveling cosmic quest, I need a guide. And I have found the perfect one: Hungarian archaeoastronomer Emília Pásztor.
Emília has spent decades researching Bronze Age Europeans’ connection to celestial phenomena some 5,300 to 3,200 years ago. I have been following her work for almost as long as she has been doing it. That’s because she also happens to be my mom.
Emília Pásztor:
Well, when I was young I wanted to be an astronaut and dreamed of flying to discover the universe—I love science fiction, so it [inspired] my [professional] dreams—but then I realized I am afraid of flying very much, so I had to find another profession, and that was the archaeology. Archaeoastronomy merges the two areas without the danger of flying.
Karáth:
Meanwhile my interest in this topic came after copyediting dozens of her research papers throughout the years.
So these days, thanks to technological marvels like the James Webb Space Telescope, we can peek into distant galaxies and witness the birth and death of stars. Ancient humans didn’t have any of that. Why would they have cared about space at all?
Pásztor:
People of the modern age hardly notice what is happening in the sky and may only pay attention to striking phenomena, such as a solar eclipse or a big storm with lightning. However, the world of prehistoric man was not polluted by artificial light, and since they needed to know the weather, they must have carefully observed weather and celestial phenomena.
[CLIP: Crickets chirp in a field]
Karáth:
What has archaeoastronomy work like hers shown us about their sky-gazing habits? Could they recognize more complex phenomena as well?
Pásztor:
Prehistoric people definitely noticed the cyclical nature of the sun and moon early on, and even the sun’s two extreme positions—the winter and summer solstice—might have been highlighted in their lives. They must have also noticed that there are stars and groups of stars that never disappear and some that return seasonally.
However, Bronze Age solar symbols are very diverse, and I’ve discovered during my research that many of the shapes and forms actually match up with the basic structure of more unique atmospheric light phenomena like sun halos.
Karáth:
A sun halo is an optical phenomenon that shows up when tiny ice crystals in the atmosphere refract, or bend, sunlight. That creates a ring of light around the sun. And Emília has found representations of related solar spectacles, too.
Pásztor:
I found examples of other phenomena, such as mock suns, as well as sun pillars, which are quite rare.
Karáth:
Mock suns can also form when ice crystals refract light, creating small luminous spots to the left, right or both sides of the sun. And sun pillars look like columns of light shooting upward from the sun. These show up when falling ice crystals reflect sunlight.
Pásztor:
I even found ethnographic parallels on shaman drums thousands of years later, so this discovery has really opened new trends in archaeoastronomy.
Karáth:
And these early astronomical observations manifested themselves in many ways in Bronze Age people’s lives—sometimes when you would least expect it.
Pásztor:
One of my most exciting findings took place unexpectedly. I work for the Türr István Museum in southern Hungary, and I was at the museum’s conservation expert’s workshop looking at a pendant we’d found in the tomb of a heavily jeweled woman during the excavation of a nearby Bronze Age cemetery. I was looking at it to determine whether the conservator had cleaned it well enough for us to start examining it. I turned toward the window to get a better look because the light was pretty dim. Then I realized that it was a shining Bronze Age solar symbol. The amber pendant glowed crimson in the sunlight, with a dark cross-shaped symbol in it.
Karáth:
We can also find celestial symbols decorating pottery, drums and other objects. One of the most famous archaeoastronomical finds is the Nebra sky disk, dating back to roughly 3,600 years ago—though there is some debate about its age. It’s a bronze disc with a diameter of about 32 centimeters that’s adorned with golden celestial symbols and was found on the Mittelberg hill in Germany in 1999. We can see what many researchers identify as the sun, the crescent moon, stars—including a grouping that could be interpreted as the Pleiades constellation—and even a symbol that might represent a boat or rainbow, depending on who you ask.
Pásztor:
According to generally accepted opinions, it is the earliest somewhat realistic representation of the sky and some of its characteristic elements. Unfortunately there is a grave issue connected to it: that it was found by treasure hunters, who are not trustworthy people. Therefore the circumstances in which it was found and which would normally help us a lot to study the object, such as the location where the disk was found and the other artifacts it was buried with, are ambiguous and therefore the various interpretations of the Nebra disk can also be questioned.
Karáth:
This level of uncertainty regarding an object’s origin in space and time is fairly common, so unlocking the mysteries surrounding an item’s use requires a lot of creativity and collaboration with researchers from other fields of study. Regardless, objects like the disk are fascinating, and despite their uncertainties, they can suggest how prehistoric peoples—at least in Europe about 5,300 to 3,200 years ago—interacted with the heavenly bodies.
Pásztor:
Earlier scientific works thought of the disk as an instrument for measuring the sun’s position at sunrise or sunset in order to obtain a calendar date, but these theories have since been dismissed. Nowadays some German scholars claim that the Nebra disk is actually a mnemonic device, which can help to calibrate solar and lunar calendars by syncing the relative position of its golden celestial symbols, like crescent moon and the supposed Pleiades constellation, with the real night sky.
Karáth:
So what does Emília think of these ideas?
Pásztor:
I disagree with these theories because it would have required an understanding of mathematics at a higher level than we have clear evidence for in Bronze Age Europe. It is highly likely that the disk was a physical but also symbolic representation of the cosmos, and it played more of a spiritual than practical role.
Karáth:
Whatever the case was, it seems like something was going on with people and the sky then. Bronze Age dig sites in Europe and other parts of the world show a significant boom in archaeoastronomy-related artifacts. A surge in celestial paraphernalia is consistent with researchers’ understanding that more complex communities had begun to form, with a growing class of wealthy inhabitants who could afford luxury items such as gold jewelry.
They may have used this jewelry, which shined with the same golden hue as the sun, and other objects endowed with celestial symbols to show their link to gods and demonstrate power and authority.
