Kalokol, west of Lake Turkana, Kenya

Namoratunga II

About 2400 BC, one eggshell (a star calendar was also proposed for about 300 BC)

Basalt pillars standing and leaning among stones on a dry plain, with acacia trees behind them. — Basalt pillars at Namoratunga, west of Lake Turkana. They are undressed. Small stones piled on some tops are a later habit, not part of the published plan. The file is small, and it is the place. Darouet, CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.

West of Lake Turkana, nineteen basalt pillars stand in a ring of stones. A 1978 reading lined them up with seven stars of a living Cushitic calendar and put that sky in about 300 BC. An eggshell from the platform is about two thousand years older.

Why this is extraordinary

On a bench of sediment west of Lake Turkana, nineteen columns of basalt stand among a ring of stones. The Turkana name is Namoratunga, people of stone. A story told locally has spirits arriving at a dance and, insulted, leaving the dancers as pillars. The columns are not dressed. At the other pillar sites around the lake a typical one is about 30 to 35 centimetres on a side.

In 1978 the stones were read as a calendar. The lines through them were said to meet seven stars as those stars rose in about 300 BC: Triangulum, the Pleiades, Bellatrix, Aldebaran, central Orion, Saiph, and Sirius. The same list belongs to the Borana, Cushitic herders of southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya. Their year is twelve lunar months, about 29.5 days each, 354 days in all, and 27 names for the days, so the early names come around again before the month ends. You use it, near the equator, by watching. Stars here rise almost straight up. Two pillars mark a rising-place. The new moon in that same place opens the next month, star by star for the first half of the year, then by the moon’s own phase. That is a herding calendar, and among the Borana it sits inside the gada cycle of generations. A 1982 comment said the bearings did not hold and that a calendar written from living people cannot be laid on undated stones. A 1986 remeasure, using the centres of the pillars, still reported the star lines.

Then the platform got a clock. An ostrich-eggshell fragment from 29 to 40 centimetres down, sample ISGS-A1493, is 3890 ± 15 radiocarbon years. Calibrated, that is about 2400 BC, with a 95 percent range near 2460 to 2300 BC. The catch is the one the excavators print themselves. Dating material was scarce, and this is not a sample from under a chosen pillar. If the fragment does date the setting, the 300 BC sky is the wrong one. A star’s rising-place drifts. The line that worked for the Pleiades in 300 BC is not their rising-place in 2400 BC.

Around the lake, pillar sites such as Lothagam North are cemeteries of the first herders, with Nderit pottery and human remains. This platform has not produced those. So the stones may be a meeting ground rather than a graveyard, and the stars may be a real sight or a pattern found after the stars were chosen. What this changes: if the lines fit the older sky, a lunar-stellar calendar was in stone here in the later third millennium BC. If they fit only the 300 BC sky, the eggshell wins, and the pillars go back to the herders’ monuments, with the Borana list as a later resemblance.

The two published ages. The star reading was calculated for about 300 BC. The eggshell is about 2400 BC. The drawing is not a plan of the pillars. Diagram: Our Deep History.

Why it matters

If the pillars are a calendar, herders here were keeping months by the moon and a short list of stars long before any written astronomy in this region. If they are a meeting place or a cemetery of the same family as the other pillar sites around the lake, the stars are a later pattern laid on stones that already had a use.

Namoratunga means “people of stone” in the Turkana language. A local story says ancestral spirits came to a dance, were laughed at for their clothes, and turned the dancers into pillars. The archaeological name for this one is GcJh3, the Kalokol or Nasura pillar site, on a bench of sediment at the east edge of the Losedok Hills. The pillars are undressed basalt, the sort of column these lake sites use, often about 30 to 35 centimetres on a side, usually upright or a little tilted. There are nineteen of them, inside a roughly circular setting of stones.

Photo tour

1 photograph, unedited. On a phone, swipe the row. Choose one to look closely.

No openly licensed plan of all nineteen pillars was found, so the count stays in the text. The one photograph is a small file of the pillars on the plain.

What is still unexplained

These sit beside the consensus account, with the same visual weight. None of them is marked solved.

