How people watched the sky in the past

Astronomy in the past

Astronomy (the meaning, in Greek, of the word, is "law of the stars") is one of the oldest science, its beginnings dating back to prehistoric times, when people were concerned with observing nature to understand the meaning of stars, eclipses, tides, seasons etc.
Benefiting from the dark sky, ancient people could see the stars appear in the eastern part of the sky, moving upwards and setting to the west. In one direction, the stars moved in small circles.
Nowadays, when we look at the north, we see in that position a star - the North Star or Polaris. This is not a very bright star: there are 48 stars in the sky that are brighter than it, but by chance, the North Star is in an interesting place. In ancient times other stars were aligned with the north pole of the Earth or sometimes there were no stars in the vicinity of the north pole.
Because people could look at the sky very often, they noticed that there were some brighter bodies, reduced in number and not rising and not setting exactly like the stars. Of course, the Moon was by far the brightest object in the night sky. The moon rose almost an hour late every night and, in time, appeared with other different stars behind it. Also, over time its shape also changes being visible, what we now call the phases of the Moon.

Lascaux Cave painting

The first discoveries

in ancient times

Various calculations on the phenomenon of the new moon were discovered on eagle bones, preserved in caves, dating back 32,000 years, and drawings over 17,000 years old were identified in the Lascaux cave, in France. This demonstrates knowledge of rudimentary astronomy, a kind of representation of the Pleiades (bright stars in the constellation Taurus, observable in the northern hemisphere) and the zodiac (the twelve constellations, which the Sun crosses over a year). It is not known the exact significance of these images on the cave walls, but it could be one of a religious nature or, perhaps, the representation of a calendar, marking the period of great migrations, hunting, etc.

Discoveries

The Gosek Circle

The Gosek Circle, discovered in 2003 in Germany, dating from the Neolithic (7000 years ago) seems to be one of the oldest "astronomical observatories".

It has the shape of concentric circles, with a diameter of 75 meters, with three openings corresponding to the sunrises and sunsets, at the winter and summer solstice.

The Gosek Circle, Germany

Ancient Egypt

The representation of the starry sky was made, in antiquity, on the cupola of the Egyptian pyramids. The interpretations of scholars in ancient Egypt brought together elements of astronomy and astrology: the year was 365 days, and the repeated overflows of the Nile were related to the star Sirius (the brightest star seen on Earth, apart from the Sun), to which Thebes Celebrations were consecrated .
Like other ancient peoples, they used stellar configurations to explain certain important events, especially the rebirth of the human spirit and the Pharaoh in particular. The Egyptians attached great importance to this process by which they believed that the Pharaoh would join the gods after he rose and ascended to heaven. This resurrection was closely related to the star Sirius and its motion in the sky.

Egyptian architecture

Egyptian buildings played an important role in Egyptian astronomy, many of them being aligned after certain stars or constellations (the ceremonial Pedj Shes). The main constellations used for alignment were Orion and the Big Dipper, and the instrument used was called merkhet. Some temples were built in such a way that the rays of the sun illuminated a certain god during ceremonies or marked a certain star that was either rising or setting at the beginning of the harvest.
This is the case of the Great Pyramid, whose tunnels point to the constellation Orion, and which is supposed to have been used during the Pharaoh's ascension ceremony and was closely related to the mummification ritual.

Religion and Astronomy

in ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt astronomy

The planets were identified with gods traveling in the sky in boats and were stars which did not know rest. The sky was divided into 36 constellations called the star gods, and each such group rose annually at sunset for a period of 10 days in a certain area of the sky. Using these constellations, the Egyptians created a 365-day calendar system called star clocks, based on the position of each constellation at a time, but did not take into account that the year was 6 hours shorter than normal. . Thus, every 40 years had to be added 10 days (some sources indicate that 5 days were added at the end of each year).