Some of my students loved it, others hated it. But almost every evening, no matter how cold the winter winds of Taung could be, we’d stay on site until the Southern Cross would be visible in the sky at dusk. Although we were just minutes from our local home, this meant we usually had a fairly late dinner once we got back from stargazing. Beer and wine usually helped to assuage any grumbling.
The night sky in a desert like the Kalahari is beyond comparison. With no moisture in the air, particularly in the dry winters, along with no metropolitan ‘light pollution,’ the stars and some planets are as visible to the naked eye as they possibly could be. As they shine down on the white limestone dust of the Taung site, it creates a unique contrast of shadows and reflections. Moonlight is so bright with the reflections that one can easily read at night by the natural light. But in the absence of moonlight, the stars are bright enough that if you pass one hand over the other, you can see a shadow.
But my students were not the only ones who were sometimes perplexed by my affections for the night skies. Or for skies in general. My local employees also had some questions, as did many of the old and wise of surrounding villages.
Let’s start with the question from Joseph, my foreman. One afternoon, as we worked at the base of the Dart Pinnacle, he had been having an intense conversation with an affable worker named Petrus. Joseph walked up to me and asked: “What time is it in America?” I replied that it depends on where you are in America, but in New York it would be 8:30 in the morning. “So they can see the sun now?” “Yes,” I replied. But then he asked, “Is it the same sun?” I again replied in the affirmative. Joseph shouted out to Petrus, “It’s the same sun!” Petrus just shook his head, smiled, and in long, drawn out tones said “Oh .... noooooo.”
Now you must understand that Joseph and Petrus are pretty bright. Both of them were reasonably fluent in at least four languages, with Joseph even surprising me by knowing a bit of Italian. And they quickly learned to identify fossils as we excavated. But astronomy was not something they had encountered.
The astronomy point was driven home to me on one of our many peregrinations up into the local village of Thabasikwa, on top of the Ghaap escarpment. We’d drive up the road to Damascus, which is what Thabasikwa means, go past the village, and step on to a Kalahari land of goats and Acacia trees. Normally we were undisturbed by the locals, but we always welcomed the occasional visitor who would wander along and ask what we were doing.
Often this would be on a Tuesday afternoon/evening. I had done this ritual enough times that I’d play the Moody Blues album “Days of Future Passed” to perfection with the sunset. For those of you unfamiliar with this musical album of 1967, it has a classic ballad regarding “Tuesday afternoon.” This got whoever was with me in the mood. Later on the tape, the Moody Blues would sing: “When the sun goes down ...” And, of course, the sun went down as my boom box echoed those words. I rarely missed by more than a few seconds.
Meanwhile, the stars of the Southern Cross would come up. One night we were joined by some of the curious residents of Thabasikwa. We talked about the Southern Cross, and other things we saw in the sky. But they had a different perspective. To them, it was a new sky every night. We asked if they had seen the Southern Cross every night, but to them, no, we were traveling through the universe, and every night was different.
So we asked about the sun, and why we see it every day. Oh, no, it is a new sun every day. I envisioned their perception as if going past street lamps on a cosmic road, each one a new one. I think that is the best interpretation I can give of what they believed. On that, I did not object. I was as willing to learn from the people of Taung, as much as to teach them.
One more thing about the sun. It went away one day. We happened to be working during a solar eclipse. More than one asked me “Why is the sun going away today?” I tried to explain that it was not going away, but just being covered up by the moon for a while. It was to no avail, as they perceived this as being very ominous.
I had some graduate students with me at the time, and we talked about capitalizing on this concern the locals had about the eclipse. That year we had the addition of a Bophuthatswana army base right next to the site, with bright lights that obscured our beautiful night skies. The army base got its water from the Thabasikwa river via rubber tubes, and we thought that maybe, as the eclipse occurred, we could inject some red dye into their water source and scare them away. We didn’t do it, but it was a fun idea that stood a good chance of working. One has to choose one’s battles carefully.
Solar eclipses are wonderful wherever you are on Earth. Shadows and reflections of leaves and buildings and even excavation equipment take on new shapes. In the lunar-like topography of the Buxton Limeworks, with cultural nuances to boot, it was even more of a spectacle. And we survived, without breaking the law.
At the beginning of this book I wrote about my return to Taung, and the Buxton Limeworks. I found then that the lights of the army base had been turned off, and the night sky was as charming, and stunning, as ever. I came to think of stars in a different way. What we see in the night sky are fossils of distant and vibrant suns, with light emitted millions of years ago, some from the same time when my fossils at Taung were living beings roaming the ancient African savannahs.
Copyright Jeffrey K McKee 2025