Sun and Clouds:
The Sun in History

Ours is a culture of the sun. Life on earth depends on it. From the day-night cycle, to seasons, to energy flow, to weather, to crop growth, to events as apparently unimportant as color changes in the shell of the fiddler crab, the sun permeates life on earth. In the history of living things on earth, the sun is a constant, despite cycles in its behavior. People have viewed the sun in different ways through history and have granted it greater or lesser status and meaning.

In ancient equatorial regions of the earth, the sun was worshipped in a religious sense. In more northerly regions, the sun occupied a central position in the culture of agrarian societies because of its role in nurturing crops and setting the cycles of life. Stonehenge—a kind of solar observatory built of massive stones—is one of the oldest monuments to the sun's prominence in society. A surviving relic of the Aztec empire is the 24-ton Great Sun Stone, which was used as a calendar and required a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics. In the United States, the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming is thought to have been built by Native Americans in the 1700s as a monument to the sun.

In ancient Egypt, the sun god Ra was considered the highest of the gods. Greece had sun dieties like Apollo and Helios. Evidence of the sun's importance can also be seen in Roman religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru, and in Japan. Among the more famous solar ceremonies is the Sun Dance of the Plains Indians of North America.

The idea of a 24-hour day arose in ancient Egypt where it was believed that Ra traveled half the time through the domains of the underworld and half through the domains of the day. Our 365-day calendar also has its roots in Egypt, and in the first century BC, Julius Caesar replaced the lunar calendar with a solar calendar modeled after Egypt's. Perception of the external world was altered when Copernicus and Galileo advanced persuasive arguments for "heliocentricity," a sun-centered view of the solar system. Soon, the earth was no longer seen as the center of the solar system, as it had been previously.

The Greeks coined the term "heliotherapy" in recognition of the sun's importance to life. Embedded in the idea of heliotherapy is the belief that the sun's powers are therapeutic and healing. That belief remained alive well into the twentieth century. While there is no question that limited exposure to radiation from the sun is essential, for example, in biologic processes like vitamin D production and in psychological phenomena like depression and seasonal affective disorder, there is also no question that there can be long-term health damage due to the sun's rays as well.

In Europe throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, the sun played a vital role in people's lives, but exposure to the sun, and therefore a darkening of the skin coloration, meant that a person was a common laborer, a person who worked outdoors exposed to the sun all day. In certain societies, pale white skin was the mark of nobility, and nobility went to great lengths to ensure paleness. Romans used lead-based chalks to lighten their faces. Later, in the 900s, arsenic and its compounds were the whiteners of choice. In these cases, concern for pale skin outweighed concern for health since both lead and arsenic are toxic to humans. In Elizabethan England, beauty marks were used as a contrast to pale skin and parasols were in use everywhere.

The Industrial Revolution began to shift the relationship between social status and skin tone. The rise of factories meant that workers spent more and more time inside, away from the sun. Those who did not have to work inside began to place value on having increased coloration, now increasingly the mark of leisure. By the 1920s, the therapeutic effect of the sun was being widely promoted, and two well-publicized French personalities gave "tanning" a fashion boost. Coco Chanel, of designer fame, returned to Paris after a cruise on the Duke of Westminster's yacht with a tan that became the rage. And the natural caramel skin color of singer Josephine Baker made women all over the world try to emulate her skin tone. Swim wear, once designed to cover skin, now exposed it. Cosmetics went from white to beige. In the 1950s, the first self-tanning product came on the market.

Prison overcrowding in eighteenth century England triggered an unintended experiment on the relationship between skin complexion and exposure to the sun. Trying to relieve the overflowing prisons in England, the House of Commons began sending criminals to Australia. The fair-skinned, fair-haired English and Irish criminals were banished to an environment that, unlike their native England and Ireland, provided constant and unrelenting exposure to the sun. The descendants of those immigrants and other European settlers living in Australia today have the highest rates of skin cancer of any known population.

It was not until the 1970s and 1980s, however, that concern about skin cancer began to balance the importance of a getting a tan. By 1979, the Food and Drug Administration concluded that sunscreens could help prevent skin cancer. Americans, at least, remained ambivalent about the sun and their skin. Indoor tanning grew in popularity even as skin cancer rates increased. By the late 1990s, despite public campaigns regarding the sun and skin cancer, most Americans still feel that people look healthier with a tan.

In addition to photo-aging and skin cancer, other current issues bring a new dimension to our view of the sun. The Industrial Revolution's reliance on burning fossil fuels, those storehouses of the solar energy thanks to photosynthesis, has given rise to concerns about global warming and acid rain. Chemical degradation of the earth's ozone layer opens a doorway for more of the sun's ultraviolet radiation to reach the earth, thus increasing the risk that its energy represents. At the turn of a new century, we are confronted with another cycle in our age-old dance with the sun.