Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

animation 7 at meetings of professional scholars in Atlanta, Georgia, 8 and Rhodes, Greece, 9 in 2004, as well as at
meetings and public conferences in San Diego, California, in 2007; in Dubai, UAE, in 2008; and in Rome, Italy, in 2009
—and the audiences immediately grasped how and why the Calendar Circle was used by the ancients. Regarding the
scholars, however, although they easily grasp the idea, their academic conditioning often blocks them from changing their
own preconceived beliefs about the Nabta Playa ancient people. Others who are more skeptical suggest that the data of
field archaeologists, especially having to do with the astronomy that matches the stones, may have been in error. *13
We, however, have double-checked the source of the Calendar Circle data and have ourselves examined the remains
of the circle. Further, with regard to the nearby megalithic structures, we also have undertaken measurements and have
relied on both the field maps provided by archaeologists as well as very accurate satellite photography of Nabta Playa.
What clinches our interpretation and conclusions that the ancient Nabta Playa astronomer-priests paid significant
attention to Orion’s belt as part of a unified system of tracking the changes in the sky is the fact that similar astronomical
activities are also attributed to the other megalithic structures in the ceremonial complex.
SPACE AGE MEETS STONE AGE
In chapter 3 we saw how the ceremonial complex at Nabta Playa consists essentially of two major features: large stones,
many of which are shaped and placed on the sediments of the ancient dry lake; and large, sculpted rocks and sculpted
lumps of bedrock beneath the sediments. The 1998 Nature letter and other early CPE reports on Nabta Playa dealt only
with the astronomy of the Calendar Circle; they did not attempt to interpret the astronomy of the megalithic alignments,
although they did report some of these megaliths’ various orientations. Finally, however, in 2001 the CPE published
their report and in it gave their tentative interpretation of the megalithic alignments and the GPS coordinates of each
megalith. They determined that the twenty-two megaliths formed six alignments that radiated out from Complex
Structure A, and they proposed that these alignments were intended to designate the rising locations of two important
stars, Dubhe and Sirius, and also the stellar asterism of Orion’s belt. Three alignments (A1, A2, A3) pointing north
aligned to Dubhe at three different dates in the fifth millennium BCE; a fourth alignment (C1) pointed, also in the fifth
millennium BCE, toward Sirius; and two alignments (B1 and B2) pointed toward Orion’s belt at two different dates in
the fourth and fifth millennium BCE.
Yet a serious problem with their data invalidated the dates they gave for these alignments. It is an understandable
fact that most people do not question or verify the data and conclusions given in a technical or scientific publication by
university professors of the caliber of Fred Wendorf, Kim Malville, and Romuald Schild of the CPE. Having already
developed our own interpretation for the Calendar Circle before the CPE’s 2001 site report was published, we were
keenly interested in their alignment data for the megaliths. In order to verify the link among the alignments of the six
rows of megaliths and the rising point of stars on the horizon, it was necessary to convert into azimuths the GPS
coordinates of the megaliths given in the 2001 report and then to match them to the calculated azimuths of the proposed
stars. Yet when we tried to convert these GPS readings into azimuths, we found that they did not match the published
azimuths in the 2001 report! This meant that the dates for the stars’ rising were also off. Only the azimuth given for
Orion’s belt was more or less the same as ours—but those given for Sirius and Dubhe differed radically from our
calculations, which were in fact based on the GPS readings published in the 2001 report. Something clearly was not right.
To make matters worse, the azimuths for the six megalithic alignments in the 2001 report were significantly different
from those previously given in the 1998 Nature letter. Further, some of the CPE’s calculations of ancient star locations
differed from our calculations, even before they were matched to rising azimuths.
All this was very confusing, for it was impossible to tell from these reports whether the raw GPS readings taken on
location were in error or that the CPE calculations to convert these into azimuths was in error. We determined that it was
best to ask the CPE about this. The lead author replied that we should contact another author who was responsible for the
data in the relevant 2001 report. While we waited for the response, as luck would have it, the Space Age provided us with
another and better way to clear up this confusion: DigitalGlobe, a high-tech corporation, was in the process of
developing the first high-resolution satellite-imaging system for commercial use. In November 2000 they twice
attempted to launch their Quickbird 1 satellites from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia, but both rockets failed and the
satellites were destroyed. On October 18, 2001, however, the Quickbird 2 satellite was successfully launched from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and after testing and calibration, DigitalGlobe began making commercially
available 60-centimeter, high-resolution imagery from space. With this kind of resolution, we estimated that we could
probably identify the Nabta Playa megaliths from space and obtain for ourselves the coordinates for our calculations. We