This article was sent to me to be put on the Portal. I'm not completely sure it is the oldest astronomical complex, but the rest of the content is important, regardless.
Saving Nabta Playa
Will the oldest prehistoric astronomical complex in the world soon be under water?
by Robert Bauval, author of The Egypt Code
In 1998, an American anthropologist, Fred Wendorf, and his colleagues sent a letter to the scientific journal, Nature, setting off a worldwide wave of controversy. They announced that they had discovered Nabta Playa, a prehistoric settlement in Egypt’s Nubian Desert in 1974, and they were confirming it to be the oldest astronomical megalithic site in the world, predating Stonehenge by at least 1,000 years.
Who Were the Astronomers of Nabta Playa?
About 500 miles south of today’s Cairo, Nabta Playa is known to anthropologists as a ceremonial complex with several stone alignments directed to the rising of certain stars. The most important artifact is a stone calendar circle aligned to the summer solstice sunrise and the meridian (noon) passage of the sun. Carbon dating has established the presence of humans at the site between about 6,500 BC and 3,400 BC. Evidence shows that the mysterious people of Nabta Playa achieved a high level of astronomical knowledge, they domesticated cattle and engaged in agriculture millennia before previously assumed. When the southwestern desert of Egypt became super-arid, the population was forced to move to the Nile Valley––leading scholars to suspect that they triggered the rise of pharaonic Egypt when they settled in the valley.
Shocking Destruction of the Site
Wendorf and his team left the precious site of Nabta Playa unattended for the greater part of each year, and in recent years the site has become neglected and partially destroyed. When my colleague, the astrophysicist Thomas Brophy, visited the site in 2003, he was puzzled at the lack of fencing or signposts indicating archaeological importance. In 2007, I also visited Nabta Playa with a few friends and colleagues, as well as an officer from the Egyptian military and a local guide from the oasis of Bahareya. There, we also encountered the British Egyptologist, Dr. Nicole Douek, who was escorting a group of tourists in the Egyptian Sahara.
In 2008 on a return visit, Brophy found that the calendar circle had been dislocated and some of the stones were missing, and that a rubbish dump was evident. I returned this year, also, to assess the damage and confirmed the ongoing destruction. When I saw tracks of heavy vehicles and several open rubbish dumps, I went to the Nubian Museum at Aswan and met with Deputy-Director Ragheb, who informed me that upon instructions from foreign anthropologists in charge of Nabta Playa, he had moved three of the large megaliths to the museum. He believed the stones of the calendar circle were in their original positions, and he knew nothing of the rubbish dumps.
Later, I contacted Dr. Romuald Schild, the head of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition (CPE) in charge of Nabta Playa. He told me that unauthorized tourists had visited the site over the years and that they had tampered with the calendar circle and had also built a “New Age” stone circle. Accordingly, he was prompted to remove the calendar circle from its place, with instructions that it be reconstructed in the Nubian Museum, and he had a modern replica of the monument installed in the original location.
Schild said, “The calendar and other selected Nabta monuments were removed on February 18, 2008, in my presence, as well as in the presence of members of the expedition and a special high committee of the Supreme Council of Antiquities headed by an undersecretary of state. The entire removal was filmed and intensively photographed. The antiquities were taken to the Nubian Museum in Aswan in a convoy escorted by the police. Dr. Osama, director of the museum, received the convoy and its load at the museum.”
“But what of the open rubbish dumps on the site?” I asked. He blamed the “tourists” and then, he dropped the bombshell:
A Future Now in Doubt
“Since May, 2007 I am no longer heading the CPE, although I have been responsible for some of the projects carried out by the organization, such as archaeological operations undertaken in conjunction with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, including salvage of Nabta monuments . . . . Nabta has been earmarked for an extensive reclamation as a part of the Tushka Project.”
I found out that the Tushka Project is part of the Egyptian government’s mega-engineering plan to reclaim the arid Western Desert for agriculture. One of the major elements of the plan is the building of the Sheikh Zayed Canal, to be fed by the water from Lake Nasser, and used to irrigate vast areas of the desert as far north as the Qattara Depression. Another project will pump billions of cubic meters of water out of the underground aquifers to irrigate the southwestern desert near Nabta Playa.
The first phase of the canal is already complete, as is the Mubarak Pumping Station, which is the largest in the world. Together these comprise the Southern Egypt Development Project (the Tushka Project). According to Dr. Schild, “Exempting Nabta from these governmental plans has not yet been successful.”
Pleading the Case
I have notified UNESCO World Heritage of the impending drowning of the site, yet have received no satisfactory reply. And, as for the relocation of the calendar circle, I found that the astronomer, Dr. Malville, who was originally responsible for its study, was unaware of its removal and replacement by a replica, as was the Egyptian astronomer, Dr. Mosalam Shaltout, who had studied Nabta Playa. As for the large volume of rubbish on the site, evidence suggests that it was left there by the CPE, rather than by “tourists”.
A precious window into the origins of civilization, Nabta Playa must come under the protection of UNESCO and the Egyptian government before 21st century development drowns the last remaining fragments of a lost civilization and a people whose astronomical achievements are among the most extraordinary ever discovered.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road