Open Seven stars, and a way to watch them The 1978 reading said the pillars are not aimed at random. The targets named are Triangulum, the Pleiades, Bellatrix, Aldebaran, central Orion, Saiph, and Sirius. Those are the stars a living calendar of eastern Cushitic herders, the Borana of southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, uses to know the month. Near 3.4 degrees north the stars rise almost straight up, so a pair of pillars can mark one rising-place on the horizon without a tall instrument. You would stand so that two stones line up with the place the chosen star clears the land. The Borana check, as the ethnographic account prints it, is the new moon rising at that same place. The year opens when the new moon is with Triangulum. The next new moon is with the Pleiades, then Aldebaran, Bellatrix, a mark in Orion, and Sirius. That covers the first months. A lunar month is about 29.5 days, and the calendar keeps 27 day-names, so the first names are used again at the end of the month. Twelve such months make a year of 354 days. The later months in the list are kept by the moon’s phase, full, gibbous, quarter, and the crescents, rather than by another star. Among the Borana this is a herding and ritual year, tied to the gada generation cycle. The catch is that this meaning is written down from living communities. It is not cut on the pillars. A 1982 comment challenged the bearings and the idea that a calendar recorded in the twentieth century can be assumed for the stones. A 1986 remeasurement, taking the line through the centres of the pillars rather than their highest points, still reported lines toward the same stars.

Open An eggshell about 2400 BC The pillars were undated when the star reading was made, and the sky was calculated for about 300 BC. In 2007 to 2009 a test trench found an ostrich-eggshell fragment 29 to 40 centimetres down, laboratory number ISGS-A1493. It measures 3890 ± 15 radiocarbon years. The 2011 table prints a calibrated centre near 2398 ± 44 BC. A 2012 calibration of the same sample gives a 95 percent range of 4413 to 4250 calendar years before present, about 2460 to 2300 BC. Dating material at this site was scant. This is one fragment, not charcoal from a pit under a named pillar. If it dates the platform, the 300 BC sky is the wrong century. The rising point of a star drifts over two thousand years. A line that caught the Pleiades in 300 BC does not catch them in 2400 BC. A supporter can answer that the eggshell dates a visit, not the day the pillars were stood, or that nobody has yet published the same seven lines against the older sky. Both answers are checkable. Neither has been the published test.

Location and dating

Location: GcJh3, the Kalokol pillar site, on the east edge of the Losedok Hills, about 50 kilometres off the Lodwar–Kalokol road, west of Lake Turkana. The coordinate is the site. Namoratunga I, at Lokori, is a different place, a field of cairns without these pillars.
Period label: Current consensus — open to revision Pastoral Neolithic, with the other pillar sites around the lake. The eggshell sits near 2400 BC. The star reading was calculated for about 300 BC. Sister sites such as Lothagam North are communal cemeteries of early herders. This one has not produced the Nderit pottery and the human remains those cemeteries have, so a meeting place remains a live description beside a cemetery.
How this dating was done: Radiocarbon on one ostrich-eggshell fragment from the platform. The star reading is archaeoastronomy, a comparison of lines through the pillars with the rising points of seven named stars. The 300 BC sky and the eggshell sky are not the same calculation.
What could change it: A second date from under a pillar, or a published azimuth of each line against those seven stars at about 2400 BC rather than at 300 BC. Either result would move the weight.

Published ranges, drawn as bars. A bar is a claim about a span, not a point.

Eggshell at GcJh3

Star readingContested

2460 BCE1500 BCE200 BCE

Eggshell at GcJh3. ISGS-A1493, 3890 ± 15 radiocarbon years. The bar is the 2012 95 percent calibration, about 2460 to 2300 BC, not a new calculation.
Star reading. The 1978 sky, “about 300 BC.” A proposed century, not a laboratory date.

What is actually there

Nineteen undressed basalt pillars stand in a circular stone setting.
A 1978 reading named seven rising stars used in a living Borana calendar.
The Borana year is twelve lunar months, about 354 days, with 27 day-names.
One eggshell fragment dates to about 2400 BC, roughly two thousand years older than that sky.
Neighbouring pillar sites are cemeteries. This one has not yielded their pottery or their burials.

Open questions

Question	Status
Do the pillars mark the rising of those seven stars, or do nineteen stones in a ring make lines that can be matched after the stars are chosen?	Open. A 1986 remeasure still found the lines. The eggshell moves the sky they would have to fit.
Is this a calendar, a cemetery, or a meeting ground of early herders?	Open. The sister sites are cemeteries. This platform has not produced their graves.

