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 From this information, accurate calendars could be developed to determine the time for planting, harvesting and setting important religious festivals. Learning the positions of the stars at determined times of the year could also aid travelers in determining their location when on long journeys from their homes. This helped merchants as trade developed between peoples far away from each other. Many ancient peoples developed astronomy to a high degree, and have left history behind in their records. The Mayans, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Chinese all developed accurate star charts and mapped the movements of the sun, moon and planets. All these civilizations came up with highly accurate calendars. These various civilizations all kept meticulous records of their observations. Babylonians used clay tablets, dried in the sun to record and perform fairly complex mathematical equations to predict planet, star, lunar, and solar movements with a high degree of accuracy. Literally hundreds of these stone tablets have been unearthed and studied by archeologists. Egyptian records were written on papyrus and carved in stone. Most Mayan records were destroyed by Spanish conquistadores when they over ran the Mayan cities. Many Chinese records are also still in existence. Astrology played a part in ancient astronomy. This was, and still is for many, the belief that the movements of the stars and planets influenced events on earth, and the lives of the men and women who lived here. This was a logical extrapolation, as it was believed that the stars influenced the events on earth that they predicted, such as the seasons. Astrology’s contribution to science comes in the form of the mathematics devised to plot the movements of celestial bodies to develop predictions based on those movements. Ancient astronomers formulated many different theories explaining the movements of the earth, sun and planets. Some believed in the geocentric theory in which the earth was motionless, the sun, planets and stars revolving around it. This theory required elaborate corrections and schemes to make it fit what was observed in the sky. Others, Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos chief among them, believed in a heliocentric system, the sun being at the center and the earth and planets revolving around it. The geocentric became the predominant theory until the sixteenth century when Nicolaus Copernicus proved the old theory wrong. The accomplishments of the ancient astronomers were many and they laid the basis for much of what we know now. This was all accomplished with naked eye observations and very rudimentary equipment. Modern astronomers work exclusively with giant telescopes, radio arrays, satellites, computers and other equipment. Very rarely does an astronomer actually look at the starry cosmos gazed at so earnestly by their processors of old. |