Every stone in the Dreketi Sky Circle has a connection to somewhere on Earth. On every continent people watched the same sun, moon and stars, built in stone to follow them, and set their festivals, plantings and harvests by them. Many of those traditions are alive today, and many live in Fiji's own communities: iTaukei, Indian, Chinese, Rotuman and more. The circle is being designed as a global meeting point for the world's sky cultures, a place to honour the ancient sky watchers of every land under one sky.
Fiji and the Pacific
Fijian months follow the moon and the sea. Vula i Balolo Levu, around November, is the month of the great balolo, when tiny reef creatures rise to the surface at dawn about a week after the full moon. Across the Pacific the Pleiades mark the year: Matariki in Aotearoa, Makaliʻi in Hawaiʻi, Matariʻi in Tahiti and Mataliki in Tonga are all the same seven stars. Their return at dusk in November opens Hawaiʻi's Makahiki season and Tahiti's Matariʻi i niʻa, the season of plenty. Their return at dawn in June is the Māori New Year.
And for three thousand years Pacific voyagers steered by the rising and setting points of the stars, with no instrument but memory.
In the circle: The south pole tube is for the navigators. The Pleiades will be watched from the circle at both of their returns.
India
Indian astronomy divides the moon's path into 27 nakshatras, or lunar mansions, still used to set festival dates today. The Pleiades are Krittika, the six mothers who raised the warrior god Kartikeya. Diwali falls on the new moon of Kartik, the darkest night of the month, and Makar Sankranti marks the sun's entry into Makara, Capricorn, in January. In 499 CE Aryabhata wrote that the Earth turns on its axis, and in the 1700s Maharaja Jai Singh built the giant masonry instruments of Jantar Mantar in Jaipur and Delhi.
Fiji's Indian community has kept this calendar since the first girmitiyas arrived in 1879.
In the circle: The zenith needle is a tropical connection of the great sundial at Jantar Mantar.
China and Japan
Chinese astronomers kept the longest unbroken sky records on Earth. They mapped 28 lunar mansions, used the Big Dipper as a clock turning around the pole, and logged Halley's Comet in 240 BCE and the supernova of 1054 that left the Crab Nebula. The Lunar New Year still begins on the second new moon after the December solstice. In summer, Qixi in China and Tanabata in Japan celebrate Vega and Altair, the weaver girl and the cowherd, allowed to meet across the Milky Way one night a year. Japan's name for the Pleiades is Subaru, the cluster on the car badge.
In the circle: The moon stones follow the same lunar cycles that set the Chinese calendar.
The Middle East
Babylon gave us the zodiac, the 360 degree circle, the 60 minute hour and the saros cycle that predicts eclipses. The Magi who followed the Star of Bethlehem were sky watchers of this tradition, from Persia or Babylon; astronomers have proposed a meeting of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BCE, or of Jupiter and Venus in 2 BCE, as the star they saw. Persia still greets Nowruz, its new year, at the moment of the March equinox. Islamic months begin with the first thin crescent sighted by eye, and the astronomers of Baghdad and Cairo left their mark overhead: Aldebaran, Altair, Deneb, Rigel, Betelgeuse and Vega are all Arabic names.
In the circle: The equinox stones mark the moment of Nowruz. The first crescent will be looked for from the circle each month.
Africa
Africa holds the oldest stone calendar known. At Nabta Playa in Egypt's southern desert, a circle of standing stones around seven thousand years old, older than Stonehenge, lines up with the midsummer sunrise. Along the Nile the return of Sirius to the dawn sky announced the flood and the new year, and the pyramids of Giza are set to the cardinal points with astonishing precision. In southern Africa the Pleiades are isiLimela, the digging stars: their first dawn appearance in June told Xhosa and Zulu farmers to start hoeing, and Xhosa men counted their years of manhood from the June they first saw them.
In the circle: The solar gates follow Nabta Playa's lead. The June return of isiLimela is the same dawn as Matariki.
Europe
At Newgrange in Ireland, built 5,200 years ago, a roof box above the entrance lets the midwinter sunrise creep down a 19 metre passage to light the chamber for a few minutes a year. Stonehenge, a little younger, frames the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset. The Greeks, borrowing from Babylon, drew the constellations we still use, and Ptolemy's catalogue of 1,022 stars stayed the standard for 1,400 years.
In the circle: The solar gates are Dreketi's Stonehenge, set for the southern tropics instead of Salisbury Plain.
The Americas
In ancient Mexico, at Monte Albán and Xochicalco, sky watchers cut vertical shafts to catch the two noons a year when the sun stands straight overhead, and the Maya timed Venus to within a day over centuries. At Chichen Itza the equinox sun throws a serpent of light down the stairway of El Castillo. The Inca of Cusco read the Pleiades, Qollqa, each June to forecast the rains, saw a llama in the dark lanes of the Milky Way, and still celebrate Inti Raymi at the June solstice. In New Mexico the Sun Dagger of Chaco Canyon marks the solstices, the equinoxes and the moon's 18.6 year cycle with a blade of light across a spiral carved in rock.
Many Native American nations tell their star stories only in winter, so we share just the outline here.
In the circle: The zenith needle is a Mexican idea. The moon stones follow the same 18.6 year cycle the Chaco sun watchers tracked a thousand years ago.
Australia
Aboriginal Australians hold the oldest living astronomy on Earth, with star knowledge handed down for tens of thousands of years. The Emu in the Sky is drawn not in stars but in the dark dust lanes of the Milky Way, its head beside the Southern Cross and its body stretching to Scorpius. As its pose changes through autumn and winter it tells people when emu eggs are laid and ready to collect. Near Melbourne the Wathaurong stone arrangement of Wurdi Youang lines up with the setting sun at the solstices and equinoxes. From Dreketi the emu rises just as it does over Australia.
In the circle: The solar gates and equinox stones echo Wurdi Youang.
The Arctic
The Sámi of Sweden, Norway and Finland see a great elk, Sarva, running across the northern sky, chased by hunters whose bow is the Big Dipper and whose leader is the star Arcturus. Their year has eight seasons, read from reindeer, snow and sky. Much of the Sámi sky stays below our northern horizon, a reminder that every people reads its own piece of the heavens.
In the circle: The south pole tube points to the still point of our sky; the Sámi have the Pole Star for theirs.
These stories belong to the peoples who made them. We tell them briefly and with respect, and we welcome corrections and new stories. If your ancestors have taught you their own way of reading the sky, tell us when you visit.
Sky Circle
Stardome
Bamboo Cabin
Nakanacagi Village
