Ancient Astronomy

These pages supplement the table of Julian equivalents for Roman dates in Drumann-Groebe vol. 3. They move, with supporting evidence, the intercalary month from 59 to 58 BC and from 54 to 55 BC.  All phases of the Moon and market days (nundinae)  are listed for those years.

Dans l'expression Astrologie : « science des astres » il y a… 3 mots qui posent problème : « science », « des » et « astres » ! Ce sera le fil conducteur pour une analyse critique en profondeur de l'astrologie, qui plus est rénovée par l'EX-astrologue que je suis.
Ce tome 1 est donc une introduction à cette nouvelle analyse d'une discipline dont on sous-estime souvent la complexité. Signe "d'une grande richesse" pour l'astrologue, elle constitue pour moi le terreau idéal pour les biais cognitifs. La raison première, peut-être, pour laquelle l'astrologie a pu si aisément traverser les siècles.
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4e de couverture :
Il y a 12 ans, assistant aux désaccords profonds entre ses collègues, un jeune astrologue commence à s’interroger sur la question de l’erreur. Il débute une autocritique et se confronte aux sceptiques. Cet essai est le témoignage d’un homme sur son long parcours de déconversion. C’est aussi l’introduction à une analyse critique rénovée et sereine de l’astrologie qui ouvre à des problématiques plus fécondes.
Pourquoi les astrologues ne se réfèrent-ils pas aux positions des planètes réellement observées sur la voûte céleste ? Pourquoi conservent-ils certains astres qui n’existent plus ? Pourquoi les interprétations « marchent-elles » quand le praticien se trompe de date de naissance ?! L’outil astrologique (complexe et sacré) dupe-t-il ses utilisateurs de générations en générations ? Le zodiaque mésopotamien a-t-il, d’ailleurs, été créé par des astrologues ? Est-il vraiment né dans le ciel ?!
Et quel est l’énorme coup de chance qui permit aux horoscopes d’intégrer la presse, il y a juste 80 ans, avant d’inonder littéralement toute la planète ?
Le brainstorming, enfin, peut-il expliquer succès, échecs et longévité de l’astrologie sans prétexte scientifique ni métaphysique ?
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Membre du bureau de l’Observatoire Zététique et ex-astrologue de la Fédération Des Astrologues Francophones, Serge BRET-MOREL a développé une expertise unique. Dans ses conférences et publications, il met un point d’honneur à décrire avec pédagogie les questions déroutantes posées à, et par, l’astrologie.
Plus d’informations : www.astroscept.com

On Wednesday, Dec. 21, nations in the Northern Hemisphere will mark the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year. For thousands of years people have marked this event with rituals and celebrations to signal the rebirth of the sun and its victory over darkness.

At hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of missions stretching from northern California to Peru, the winter solstice sun triggers an extraordinarily rare and fascinating event – something that I discovered by accident and first documented in one California church nearly 20 years ago.  See article at On Wednesday, Dec. 21, nations in the Northern Hemisphere will mark the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year. For thousands of years people have marked this event with rituals and celebrations to signal the rebirth of the sun and its victory over darkness. See link to online magazine at https://theconversation.com/a-sacred-light-in-the-darkness-winter-solstice-illuminations-at-spanish-missions-70250

The doxography for Anaximander’s account of the rings of the sky gives proportions for them that are discrepant. So a widely accepted hypothesis proposes that, since the circles of the celestial bodies are compared to wheels, we should add the thickness of their ‘rims’ to the measurements for the celestial rings. This paper proposes an entirely different hypothesis which avoids this awkward expedient by suggesting that there is a ‘geometrical’ reading of the numerical data. The discrepancies can then be explained by there being two different methods for calculating the circumference of the circles.

