Ancient Greek Astronomy
Since the first Egyptian farmers discovered the annual reappearance of Sirius just before dawn a few days before the yearly rising of the Nile, ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean have sought to explain the movements of the heavens as a sort of calendar to help guide them conduct earthly activities. Counting phases of the moon or observing the annual variations of day length could, after many years' collection of observations, serve as vital indicators for planting and harvesting times, safe or stormy season for sailing, or time to bring the flocks from winter to summer pastures. With our millennia of such observation behind us, we sometimes forget that seeing and recording anything less obvious than the rough position of sun or nightly change of moon phase requires inventing both accurate observation tools (a stone circle, a gnomon used to indicate the sun's shadow, a means to measure the position of stars in the sky) and a system of recording that could be understood by others. The ancient Greeks struggled with these problems too, using both native technology and inquiry, and drawing upon the large body of observations and theories gradually gleaned from their older neighbors across the sea, Egypt and Babylonia. Gradually moving from a system of gods and divine powers ordering the world to a system of elements, mathematics, and physical laws, the Greeks slowly adapted old ideas to fit into a less supernatural, hyper-rational universe.
As ancient peoples began to realize that sun, moon and stars follow certain rhythms in step with the seasons, they began to hypothesize that some conscious set of rules must be dictating these movements and seasonal changes that, for agrarian or pastoral soc...
... middle of paper ...
... various geometers to account for observed inconsistencies in their basic theory. It would take many centuries before anyone had accurate enough observations to realize that the theory could not account for all data. By then, people would have even more difficulty letting go of their clockwork, geocentric, "divinely subsidized" universe than the Greeks, who had placed their version of a Bible, the Homeric and Hesiodic myth-cycle, into the realm of metaphor.
Bibliography:
Works Cited
Aveni, Anthony F. Stairways to the Stars. New York, NY, 1997.
Brecher, Keneth, ed. al. Astronomy of the Ancients. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979.
Heath, Thomas. Greek Astronomy. New York, Dover Publications, 1991.
http://www.greekciv.pdx.edu/science/astro/debok.htm [Accessed 2/18/00]
Krupp, E.C. In Search of Ancient Astronomies. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977.
Ancient Pueblo Indians had a great understanding of astronomy. All of the pueblos in the canyon were aligned to match the movements of the sun and moon. Also, they marked their complexes with daggers and spirals to keep up with the moon cycles and sun movements. The film explains that the moon moves north for nearly ten years and then south for about ten years. To fully understand this cycle of the moon, Pueblo people had to study it for years in order to build their Pueblos in relations to it. The sun however, was different because it set and rose in the same position. The concept of building structures in an astronomical pattern this complex cannot be found anywhere else.
A group called the Powers had their own thrones of doom and were the “most holy gods.” They held council which shows already that order and rule was important. The Powers chose to give names to different times of the day spanning morning, afternoon and night and so on. This structure allowed for a calendar-like count of the days and years so that people could keep track of time. If the sun was visible in one position it was a certain time and they’d know that next the sun would set and then the moon would begin to rise marking the end of a
Clarke, Leonard W.‘Greek Astronomy and Its Debt to the Babylonians' The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 1, No. (Cambridge University Press. 1962)
The Egyptians calendar was based on the celestial bodies to determine the passing of time. For thousands of years, there have been records of timekeeping in the different cultures of past times. The Egyptian calendar was first based on the moon's cycles, but then discovered the Sirius which rose every 365 days. The Egyptian calendar and this discovery have led this to be one of the earliest discoveries that began in about 3100 BC. In the Egyptian culture the moon, stars, sun and planet are very important to the discovery of timekeeping for the calendar.
The clock is one of the most influential discoveries in the history of western science. The division of time into regular, predictable units is fundamental to the operation of society. Even in ancient times, humanity recognized the necessity of an orderly system of chronology. Hesiod, writing in the 8th century BC., used celestial bodies to indicate agricultural cycles: "When the Pleiads, Atlas' daughters, start to rise begin your harvest; plough when they go down" ( Hesiod 71). Later Greek scientists, such as Archimedes, developed complicated models of the heavens-celestial spheres-that illustrated the "wandering" of the sun, the moon, and the planets against the fixed position of the stars. Shortly after Archimedes, Ctesibus created the Clepsydra in the 2nd century BC. A more elaborate version of the common water clock, the Clepsydra was quite popular in ancient Greece. However, the development of stereography by Hipparchos in 150 BC. radically altered physical representations of the heavens. By integrating stereography with the Clepsydra and the celestial sphere, humanity was capable of creating more practical and accurate devices for measuring time-the anaphoric clock and the astrolabe. Although Ptolemy was familiar with both the anaphoric clock and the astrolabe, I believe that the development of the anaphoric clock preceded the development of the astrolabe.
