Oriented to the Heavens. In several West African cultures, family homes were built so that the entrances faced west. In the north of present-day Ghana, the Mamprusi people follow this practice in order to insure that the light of the sunset falls on the seating location designated for the oldest members of the family. The oldest members' task, then, was to assess from the location of light on the wall the important aspects of the seasons for planting and harvesting. The Batammaliba people of present-day Togo and Benin Republic wanted the sunset light to fall on the shrines of the ancestors, so that the sun god, Kuiye, would talk with the ancestors about the concerns of their family. Ogotemmeli, a twentieth-century Dogon sage and oral historian of astronomical secrets going back to 1283, reported that Dogon granary stairways were oriented to Orion's...