The current narrative

Where publication stands today. It is the best-supported reading, and it is open to revision. It is not a verdict.

The current narrative — open to revision

A monument of early herders

The pillars belong with the Pastoral Neolithic pillar sites around Lake Turkana, built by mobile herders as cemeteries and meeting places. The eggshell puts this platform near 2400 BC. The star list is a pattern noticed later, calculated for a century the sample does not support.

What supports this

One radiocarbon sample from the platform, 3890 ± 15 radiocarbon years, calibrates near 2400 BC.
Other pillar sites at the lake, including Lothagam North, are communal cemeteries of the same broad age and the same basalt architecture.
The pillars are undressed columns, the building habit of those sites, not an instrument with a published scale.

What pushes back

The sample is one eggshell fragment, not a foundation under a named pillar, and dating material here was scant.
A 1978 reading and a 1986 remeasure both reported lines on the seven calendar stars.
Kalokol has not produced the burials and Nderit pottery of the cemetery sites, so “just another graveyard” is not yet a description of this platform.

What would settle it

It is the centre because a radiocarbon sample and a family of sister sites are stronger than a sky chosen for 300 BC. It moves if the lines fit the rising points of those stars at the eggshell’s century and miss a random ring.

Emerging narratives

Other published readings. Each may be right. None is adopted here unless the evidence carries it.

An emerging narrative

A sightline for a lunar-stellar calendar

The nineteen pillars were set so a watcher could mark where seven stars rise, and could then tell the month by the new moon rising in that same place. The living Borana calendar is the meaning, a herding year of twelve lunar months.

What supports this

The 1978 paper named the same stars the Borana calendar uses, and called the match non-random.
Near the equator a star rises nearly vertically, so two pillars are a workable sight for a horizon point.
A 1986 remeasure, using the centres of the stones, still reported the lines.

What pushes back

The eggshell is about two thousand years older than the sky the lines were tested against. Precession moves the target.
A 1982 comment challenged the bearings. Basalt can tug a compass, and a living calendar is not dated by a stone.
No month-name is written at the site. The gada cycle is Borana ethnography, not a Pastoral Neolithic text.

What would settle it

It stays on the table because the stars are a real list and the pillars are real lines of stone. It is not the centre until someone publishes the azimuths against the sky of about 2400 BC, with more than one date under the pillars.

Should the current view be reevaluated?

Open to revision

The pillars and the eggshell are firm enough to keep. Whether they were a star calendar is a real published reading that was calculated for the wrong century if the eggshell dates the building. Open keeps the herder monument and the seven stars in the same room.

What drives this

Nineteen undressed basalt pillars in a circular setting.
A 1978 star list that matches a living Cushitic calendar, and a 1986 remeasure.
One eggshell near 2400 BC, against a sky calculated for about 300 BC.

This is the museum’s own weighing of the evidence. It is not a visitor vote, and it is separate from the slider.

Weigh it yourself

Anonymous. Nothing here is stored except on this browser. Your lean does not change the assessment beside it.

A monument of early herders Unsure A sightline for a lunar-stellar calendar

If the contested reading is right

What would follow if a reading that is not the consensus turned out to be true, and what could settle it. This explains the stakes. It does not adopt the reading.

The pillars are a lunar-stellar calendar

Early herders at Turkana would be taught as keeping a month by the moon and seven stars, and the Borana calendar would have a stone ancestor two millennia older than the 300 BC sky. The cemetery sites around the lake would still stand.

Why it is still worth a test

Surveyed azimuths of the pillar lines against Triangulum, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, Bellatrix, central Orion, Saiph, and Sirius at about 2400 BC, plus a second date from a pillar socket.

Sources

Namoratunga, the first archeoastronomical evidence in sub-Saharan Africa Science, 1978
Four middle Holocene pillar sites in West Turkana, Kenya Journal of Field Archaeology, 2011
Early herders and monumental sites in eastern Africa Antiquity, 2012
Borana calendar Wikipedia, summarizing the ethnographic month list

Image credits

Basalt pillars at Namoratunga, west of Lake Turkana. They are undressed. Small stones piled on some tops are a later habit, not part of the published plan. The file is small, and it is the place. . Darouet, CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.
The two published ages. The star reading was calculated for about 300 BC. The eggshell is about 2400 BC. The drawing is not a plan of the pillars. . Diagram: Our Deep History.

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