In search of an anthropology of the cosmos

50 years after the arrival of man on the moon, one of the great narratives that shaped the twentieth century has been revived: Space exploration as one of the most important scientific and technological achievements of humanity, which somehow affirmed the economic and political power of the United States during the cold war.

Although in 1969 the Apollo 11 moon landing was an act that had meanings closely linked to American identity, today, space exploration has more global connotations and does not only cover government sectors, but also the private sector is now a key player.

As the cultural epicenter of globalization during the twentieth and twenty-first century, the United States has played a central role in the configuration of this collective imaginary, and the NASA space agency continues to be the entity with the greatest convening power on issues related to space in the world, more than any other institution, whether private or governmental.

The monumental achievement of NASA in the days of the Apollo mission, has different angles of analysis and edges that had an impact on modern history, but what interests us here is to approach the space exploration that begins in the second half of the twentieth century as the continuation of a myth that has its roots in our ancestors and which is the construction and cultural appropriation of space as a universal quality of the human being.

In establishing this, we also advocate an anthropology of the cosmos, in the sense of treating the cosmos as a cultural object, which has had different representations throughout history, of course, it is currently a cultural construction that goes hand in hand with advances scientific and technological, but there is also a popular cultural imaginary that weaves and enriches the myth.

If anyone asks his neighbor or colleague what he means by “myth” it is almost certain that the answer will be something like “the beliefs of the primitive peoples” or “the beliefs of the ancestors”, however, for an anthropologist the myths not only are they part of the worldview of extinct cultures or hunter gatherers, they are also part of the modern world.

One of the most influential anthropologists of the twentieth century and maximum exponent of structuralism, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), showed that under the story of legends, fictions and fantastic narratives, logical systems are hidden that allow access to a worldview, necessary to give direction and meaning to human action.

Of course, Lévi-Strauss talked about the myths of societies without writing, but if we stick to the definition of myth as a form of story that allows human beings to classify the world around them to guide their action and take their place in that classification, then we see that industrial and contemporary societies also build narratives that function as myths.

Some myths of modernity are closely linked to technological and scientific development, which does not mean that progress is a myth, what is structured as a myth is the narrative that is built towards the collective imaginary, sometimes from the popular culture preceding technological advances, such is the case of Jules Verne and his novel From the Earth to the Moon, 1865.

From that moment on, the story of the space exploration as an archetype of technological progress and space as a cultural extension of our habitat was implanted in the collective imaginary, however, the relationship of man with space is very old and although we have no record of this, surely our ancestors had a deep relationship with space by observing the planets and stars, a relationship closely linked to everyday survival.

For example, it is difficult to understand how our ancestors could plan the hunting seasons or the changes of seasons, fundamental acts for survival, without observing the movements of the sun and the moon, or the ancient navigators who were guided mainly by the stars.

It seems that the relationship with space has accompanied us during our same development as a species, for example, the oldest evidence of some type of lunar record has been estimated at 30,000 years or more, in some art caves in the south from France and Spain, bones have been found with marks that have been interpreted as lunar calendars.

If we think of the ancient great civilizations, they all had an important relationship with space, that is, they made the cosmos a cultural object that denoted their worldview and for some such as ancient Egypt or the Mayan culture, this relationship played a fundamental role that it was reflected in its architecture.

We can easily see how the observable space has had a cultural link with human beings, in different times and spaces, and that it has not only served the human being for practical purposes, but that these develop along with narratives about their meaning, such it is the case of the zodiac that does not have a scientific basis, but it does have cultural and historical connotations about the popular imagination and our cultural relationship with the cosmos.

The myth of space exploration literally took off in 1969 with the launch of Apollo 11 and the moon landing on July 21, 1969, when a human being walked for the first time on the surface of an object of the solar system that did not is the Earth.

Beyond the technological challenge that the moon landing represented, in anthropological terms, a narrative was established in which the cultural construction of space, for the first time in the history of mankind, entailed a concrete form of appropriation and the possibility of migrating Culture (capitalized) to outer space.

Paradoxically, a year earlier, the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, anticipated the myth, already rooted in popular culture, with a film that marked a before and after both in the way of representing the cultural link of the human being with space, as in the cinematographic perspective by taking the science fiction genre on the big screen to a quasi-intellectual level.

