The astronomer Juan Antonio Belmonte Avilés is a member of the Scientific Council of the Talayotic Menorca Agency, and one of the authors of Menorca's UNESCO World Heritage nomination dossier. With a Degree in Physical Science from Barcelona University and Doctorate in Astrophysics from La Laguna University, he holds the position of Research Professor at the IAC (Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics), where he conducts research in exoplanetology and archaeoastronomy.
Over recent decades he has focused his research on the astronomic traditions of the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean. He currently chairs the "World Heritage and Astronomy" commission of the IAU (International Astronomical Union).
This scientific task further adds to his extensive track record in teaching and scientific outreach: he has published some fifteen books and written more than two hundred articles about these subjects, in both scientific journals and popular science magazines. He holds an associate position at the Department of Astrophysics of La Laguna University, where he has taught classes in the History of Astronomy and Archaeoastronomy, and also teaches Habitability and Astrobiology. He has likewise served as Director of the Tenerife Museum of Science and the Cosmos (1995-2000), chaired the SEAC (European Society for Astronomy in Culture, 2005-2011) and the CAT (Time Allocation Committee) of the Canary Islands observatories (2003-2011).
Let's begin by finding out a little of your personal background. What led to your interest in studying the stars?
At difficult times in your teenage years, you reach decisions without really understanding why. My passion was history and geography, my family was full of doctors, and fate seemed to be pushing me towards that specialist field. In the late Seventies history didn't offer much of a future, aside from teaching. And then all of a sudden, I discovered astronomy. And to be an astrophysicist you had to study Physics, which wasn't available as a course in Murcia, my home town.
My siblings kept telling me that I needed to get away from home, and so I always joke that if there had been a Physics course in Murcia, I would be an architect. It was just after my 18th birthday that I took the decision. I headed off to Barcelona, but never forgot my passion for history, ancient languages, architecture, cosmography. Egypt, Assyria and Rome were to be a constant in my life.
And that passion gave rise to a profession: how did you end up specialising in archaeoastronomy?
When I finished my studies specialising in Astrophysics in Barcelona, I went off to the IAC, in Tenerife, which at the time was a new institution, with little experience but plenty of promise and enthusiasm. I began a thesis in stellar physics, and would most likely still be studying the interior of stars, through astroseismology, if a series of chance happenings hadn't brought me face to face with a discipline that I was completely unaware of, but which offered me the perspective I had dreamed of, to combine all my passions: archaeoastronomy.
There wasn't, and still isn't in Spanish at least, any formal course of education allowing you to study such a trans-disciplinary subject, which didn't fit in with any classification. And so you could say that I am self-taught. I read all there was to be read, and invited the leading lights in archaeoastronomy from all round the world to teach part of the doctorate course in the History of Astronomy that I had taken on. Anthony Aveni from Colgate, Michael Hoskin from Cambridge, Clive Ruggles from Leicester, Ivan Sprajç from Ljubliana, Stanislaw Iwanizewski from the INAH in Mexico, Rolf Krauss from Berlin, among others, all visited the IAC, and along with my students, I gradually soaked up their knowledge and know-how.
The change of century was a golden age in that regard. In 2005, with projects in progress in Egypt, the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean islands and North Africa, almost without realising it, I was elected as President of the SEAC. Archaeoastronomy, which is more well-known and better cited these days, as cultural astronomy, had gone from being a passion to a profession. My guiding light as a researcher from that time onwards, along with exoplanets, the umbilical cord linking me to astrophysics.
What data does archaeoastronomy provide in explaining an ancient culture such as the Talayotic civilisation?
Archaeoastronomy is a form of archaeometry more connected with the archaeology of the landscape. We mustn't overlook what is going on above the horizon if we want to understand the societies of the past. The celestial orb was for them as important as the land and sea around them, the landscape. And astronomy is also the only discipline which could position us in time and space, before mankind invented the compass, GPS or atomic clocks. The heavens, with their regular movements and apparent immutability, also offered patterns which helped to create a cosmological vision and eschatology which, although they were (almost) beyond all comprehension, generated hope.
Which is why buildings pointed towards the stars above, and were fitted into the landscape without overlooking the corresponding celestial sphere. The patterns that were established remained in place for centuries. Calendars were created by observing the sun, the moon and the stars to keep track of time. The heavens were mapped to provide a guide, above when navigating stormy seas or inhospitable deserts. These are all the data analysed by cultural astronomy, and in particular archaeoastronomy, with reference to ancient buildings. Menorca is a paradigm in this regard.
What was it that prompted you to study Talayotic culture, and how did your relationship with Menorca begin?
That was down to my mentor, Prof Michael Hoskin of Cambridge University. Michael had pioneered archaeoastronomy studies in Spain, specifically in Menorca, working in the late Eighties on the island's taulas, navetas and megalithic sepulchres. In 1993, thirty years ago now, I got in touch with him to ask if he wanted to contribute to a collective work, "Hispanic Archaeoastronomy", which was to be brought out by Equipo Sirius, the publishing house of the journal [Tribuna de] Astronomía back then. His reply was enthusiastic.
