Ancient Tombs Arranged In The Image Of A Galaxy Discovered In Sudan

Conny Waters - AncientPages.com - No matter what place or time, people have always studied the stars and other celestial objects.

Archaeologists have discovered thousands of years old tombs in Sudan that were deliberately arranged in the image of a galaxy. This important finding sheds light on the burial customs in this area along with the significance of astronomy in the daily life of people in ancient Sudan.

 Field pictures of the funerary monuments. (A–C) Examples of foothill tumuli. (D) A well preserved two-storey qubba. (E–G) Landscape views of scatters of qubbas around the Jebel Maman. Credit: Costanzo S, Brandolini F, Idriss Ahmed H, Zerboni A, Manzo A (2021)

According to a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, Sudanese Islamic burial sites are distributed according to large-scale environmental factors and small-scale social factors, creating a galaxy-like distribution pattern.

The Kassala region of eastern Sudan is home to a vast array of funerary monuments, from the Islamic tombs of modern Beja people to ancient burial mounds thousands of years old.

Stefano Costanzo of the University of Naples "L'Orientale" in Italy and his team these monuments are randomly placed; their distribution is likely influenced by geological and social factors. Unraveling the patterns of the funerary landscape can provide insight into ancient cultural practices of the people who built them.

In this study, Costanzo and colleagues collected a dataset of over 10,000 funerary monuments in the region, distributed over 4000 km2, identified by field work and remote sensing using satellite imagery. They then analyzed the arrangement of these sites using a Neyman-Scott Cluster model, originally developed to study spatial patterns of stars and galaxies. This model revealed that, just like stars cluster around centers of high gravity, burials in Kassala cluster in the hundreds around central "parent" points which likely represent older tombs of importance.

The authors hypothesize that the larger scale distribution of tombs is determined by the environment, with "high-gravity" areas centering on regions with favorable landscapes and available building materials.

What role did the Milky Way play in the lives of people living in ancient Sudan? Credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi - CC BY-SA 4.0

Smaller scale distribution seems to be a social phenomenon, with tombs commonly built nearby older structures, possibly including recent family burials or more ancient burials of traditional importance. This is the first time this cosmological approach has been applied to archaeology, representing a fresh tool for answering questions about the origins of archaeological sites.

“The enormous number of monuments and their spatial distribution are here successfully explained using, for the first time in archaeology, the Neyman-Scott Cluster Process, hitherto designed for cosmology.

Our study highlights the existence of a built funerary landscape with galaxy-like aggregations of monuments driven by multiple layers of societal behavior. We suggest that the distribution of monuments was controlled by a synthesis of opportunistic geological constraints and cultural superstructure, conditioned by the social memory of the Beja people who have inhabited the region for two thousand years and still cherish the ancient tombs as their own kin’s,” the researchers write in their study.

“The NSC revealed “invisible”, empirically undetected local-scale clusters of Islamic funerary monuments that were nested within six large, environmentally driven “visible” clusters outlined within the study region.

Considering such monuments as realizations of galaxy-like clusters composed of offspring points revolving around parents, enabled a better understanding of their spatial organization, regardless of their chronology and shape.

Landscape views of scatters of qubbas around the Jebel Maman.. Credit: Stefano Costanzo - CC-BY 4.0

In fact, one of the premises of this research was the almost complete lack of previous studies on their origin, precise chronology and stylistic variants. With this approach we were able to formulate new hypotheses about their genesis and role within the funerary landscape. Comparing their arrangement with historical sources that describe the groups inhabiting the area since the late 1st millennium BCE, it emerges that the local clusters are most probably tribal/family cemeteries of the Beja people, where the socially superstructural offspring burials grew around environmentally opportunistic parent tombs, built in favorable locations with readily available construction material.

Satellite imagery illustrating the distribution of funerary monuments. Credit: Credit: Costanzo S, Brandolini F, Idriss Ahmed H, Zerboni A, Manzo A (2021)

Lastly, the cross G-function shows a local-scale (<400m radius) tendency towards aggregation of the Islamic funerary monuments around much older ones belonging to ancient pan-African traditions. This aspect requires further insights to determine the ratio of societal and geologically opportunistic contributions to their locations, yet it highlights continuity and stratification of subsequent phases,” the science team explains in their study.

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The authors add: "An international team of archaeologists discovered the environmental and societal drivers underlying the creation of the monumental funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan with a novel application of advanced geospatial analysis."

This interesting discovery opens a new window in the study of the ancient burial traditions in Sudan.

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Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Staff Writer