A trapezoidal opening in the western or southwestern side of the roof doubles as a vent for smoke and as a source of light. It is closed in the wet season (when the roundhouse fills unpleasantly with smoke), but opened up in the dry season; at this time its orientation, well away from the southerly or southeasterly direction of the prevailing wind, ensures that only rarely will it catch the wind thus blocking the escaping smoke. However, this does not explain why a northerly or northeasterly orientation could not equally well be chosen in many cases. The reason for this may be that the opening originally had a third purpose, as an observation window. The beam of the afternoon sun crosses the interior of the house, its movement marking out the time of day and the time of year. The interior of the house is richly decorated with paintings depicting scenes and figures important in Yekuana myth, some of which are lit up by the beam of sunlight at certain times. There are structural alignments, too: thus on the winter solstice, the sunbeam reaches the northeastern corner of the internal rectangle.
The Yekuana roundhouse was truly a model of the cosmos. It may also, in some senses, have functioned as an observatory, in the sense that observations of sunlight through the roof opening could have been used as a clock or calendar. It may even have been used to observe the night sky. There is no ethnographic evidence to support this claim directly, although the same is known to have been the case among some indigenous North America groups, such as the Pawnee.
The Yekuana creation myth, and a very specific set of principles of construction conceived within the framework of that myth, ensure that the traditional roundhouse not only incorporates sound structural principles and pragmatics for living, but also reflects and reinforces the prevailing world-view. It is interesting to speculate on how much of the cosmological symbolism incorporated just in the overall structure of the roundhouse could have been guessed at by an archaeologist of the future if all historical records had been lost. The answer is probably very little, a sobering thought when we struggle to interpret, for example, roundhouses surviving in Europe from the Iron Age.
See also:
Cosmology; Solstitial Directions. Iron Age Roundhouses; Navajo Hogan; Pawnee Earth Lodge. Solstices.
References and further reading
Aveni, Anthony F. Ancient Astronomers, 146.Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1993. Ruggles, Clive, and Nicholas Saunders, eds. Astronomies and Cultures, 296–328. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1993. Wilbert, Johannes. “Warao Cosmology and Yekuana Roundhouse Symbolism.” Journal of Latin American Lore 7 (1981), 37–72.
Zenith Passage of the Sun
If you are within the tropics—but only if you are within the tropics—you will have the opportunity to see the sun pass directly overhead. The highest point in the sky is known as the zenith, so this event is known technically as solar zenith passage. Solar zenith passage will happen at local noon on two separate days in the year, but what those days are will depend upon your latitude on the earth. Right on the Tropics themselves, it happens on just one day in the year: the June solstice at the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere, and the December solstice at the Tropic of Capricorn in the south. A little south of the Tropic of Cancer, the dates of solar zenith passage will be a little before and after the June solstice: the farther south you are, the further apart these dates will be. At the equator, the dates occur exactly six months apart, at the two equinoxes. Moving farther south again, the two dates gradually converge on the December solstice.
One way of visualizing this is to imagine a tightly coiled spring wrapped around the earth with its open ends on the two Tropics, and its 183 coils not quite following lines of latitude. There is always some point on the earth where the sun is currently overhead, and from the June solstice to the December solstice this point will trace slowly along the coils of the spring, going around once every twenty-four hours and moving inexorably southwards along the coils, until the December solstice is reached and the sun starts to move back northwards again.
Times when the sun passes close to the zenith stand out, because people and other upright objects cease to have shadows. Such times have sacred and practical significance in a variety of cultures within the tropics. A number of legends identify it as a time when the way is open into the upper world. In some Guatemalan villages, for example, the two dates of zenith passage coincide with springtime and August rains, and are marked by ritual observances that still live on in Christian tradition in the form of parades. In ancient Hawai‘i, the moment of solar zenith passage was a time with great mana, or sacred power. It was a time when a person’s shadow was no longer visible and was thought to have retreated directly into the brain through the top of the head; a person’s spirit could exit at this time.
The coming of the days when the sun will pass through the zenith may be recognized in various ways, for example, by observing the rising or setting position of the sun on the horizon, or by watching for the heliacal rise or set of certain stars or asterisms. Sometimes we have evidence of devices that marked the actual moment of solar zenith passage, often in a dramatic way. Zenith tubes, which allowed the light of the sun to pass down into a dark place only at the time of zenith passage, are known at the Mesoamerican cities of Monte Alban and Xochicalco.
The zenith sun may hold one of the keys to the mystery of why Necker Island, a remote and uninhabitable rock lying well beyond the larger islands of the Hawaiian chain, is covered in temple platforms. It may have been an especially sacred place because it lay right on the Tropic of Cancer, at the very edge of the region where the sun reaches the zenith.
See also:
Antizenith Passage of the Sun; Equinoxes; Zenith Tubes. Necker Island. Heliacal Rise; Solstices.
References and further reading
Aveni, Anthony F. Stairways to the Stars: Skywatching in Three Great An
cient Cultures, 21–25. New York: Wiley, 1997.
———. Skywatchers. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.
Pukui, Mary K., E.W. Haertig, and Catherine A. Lee. N§n§ I Ke Kumu
(Look to the Source), Volume I, 123–124. Honolulu: Hui H§nai, 1972.
Zenith Stars in Polynesia
The paths of the stars across the sky depend upon the observer’s latitude. At any given latitude, only certain stars will pass directly overhead. Conversely, any given star will only be seen to pass overhead from one particular latitude on earth. For this to happen, the observer’s latitude has to be equal to the “latitude” of the star on the celestial sphere—in other words, its declination.
The New Zealander David Lewis, in his efforts to trace surviving fragments of traditional methods of navigation in the Pacific, encountered a number of references to “the star on top,” “the overhead star,” “the star that points down upon an island,” and the like. Taken together, these suggest the former existence of a Polynesian tradition in which different islands were seen to have distinctive “marker” stars. Most intriguingly, a Tahitian chant recorded in 1818 listed eight “pillars that hold up the heavens.” The declinations of several of these stars, Lewis found, corresponded in C.E. 1000 (since they change slightly over the centuries, owing to precession) to the latitudes of various southern Polynesian islands, from the Line Islands in the north down to New Zealand in the south. The implication is that the overhead stars, marker stars, and pillar stars could have been zenith stars for particular islands.