It fell to me to translate and edit his chapters, including the one dedicated to Talayotic culture, which was my first contact with Menorca. In the late Nineties I spent a long time on the island, and fell in love with it. A little later I worked in Mallorca, and Talayotic culture became another of my lines of research, which I also linked in with my work on the island of Sardinia, so different but at the same time so similar to Menorca.
What was the relationship between the Talayotic people and the heavens?
Archaeoastronomy studies show that the population that arrived in the Balearic Islands a little over 4,000 years ago brought with them their customs of funerary orientation, which suggest that these people originated on the coasts of the Gulf of Lion.
Meanwhile, their elaborate rituals, represented by the taula enclosures, suggest the need to observe the sky against open horizons, revealing patterns, asterisms (constellations) that are today invisible from the island of Menorca. The direct connection between these and the rituals evades us, but it is particularly striking to note that when those stars disappeared from the skies above Menorca, they stopped building the taulas. Although the cause-effect relationship cannot be proven, it nonetheless remains indicative.
And what tools or knowledge did the Talayotic people use to steer by the constellations?
We do not know for certain which constellations the peoples of the Balearic Islands were familiar with. As they weren't sailors, we don't know if they mapped the skies for this purpose. Nor do we know they used particular asterisms to position themselves in time, as many other contemporary Mediterranean peoples did. And we also know nothing of whether they revered any particular star, planet or constellation.
What is striking, however, is to note that Sirius, the brightest star in the sky towards which the Torralba taula points, was a seasonal marker of the first order in Egypt, for example, where it was also an avatar of the goddess Isis. The discovery of Egyptian artefacts in the excavations, or the mention of Caelestis at Son Catlar, suggests something, but we cannot go much further.
There has also been much talk of the possible relationship between the cyclopean cultures of Menorca and Sardinia, and so the fact that landmark buildings of both these civilisations point towards the same groups of stars, such as the Southern Cross and the lucidae of Centaurus, raises some intriguing enigmas.
Highlighting the importance of Michael Hoskin as a figure, what are the main conclusions of his research on Menorca to which you contributed?
My collaboration with Michael culminated in the publication in 2001 of Reflection of the Cosmos, which we wrote together. By then I had already assimilated all his findings in the Balearic Islands and Iberia, and espoused them, to a certain extent. That friendship and collaboration continued over the next two decades, up until his death in 2021 at the age of 91.
By then I was already the leading proponent of his work, intermingling it with my own. His earliest hypotheses were backed up by later findings, and even survived certain paradigm shifts, such as the new datings of the taulas, indicating they were closer in time.
What hypothesis do you consider to be the most plausible to explain the orientations of the Talayotic monuments?
Given all that I said earlier, when the possibility came up of incorporating studies into cultural astronomy as an additional element in Talayotic Menorca's World Heritage nomination, and given Michael's advanced age, I found myself in the perfect position to serve as ambassador for the skies of Menorca as a cultural landmark of the first order, characterising the attributes and underpinning their universal and exceptional value.
We considered what could be the most important features characterising the island and making it distinctive, in addressing the vital comparative analysis with its potential rivals, including Sardinia and Malta. And so we went back to the hypotheses as to the orientation of the dolmens, the navetas and taulas, that we had considered earlier.
The funereal monuments seems to correspond to a lunar pattern. The taulas, a stellar pattern. The sun has not for the moment offered irrefutable evidence, but the effects of light and shadow inside some of the funereal caves suggest interesting perspectives for the future.
What is for you the monument that best represents the cosmological vision of the Talayotic people?
A hard question to answer. My favourite is the taula complex at Torralba d’en Salort, but then again it is the exception to the rule, as it is not the most representative structure.
In that regard, the outstanding complex at Torre d’en Galmes is unrivalled. Everything is represented there: talayots dominating the landscape, a taula facing the sea and the Southern Cross, and in the vicinity a dolmen (Ses Roques Llises), evoking the migrations of the past. I could go on…
How have your and Michael Hoskin's studies help to distinguish the Talayotic culture of Menorca with a view to the possible World Heritage listing?
After this exasperating uncertainty, if the World Heritage declaration proves successful in Riyadh in a few months' time, which is what we all hope and wish, this will be the third time that archaeoastronomy has played a key role in the inclusion of a Spanish site on the list. The previous examples were Antequera and the peaks of Gran Canaria. I found myself involved in all of them, and I think that my participation marked one of the proudest moments of my career as an archaeoastronomer.
Without Michael, neither Antequera nor Menorca would have included the heavens and their interaction with the landscape as a fundamental element in the exceptional universal value of the nomination's attributes. In Menorca, its situation, a land enclosed by sky and sea, the observation of the heavens and their interaction with the landscape proved a fundamental element. Which is what made it so important for them to be represented in the nomination dossier, and based on my experience in the evaluation process, in which it was a pleasure and an honour to take part, although I do not want to get ahead of events, it was a factor which really helped to showcase our bid and give it sex appeal.
Michael lived to see the dolmens of Antequera declared a World Heritage site, and I am sure that wherever he is, even if only in our memory, he will be really proud when Talayotic Menorca achieves this too.