Sirius (alpha Canis Majoris; apparent magnitude −1.46) is the brightest star in the night sky and has been documented as an object of primary cultural and calendrical significance in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Mesoamerica. Regional archaeoastronomical surveys have identified Sirius orientation at individual sites or within bounded cultural regions — most notably Magli's (2016) analysis of Göbekli Tepe and the Belmonte et al. (2009, 2010) 'Orientatio ad Sidera' programme on Egyptian and Sudanese temples — but no study has applied a consistent methodology across a geographically global sample to test whether Sirius orientation constitutes a statistically non-random cross-cultural pattern. This paper presents such a survey, comprising thirteen well-documented sites spanning six regions (Anatolia, North Africa/Egypt, West Africa, the Levant, Russia, and South/Mesoamerica), all of which exhibit architectural orientations consistent, within ±2°, with the heliacal rising or setting azimuth of Sirius at their latitude and construction epoch. For each site, predicted azimuths are computed using the JPL Horizons ephemeris with SRTM-derived horizon corrections; observed azimuths are drawn from published survey data with stated precision ≤0.5°. A null hypothesis test estimates the probability of the observed pattern arising by chance at approximately p < 0.001 across the combined sample. The paper argues that this pattern constitutes evidence of Sirius as a shared global astronomical reference framework — arising either through convergent independent observation driven by Sirius's unique brightness and calendrical utility, or through diffusion of a common observational tradition of considerable antiquity, or through both mechanisms operating at different geographic and temporal scales. The paper concludes by identifying the most productive directions for future systematic survey work.
Diogo Azevedo Oliveira Sennfelt (Fri,) studied this question.