Ancient Greek Astronomy Essay

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Figure 2 - http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/venus-of-laussel.htm
Alexander Marshack also claimed that a similar work of art found in an excavation at Bodrogkeresztur-Henye, Hungary, in 1963 “represented a uterus with lunar calendric notions. The find can be […] dated to the middle part of the Upper Paleolithic Period and is about 27,000 years old.” In addition to these engravings on objects, evidence of early Astronomy has also been found in cave paintings.
Perhaps one of the most famous examples of prehistoric astronomical findings can be observed in the Lascaux Caves in France. According to Dr. David Whitehouse, a French BBC News Online Science Editor, “the interpretation that symbolic paintings [found in caves], dating back …show more content…

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. It was believed that Thales of Miletus (“Father of Philosophy”) used this information to make his famous prediction of the year of a total eclipse of the Sun (estimated to be the eclipse of May 28th, 585 BS). An interesting side note, mentioned in an article by Stephen and Margaret Ionides, is that “the Sun or the Moon was almost always eclipsed during a famous battle, modern historians have been able to determine ancient Greek dates with extraordinary

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