In 1990 Science News printed an article which told of the Mimbres culture of what is now southwest New Mexico. The Mimbres people made black-on-white pottery adorned with intricate designs and mysterious animal. Of particular note in the article was a shallow bowl with the figure of a rabbit painted on the inside. According to the article the rabbit is an animal associated with the moon in numerous indigenous cultures of what is now the Southwest United States and Central America.
Upon close observation, the image of a rabbit on its hind legs can be seen in the dark areas of the full moon. Which might have led to the link between the rabbit and the moon.
The article concerned a study led by astronomer R. Robert Robbins and student Russell R Westmoreland then of the University of Texas in Austin. In studying the pottery of the Mimbres culture, they happened upon a specific bowl which pictured a rabbit “clutching” a small circular image with 23 rays. They proposed that this bowl was a record of the explosion of the supernova which created the Crab Nebula. The explosion was recorded by Chinese astronomers in the 11th century Common Era (CE). This would make the bowl, now known as the Supernova bowl, the only known record of the supernova that created the Crab Nebula outside China and Japan.
At the time I found the story intriguing and started a search for more information on stories from indigenous peoples related to a rabbit on the moon. I was also curious about the shape of the shallow bowl. It was round but quite shallow and would not be able to hold much inside, whether it was water, or grain, or sand. I was not able to find much information on either, but I was also wrapped up in my work as an engineer – and camping along the unpopulated portions of the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Several decades later I was sitting on my screen porch at night. I might not have been in the wilderness, but I was outside enjoying a very pleasant evening. The light that entered the porch was from a single streetlight across the street. I happened to look up at several items we had hanging on the wall of the porch, one of which was a large, shallow bowl I had bought in street market in Morocco in the 1960s. We had two of these bowls hanging on the wall as they are well made and have a colorful geometric pattern. As the light from the streetlight hit the bowls at a shallow angle the side of the bowl cast a shadow across the curved depth of the bowl and created a pattern of a waxing crescent moon, as it proceeded to a full moon. I was amazed. I carefully removed the bowl from the wall and turned it so that the light of the streetlight hit it a different angles and created a shadowing affect that appeared like the changing phases of the moon.
I found this interesting and wondered how ancient people explained the phases of the moon, or whether they might have thought of the moon as a bowl. Of course, we now know that the moon is not a bowl but rather is a sphere created around the same time as the Earth. As both revolved around the Sun and each other they became more and more rounded from the effect of the rotating motion.
Several years later while looking for a space-related gift for a colleague who was retiring, I came across a “moon bowl”. It was made of metal with an acid-etched surface. It was very shallow and looked very much, in its general shape, like the Mimbres bowl I had read about so many years before. I gave the gift and told the story, or what I thought was a plausible story, of how ancient people might have used a bowl to explain the phases of the moon.
Recently, I went in search of more of these metal bowls but was disappointed to learn that the foundry in Vermont was no longer making the bowls.
But the story does not change, and now when I stand outside and look up at the night sky. I wonder what ancient people thought the moon and the stars and the wandering planets might be. Some stories have come down to us, from when those people, our ancestors, stood outside and gazed up and the night sky and marveled at its beauty.
The Science News article from 1990 may be found at; https://www.sciencenews.org/archive/astronomy-71
Dr. R. Robert Robbins remains on the staff of the University of Texas in Austin where he teaches the history and philosophy of astronomy and archaeoastronomy; and science education.
The picture of the “Supernova Bowl” below is from a copy of the Science News article. I will post a better one if I can find it.
