Watching the Sun: From Stone Monuments to Spacecraft

By Jeremy Clift, author of Born in Space: Unlocking Destiny

Stonehenge mysteries

When we think about solar storms, it's easy to assume they're a modern concern.

After all, satellites, GPS navigation, electrical grids, and the internet are only a few decades old. Surely our ancestors had little reason to worry much about activity on the Sun. Or did they?

Long before telescopes and satellites, civilizations around the world watched the sky with extraordinary care. They tracked the movements of the Sun, Moon, and planets, built monuments aligned with solstices and equinoxes, and recorded eclipses with remarkable accuracy.

For ancient peoples, the heavens were more than a source of wonder. They were a calendar, a clock, and often the foundation of agriculture, religion, and political authority. A change in the sky could change everything on Earth, crucially for crops and harvests.

Watching the Sky

The Maya developed one of the most sophisticated astronomical traditions in the ancient world, calculating planetary cycles with astonishing precision.

Mayan Temple of the Sun.

The Babylonians meticulously recorded celestial events on clay tablets.

Chinese astronomers documented comets, eclipses, and unusual celestial phenomena for centuries. Across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, monuments were built to mark the changing seasons, ensuring that communities knew when to plant crops, harvest food, or prepare for winter.

These civilizations understood something we sometimes forget. Human survival has always depended on understanding our place beneath the sky.

When the Sun Turns Violent

Most days, the Sun appears reassuringly constant. In reality, it is a dynamic star.

Solar flares and coronal mass ejections regularly hurl billions of tonnes of charged particles into space. Earth's magnetic field shields us from much of this activity, but particularly powerful eruptions can disturb that protective bubble.

In 1859, the Carrington Event produced the most intense geomagnetic storm ever recorded. Telegraph systems failed across continents, operators received electric shocks, and brilliant auroras illuminated skies far from the poles. Had the same event occurred today, scientists believe the consequences could be far more severe, disrupting satellites, navigation systems, communications, aviation, and electrical grids upon which modern civilization depends.

More recently, researchers studying ancient tree rings have identified evidence of even larger bursts of cosmic radiation, known as Miyake Events. These sudden spikes in radioactive carbon suggest that Earth has experienced extreme solar activity—or other cosmic events—far beyond anything witnessed in modern history.

Exactly what caused them remains an active area of scientific research. But they remind us that our planet has endured extraordinary events before.

Did Ancient Civilizations Notice?

One of the fascinating questions is whether ancient observers ever witnessed the effects of major solar storms. A powerful geomagnetic event can produce spectacular auroras visible thousands of kilometers from the poles. To people with no scientific explanation, shimmering curtains of light across unfamiliar skies would almost certainly have seemed significant.

Some researchers have suggested that historical records describing "red heavens," unusual lights, or strange celestial omens may correspond to periods of heightened solar activity. Others urge caution, noting that ancient descriptions are often symbolic and difficult to interpret. The truth is that we don't know.

But it is entirely possible that people living thousands of years ago observed extraordinary events in the sky and sought to preserve them in the only ways they could—through stories, monuments, artwork, and oral traditions.

Reading the Past with Modern Science

One of the most exciting developments in archaeology is that researchers are increasingly combining ancient records with modern scientific techniques. Tree rings preserve evidence of changes in atmospheric chemistry. Ice cores contain traces of past solar activity. Radiocarbon dating reveals subtle changes in Earth's environment. Ancient inscriptions provide clues that can sometimes be compared with astronomical calculations.

No single source tells the whole story.

Together, they allow scientists to reconstruct events that occurred centuries—or even millennia—before modern instruments existed. It is a reminder that archaeology is not simply about discovering old objects, it's about recovering forgotten knowledge.

Where Science Meets Fiction

This intersection between archaeology and astronomy became one of the inspirations for my latest novel Space Shield: The Wrath of the Sun.

At the heart of the story lies an ancient Olmec mosaic. It is not a magical artifact or a supernatural prophecy. Instead, it represents something I find far more intriguing: the possibility that ancient civilizations carefully observed the heavens and encoded their understanding in ways we are only beginning to appreciate.

The novel imagines what might happen if those observations pointed toward a recurring solar catastrophe, one that modern science eventually recognizes as a genuine threat.

The archaeology sets up the mystery, the physics explains what's going on, and engineering provides the solution. Or at least, an attempted one.

Looking Up

One of the greatest lessons of history is that every generation believes it understands the world better than the last. Usually, that's true.

But every generation also inherits questions that previous civilizations asked in different ways. What is happening in the sky? How does it affect life on Earth?

And how should we prepare?

Our ancestors lacked satellites and supercomputers, but they possessed something equally important. They paid attention. As humanity prepares to build permanent settlements on the Moon, send astronauts to Mars, and construct infrastructure across the Solar System, we may find ourselves looking upward with the same sense of urgency they once did.

Only now, we have the tools to understand what they could only wonder about.

— Jeremy Clift, author of Born in Space  and Space Vault: The Seed Eclipse. Read Clift’s profile on Kirkus.