Ancient Greek Navigation

Typical designs of Odysseus’s ships

The Ancient ocean travellers did not see the earth as a series of latitude and longitude lines for wayfinding. The home star filled the role for finding a position along which to sail.  Any star rising and setting at the home east – west location, and the stars vertically above at the rising/setting point were used as the position star/base star and a capital star vertically above, providing an imaginary “pillar”. The succession of stars rising from the same horizon point was a star path. At the beginning of a voyage home if the star pillar was at an angle from the vertical then the navigator would steer towards the capital star. When the pillar was upright the navigator turned to the erect pillar and sailed along the position line to make landfall.

It has been recently revealed that the ancient Greeks followed this method of navigation and an understanding of the method was concealed in Homer’s Odyssey. When a Star Pillar is created with Alnilam in Orion’s Belt and Aldebaran in Taurus the associated latitude position line runs close the Santa Maria in the Azores. When Odysseus was heading east towards his destination of Santa Maria (Ogygia) if the line from Alniham to Aldebaran was veering to the right by turning towards the star by the same angle, the following night when the position could be checked, the line would be closer to vertical and thus the position line travel would be resumed. The year of Odysseus voyage is calculated to be around BC 670.