The Middle of the World Monument in Ecuador seen from above
“Equator means ‘middle of the world’ and, obviously, this is linked to the French geodetic mission, which defined the point in the center of the world where today there is a monument,” says Jorge Eduardo Carrera, director of the Ciudad Mitad del Mundo, where the famous landmark is located on the equatorial line.
From 1734 to 1744, the French Academy of Sciences made several expeditions to determine the true shape of the Earth.
The French Geodesic Mission verified Isaac Newton’s theory that the planet was flat at the poles and wide around the Earth’s equator, also known as the equator or 0° parallel.
But the demarcation line they drew was not precisely at the actual latitude of 0°.
“They missed by a few meters. Today, with GPS, you can see that the exact point is very close to here, but the reference is here, in the most visited place in mainland Ecuador,” says Carrera.
Despite the mistake, hundreds of thousands of tourists go every year to that monument established more than three centuries ago to walk the line which, albeit imaginary, can be seen painted yellow.
Expedition to the Andes
“The geodesic mission that arrived in Ecuador found itself in a country full of small hills and very high mountains, where they had to triangulate to be able to measure what they wanted to measure,” says María Patricia Ordóñez, of the San Francisco University in Quito.
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Plaque at the center of the world monument in Ecuador
“And you also have to keep in mind that the country was in the midst of a lot of political changes, so the geodetic mission’s work was complicated from the start.”
One team was sent to Finland and another to the Andes to apply different methods including triangulation.
Another method was that of the pendulum. When they are closer to the center of the Earth, pendulums move differently. This is because, due to its equatorial bulge, the Earth’s gravitational pull is slightly weaker at the equator.
“And the third [método] It’s through the stars.”
The sky
But the French weren’t the first to look at the stars in these lands.
Even before the arrival of the Incas and the Spanish, the people who ruled and lived in the equatorial Andes, known as the Quitus, were already looking to heaven for answers.
“Science doesn’t just come from the Western world; ancient cultures also created science and technology, and there is evidence that it lasts for thousands of years,” says anthropologist Esterlina Quinatoa Cotacachi.
“They knew they were at the center of the world and they knew what all the effects of the Sun meant.”
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Tourists with one foot in the Northern Hemisphere and the other in the Southern Hemisphere in Ecuador
“The management of astronomy was very important, especially for agricultural cycles, but much more. It is said that the Incas came here to the north in search of direct sun.”
And “Quito is the place of the straight sun and the right time,” says Gustavo Guayasamin, a specialist in Andean calendars.
The solar calendars of Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia, Bolivia, northern Argentina, Chile cast asymmetrical shadows, he explains.
“Quito is the place where you can count a year with exactly the same shadows.”
the firmament
Over the years, the equator has moved a few meters in one direction and a few meters in the other, and despite the advent of high-sensitivity GPS which promised to solve this problem permanently, several places on the equator they now claim to be the true center of the world equator.
One of these is the top of the Catequilla hill, from which the name derives Gilda Katia, “one who follows the moon”. “At Catequilla there is also a semicircular construction that is not Inca: it is pre-Inca,” says Cotacachi.
“Catequilla is a very important place because you can see the whole Milky Way.”
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The Center of the World Monument marks where the equator was believed to pass through the country at the time
“One of the particularities of this region is that only at latitude 0° we can observe absolutely all the stars in the sky”, underlines the astronomer Cristóbal Cobo.
“If we go north to, say, Mexico, or south to Peru, we can no longer see some stars.”
“On the equatorial line we can see 100% of the stars, so here, perhaps, an integral awareness of the observation of the celestial vault has been generated”.
The whole
The problem is that this territory has been conquered twice, so there is little pre-Incan archaeological evidence. However, linguistics helps fill in the historical gaps.
Tsafiki is a pre-colonial language still spoken by a small minority of people and it offers us a clue.
Em Zafiki, quit-know means half and to, world: half of the world. Perhaps the origin of the name Quito. ‘Exit’ half, ‘A’, world.”
So how advanced were the pre-Hispanic peoples? Were they able to recognize the true shape of the Earth?
“The idea of a square, flat earth comes from medieval Europe, where obscurantism arose and influenced knowledge, but it seems not in America.”
“I believe that in these respects these American cultures, as Mayan mathematics has shown us, were much more advanced than other cultures around the world.”
“These people were very wise in using natural resources of water, soil, biodiversity.”
