Science: Homage to a Star

Archaeologist George Michanowsky first came upon the strange, incomprehensible markings in 1956. Inscribed on a large flat rock in a remote bush region of Bolivia, they seemed to be connected somehow with an annual festival held on the site by Indians who gather from hundreds of miles around for several days of drinking and debauchery. Yet no one, including the Indians, could offer any explanation for this yearly orgy, which seemed to have its roots in the dim pre-Columbian past.

Now, with a clue supplied by NASA astronomers, Michanowsky thinks that he may have found an explanation for both the festival and...

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