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and David Cudaback, outside the Lawrence Hall of Science at the
University of California at Berkeley. It's a little optimistic to sup-
pose that it will still be accurate then: at the foot of the hill is a
football stadium whose two halves have not lined up since the
earthquake of 1906.)
The Castillo, the main pyramid at Chichén Itzá, was built
with input from the later Toltecs of the coastal region. An hour
before sunset at the equinoxes, the shadows and sunlight on the
northern balustrade of the stepped pyramid take on the figure of
a diamondback serpent, undulating down the pyramid as the Sun
descends. By 1983 an estimated 10,000-12,000 people were turning
up to see that at the vernal equinox, and these places are now big
tourist attractions, as are Stonehenge and Newgrange.
That brings us to a major question on which to close the chap-
ter. What is astronomy? Obviously the unknown designer of the
Castillo was motivated to provide a spectacle, probably part of an
intense religious experience and now a theatrical event. With that
as with many of the ancient sites and practices described in this
chapter, a critic may say, 'But that's not astronomy!' Yet to create
them required detailed observations, analysis and prediction of the
movements of the heavenly bodies - astronomy, and specifically
positional astronomy, by any normal definition.
MacKie now feels that the emphasis which he and the Thoms
placed on the accuracy of the observations, has polarized the
argument; has made it seem that they thought the ancient observ-
ers pursued astronomy for its own sake, with the same motivations
that drive modern science, and without regard to other human
concerns [ 51 ]. He now feels that his own book title, Science and
Society in Prehistoric Britain [ 52 ], was misleading and attracted
some of the misplaced criticism his work incurred. Clearly there's
a measure of truth in that. Chapters 4 and 5 in this topic will dem-
onstrate that some of the other ancient sites were built for the-
atrical effect, no doubt for religious and political reasons - just
as President Kennedy's call to put a man on the Moon was most
likely to promote the interest of the Democrat party and particu-
larly his Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson, in the southern states,
while regaining prestige for his administration after the Bay of Pigs
debacle, and generating a non-military competition with the USSR
to replace dangerous confrontations such as the Cuban missile
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