So that popular culture and science worked hand in hand to establish a cultural landscape around space in two senses, in a “real” sense to put it in some way, where science and technology pushed astronomy towards a golden age with a new generation of powerful telescopes that gave us images of previously invisible stars and galaxies, and another “fantastic” vision of the cultural possibilities of outer space, where the collective imaginary and also science interwoven a narrative that put on the discussion table the archetype of life in the cosmos, or to be precise, of intelligent life.

In the years that followed the moon landing of 1969, the encounter between the two narratives lived its best, incredibly the initiative would be taken by a group of scientists whose most visible face was the cosmologist Carl Sagan and the most important space agency in the world, NASA.

In collaboration, they sent a series of “messages” to the cosmos about the existence of intelligent life on earth, as a form of testimony of the existence of humans, first in the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes, between 1972 and 1973 and later in the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, in 1977.

A turning point in the narrative of the twentieth century on the cultural construction of space was undoubtedly the television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, in the 1980s, Carl Sagan became a central figure by embodying the great diffuser of science on a massive level. The cultural impact of Cosmos has been to bring interest in science and astronomy to an audience that covered all educational levels and ages. For the new millennium, the series has been seen in 60 countries with an audience estimated at 500 million people.

The series gave a new perspective to the general public on issues such as the size of the universe, the number of galaxies there are, life on earth, the evolution of the human being versus the age of the universe, the Big Bang, black holes, that is, a whole new language, previously contained in the academic and scientific community exploded in the imagination of the rest of the world.

From my perspective, Cosmos not only marked a watershed by introducing a new lexicon and a new way of understanding the universe, but drew a bridge for the discussion between popular narrative and science about the possibility of life beyond the earth, that is, until the arrival of the series, it is very likely that the general public has never seen a scientist talk about extraterrestrial life, that only happened in the movies.

Today, 40 years after the premiere of Cosmos, there are groups of scientists and astronomers who make their professional lives around the search for life in the universe, and disciplines such as astrobiology have taken the discussion to a high scientific level. In fact, scientists have put a change of focus on the discussion table, it is no longer the fundamental question if there is life in the universe or not, but how long it will take for human beings to have solid evidence.

But what about the implications of space exploration for anthropology? And how can an anthropology of the cosmos be built?

The first step is to try to establish the possible scenarios. NASA currently has a very ambitious project called Artemis, alluding to the Greek deity and sister of Apollo, with which they plan to return man to the moon by 2024, the phrase used by the project is “humanity ´s return to the moon” and thus establish a sustainable platform that allows astronauts to be sent to Mars.

For any scientist, it is an extremely seductive scenario, and I would say that anyone could identify with the excitement that produces such a possibility, but for an anthropologist there are implications that force us to rethink the human experience, how our beliefs will be modified, how it will impact In the great religions, what impact will it have on the idea of life that we have so far, what impact it will have on the different cultural identities, and so we can continue.

Obviously what we have at the moment are questions, the explorations to Mars have been indirect, that is, by means of artifacts that man has sent, but has not yet been explored directly, putting the feet on its surface.

Achieving a sustainable life outside the planet earth is the most imminent implication for anthropology, and if that sustainability extends to other generations we will have to ask ourselves the consequences of a new generation that will have to redefine its identity, its idea of family, its relationship with its habitat, its beliefs, that is, everything.

What astronomy has taught us is that the planet earth does not have a privileged place in the universe, we live in a typical galaxy of which there are billions and we turn around a typical star of which there are also billions and the basic elements for the presence of life (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen) they are all over the universe.

Which brings us to the other great implication for anthropology, and it is a scenario where life is discovered on another planet, even astrobiology experts talk about the possibility of areas in the solar system where microbial life is possible, so no we will have to go so far to find it. But the impact of finding it will be a milestone in the history of mankind, beyond being the most important scientific discovery, in anthropological terms it could be what forces us to redefine ourselves as a species.

So the search for an anthropology of the cosmos has to do with looking back and learning how our ancestors built their cultures and identities from their relationship with the cosmos, how they made the cosmos a cultural object and look to the future to see how we are doing, in the end the cosmos is a great myth that has shaped us as human beings.