Ancient Astronomers and Hallows of The Solar Eclipse

My writer friend Dave Floyd, another friend ours Dal and I went treasure hunting back in 2013 down in the Rio Grande Gorge of New Mexico. We were hunting for the notorious box of gold that Forest Fenn hid and left clues for. The clues sent us packing it into the gorge with hopes of finding overnight wealth. I was equipped with plenty of camera gear and I was focused on making a documentary film. As you hike through the gorge, you'll notice that the paths are not well worn. Over what I gather is some 29 million years of formation, the Rio Grande Gorge has been formed where the North American and Pacific tectonic plates have been rifting. It's clear that as these two young rock walls have separated, that the integrity of the newly exposed surface was not very reliable. With the river cutting through the rift and sweeping away small amounts of sediment over time, the walls crumbled in lots of places. The resulting landslides can be seen every hundred yards or so and in order to go traverse the canyon, you have to do some horizontal rock climbing over jagged boulders. There are plenty of beautiful hikes in this area that are far easier on the knees and so you see very few people walking those river banks even though it's undeniably beautiful. It's also well documented that there are ancient petroglyphs throughout the region and it's not uncommon to run into them if you hike it in. The glyphs were created by the Pueblo people who still have descendants living in the area today. With that background being laid out, during our hike, I had been gathering shots to be able to edit into the feature I was working on. I found myself being left behind by Dal and Dave. I had just packed up my camera and noticed petroglyphs that lined up peculiarly on the rocks. If my memory serves correctly, I believe I remembered one that was clearly the sun (circle with rays), then a sun and a circle, then the circles were together and the sun rays were gone. I was in a hurry and focused on a documentary, so I saved the glyphs to memory until it had dawned on me what I'd just seen:  An ancient petroglyph visually explaining a solar eclipse.

Western Civilization has this amazing history of conquering and destroying knowledge. We know that Ancient Egyptians used papyrus scrolls to collect their teachings. Most, if not all of those scrolls were moved to Alexandria during a period of Macedonian occupation. Alexander the Great was a great believer in knowledge and after conquering Northern Egypt, no doubt he would have amassed papyrus scrolls as part of his war trophies. We know that Ptolemy, one of Alexander's bodyguards, was put in charge of the city of Alexandria following Alexander of Macedonia's death. Ptolemy's dynasty ensured that the Ancient Library of Alexandria would flourish for many years. Great Greek philosophers of the era would visit Alexandria because there was no other place in the world with so much knowledge collected in one place. Citizens within the Ptolemaic Dynasty would often adopt the name Ptolemy. Even Egyptians that became part of this Macedonian Empire did this and adopted greek names. One of these Egyptians was the famous astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy who is simply known as Ptolemy (100 A.D. - 170 A.D.). Confusing yes, but these two people were not the same. Ptolemy the astronomer is attributed with writing 'Almagest', a book on astronomy that was taken as gold by astronomers around the world for centuries. Somewhere between Caesar in 30 B.C. and the Muslim Conquest of Egypt in 642 A.D., the papyrus scrolls all burned. Had it not been for the greek visitors who made copies of some of the scrolls, nothing would be known about the contents of that library.

Babylonians from 1700 B.C. kept careful records of Earth, Venus, Mars, the Sun and the moon.  They were able to predict lunar eclipses with their findings. Unlike the Egyptians, the Babylonians kept some of this information on stone tablets and stone held these findings for us to observe and applaud today because stone just doesn't burn quite like papyrus. Stone stood the test of time, but the downside of stone is that it's difficult to pass proof of complex sets of knowledge to future inhabitants.

The Ancient Chinese have vast records of celestial findings that date back as far as 750 B.C. and an explanation of a solar eclipse can be found in 120 A.D. I've found a mixture of information about their findings that seem to indicate they may have been able predict when solar eclipses occurred, but there seems to be more research needed in order to verify this claim.

Thales, a philosopher from 600 B.C. is said to have accurately predicted the solar eclipse on May 28th, 545 B.C. He is noted in history as a great thinker that disassociated scientific observation from mythology. He studied in Egypt and came back with a way to determine something incredibly complex. Unfortunately we have no explanation of how he was able to predict the eclipse so accurately. So much knowledge has burned in the fires of time, but we know that we will not be the first nor the last to observe this phenomenon that is a solar eclipse. Today we can accurately predict and post date eclipses going back a great deal of time. This can be an incredibly useful tool for historians that can match dates with recorded observations and be able to know more about what recordings depict. For example, it's now widely believed that we can confirm that the six year war between the Kingdoms of Lydia and Medes ended on May 28th, 585 B.C. This is the day that soldiers of both armies put down their weapons and stopped fighting as they witnessed Thales' solar eclipse. Perhaps that if that did occur, that many saw it as a bad omen. But if Thales prediction was known, maybe the knowledge that it was going to be a once in a lifetime occurrence for them, that it was worth it to stop fighting and enjoy the event together rather than fighting their way thru it.

I hope you know there's going to be a solar eclipse this Monday, August 21st, 2017. In central Texas the eclipse is going to occur between 1:00 pm and 1:15 pm central standard time. You'd have to wait for years to see the next one so don't miss out. Unless you're saving someone's life, stop what you're doing and go check it out. It will last less than 7 minutes and it's bound to be a pretty cool experience. You can think about all the moments in history where people stopped what they were doing and looked to the sky for meaning, then you add whatever it meant to you.

For me, trying to look backwards and see it for myself on Monday, it means this: people aren't stupid now and they never were. We're not any smarter than older civilizations, but these days our knowledge is easily shared and spread. That's the difference between us and them. If we had all the papyrus scrolls from the Egyptians, we might have a much fonder respect of them. Their ability to think was never tested by modern science because they were never given a chance. The same could be said of a lot of opposing views that out there in this world. Sure, you can resist knowledge and destroy all ideas that come from opponents like we've always done in the West or you can listen to your opponent, learn from them and be stronger for it.

Ptolemy is one of the few connections that the modern world has with Egyptian science. This is mostly due to the great minds that visited and copied his works for themselves. So because of them, we know he predicted within a factor of 20, the distance between the Earth and Sun.  Considering this was in 150 A.D. and that the Sun is 92 million miles away, I'd consider his educated guess within 1/20th the distance to be pretty good. He was also able to predict that the world is round, that other planets and stars were spheres as well. He formulated the idea of the equator and longitudes, but instead of degrees he used hours from sunrise to sunset so the equator was 12 hours and the North Pole would be 24 hours at the summer solstice. This was one man almost 2,000 years ago. Imagine if we didn't seek to destroy our opposition all the time, what our world could be capable of? If we saw value in everyone being involved in our intellectual marketplace.. what would that look like? I'm not saying peace, love and everyone wins. I mean, you tolerate differences respectfully so that all can mutually benefit.

  

"The Closeup Hazel Eye of Many Shared Histories"

by Andy Graham

I'll leave you with my favorite little factoid about this. I haven't read this anywhere so no need to credit anyone. The maximum theoretical amount of total eclipse time is 7 minutes and 32 seconds. It takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds for light to travel from the Sun to Earth, so the first moment that you see the moon block our beloved Sun, know that the Sun has already sent at least 48 seconds worth of sunlight to wake your senses from this eery scene that the position of the moon is creating.