...eir records by building structures that would observe the sun. the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming dates to AD 1400 to 1700. Lines drawn between major markings on the wheel point to the location of solstice sunrises and sunsets and also toward the rising point of the three brightest stars that rise before the sun in the summer. About fifty medicine wheels have been discovered, several are thousands of years. Many of them have the same alignment as the Bighorn Medicine Wheel. In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico two spirals carved into the rock by the prehistoric Anasazi can be used as a calendar. A dagger of light penetrates the shadow of adjacent rocks. The dagger moves with the sun to different locations on the spiral.the full pattern also reflects the 18.6 year cycle of the moon as well as the yearly cycle of the sun. The ancient Native Americans were not sophisticated astronomers in the sense of coherent theory behind the movements of heavenly objects, their level of understanding of the time cycles of the sun, moon and planets was great. The methods for recording and keeping track of the seasonal movements was clever and displays a cultural richness that varies from tribe to tribe.
(Toothman, 2009) (Clagett, 1989) Ancient Egyptian Science: Calendars, clocks, and astronomy 3 Sesions 1 Year 4 Mounts 3 Weeks 10 days «They revealed to the Greeks the
Historians and archeologists have found physical evidence that ancient civilizations had an active interest it the apparent motion of the celestial objects. Stonehenge in England, The Bighorn Medicine Wheel in the Unit...
Ancient Greece and Eclipses Many ancient cultures worshipped heavenly bodies such as the sun and moon. One of these was Ancient Greece. The sun and moon gave the people a sense of order in the universe that connected with their daily lives. So, since the sun and moon were of great significance, a sudden darkening of the sun was most likely the cause for much fear and panic.
Astronomy is a very important field in science. Ancient Greece, China, and India all contributed to our everyday ideas and uses of astronomy. Ancient Greece was the most influential because the Indian’s based most of their astronomy off of Greece. The Greeks created calendars that were based off of the eclipse cycle, which they called by two different names, Hellenic Calendars and Lunisolar Calendars. Because of Ancient Greece, we now have calendars to keep us on track every day. The Greeks observed a celestial object passing through the eastern and western morning sky. After a long time of observations, they came to a realization that it was a planet and now that is the planet is well known as Venus. (Sarton, 75) Plato and Aristotle’s theories were incredible contributions on us today. Both of their theories were all about the behavior and life of the planets, such as their theory that the earth is spherical. (Sarton, 421). Ancient Greece als...
Since ancient times, a stable civilization could only subsist if it were able to take advantage of the earth and its weather. Agriculture heavily depended upon the cycling of seasons to grow food and therefore, if one could not adapt to the different phases of weather, he or she would simply not survive. Subsequently, this way of life and agriculture ultimately united people and led to the formation of agrarian societies. Essentially, the ability to harvest food meant the ability to live. Consequently, seasons naturally became symbolically associated with life since it was directly tied to farming and food. Furthermore, as time progressed, the various symbolic meanings of seasons have found their way into many works of literature. In fact,
Our understanding of Greek Astronomy before the 4th century (BCE) is very piecemeal. Among the small number of surviving writings we have, the majority of our knowledge is composed of references and comments from Aristotle (mostly opinions and criticisms). What is clear is that the earth was believed to be spherical, and that there was an increasing determination to comprehend nature without supernatural explanations. One of the biggest sources of information for the Greeks actually came from “records of thousands of heavenly occurrences” left by the Babylonians (Ionides, Stephen A. and Margaret L.). Part of the Babylonian records left to the Greeks contained records of eclipses and had calculated the periods of their occurrences, the most famous of these was known as the Saros, which predicted that eighteen years and eleven days after an eclipse, another very similar eclipse will occur.
The ancient peoples based astrology off religion, both polytheistic and monotheistic, as well as off scientific calculations to try and predict the unknown future (Schoener). Fundamentally, astrology stems from religion because only the enigmatic concept that nature is “guided by powers and forces from beyond … can [astrologers] assume that the stars have something to do with the course of our lives” (Shoener). According to Shoener, “All the events in the cosmos and on earth are linked together by an invisible magic bond,” which is believed to be a single divine figure, like God, or multiple religious entities, as believed in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Essentially, without a religious aspect, astrology would simply be astronomy. Scientifically, astrologers are uncannily similar to astronomers, studying and calculating complex “movements of the earth and the heavenly bodies” after meticulously splitting the sky into twelve identical thirty-degree segments for each birth month (Schoener).
One of the most key examples of understanding human culture through archaeology is the topic of climate and the environment. As seen through history, there is an intricate relationship between the environment and life on earth. Through extensive research, archaeologists have the ability to take note of minor cultural changes that can be attributed to the environment during a particular time period. These changes include, shifts in methods of food collection, changes in the artwor...
One cultural group was especially important for their discoveries in astronomy, the Egyptians. They were especially important because they were one of the first groups of people to create an accurate calendar. This calendar was different than others because it was based off of the Sun and stars rather than the moon. The calendars purpose was to make correct estimates of when to plan...