(forthcoming publication)
The aim of this article is to show how statistical analysis can improve our knowledge of the language and style of the second book of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia (astronomy). After a brief summary of previous studies on Pliny the Elder’s language and style, we introduce L.A.S.L.A. statistical tools and methods. In the second part we apply these tools to compare syntactically Naturalis Historia II and Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones VII, in order to highlight the main differences in the structure of the sentence, as well as pragmatic features which emerge on a statistical ground. In the last section, we proceed with a factorial correspondence analysis on a corpus of Latin texts, to show which texts are associated with Naturalis Historia II.

The change in the average lifespan of man, from almost a thousand years in pre-flood times to the present day norm of seventy years, is explained by earth orbital changes, triggered by events in the solar system, at the time of Noah’s flood. These changes also provide answers for the mechanics of the flood and presage even more dramatic realignments of the solar system at the return of Christ.

This article is a response to a recent paper by Donald Keith Mills on the old Velikovskian puzzle of the ‘comet Typhon’ mentioned in classical sources and its association with the Biblical Exodus by the early 17th-century scholar Rockenbach. Keith Mills’ main contentions were that “King Typhon Tumbles” and “Rockenbach Falls”, that is to say, that there probably never was a comet named after a king Typhon and that the sources Rockenbach claimed to have used have so far been elusive for the simple reason that they did not exist. In this first of two parts, I assess the classical reports on the comet Typhon anew and identify Rockenbach’s sources for the comet and its link with the Exodus.

NOTE: In the process of editing, the formatting of the first 19 endnotes has unfortunately been messed up: italic text was deitalicised and superscript numbers indicating edition numbers were printed as normal numbers.

The Grolier Codex is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

This document was prepared by Richard Heath as a letter for Nature magazine and submitted on 14th April 1994 but remained unpublished. It marks the discovery of a unit of time proposed and named the Chronon, as being 1/10000th of the Moon's orbit and also the difference between the sidereal and tropical day of the Earth. The paper also documents a discovery made, with Robin Heath, that one can divide up the solar year by its excess over the eclipse year to reveal an 18.618:19.618 ratio between these years, and many other interesting numerical facts not mentioned here. The puzzle is a connection between the rotation of the Earth, the solar year and the precession of the Moon's orbit which (a) may be explainable by science (b) appears to have puzzled Megalithic astronomers and (c) should puzzle us today. We find that the Earth's rotational day divides the year according to the 18.62 year cycle of the Lunar Nodes. The tropical solar year in days is factorised almost exactly by 18.618 times 19.618 and the Moon travels one ten thousandth of its orbit in the time difference between sidereal and tropical days. We have been considering a range of numerical coincidences present in arithmetical and geometrical analyses of astronomical cycles involving the Sun-Moon-Earth system. But here is an apparently lawful relationship concerning the Earth, Sun and Moon, one that is most unusual.

Four stars in the night sky have been formally recognised by their Australian Aboriginal names. The names include three from the Wardaman people of the Northern Territory and one from the Boorong people of western Victoria. The Wardaman star names are Larawag, Wurren and Ginan in the Western constellations Scorpius, Phoenix and Crux (the Southern Cross). The Boorong star name is Unurgunite in Canis Majoris (the Great Dog). They are among 86 new star names drawn from Chinese, Coptic, Hindu, Mayan, Polynesian, South African, and Aboriginal Australian cultures.

A sequence of omens has puzzled Assyriologists since 1866, when Henry C. Rawlinson published the first copy of these peculiar divinatory texts. The omens have the structure DIŠ MUL ana . . . GUR, “If a star turns into . . .”, where the object into which the star changes can be an animal, metal, stone or some other item. Such a change has been held to belong to the field of dreams or, more generally, to terrestrial events rather than to astronomy. In fact, however, these omens refer to a specific celestial phenomenon, the transformation of a “star” into a meteorite that can be picked up from the ground, as can also be seen in the phrasing of the corresponding namburbi-ritual, which some scribes appended to their recension of this omen sequence.

Links zu weiteren Vorlesungen von Frau von Dechend und Infos: www.per-aspera-ad-astra.net www.frobenius-institut.de/sammlungen/nachlaesse  Dechend Gilgamesh WS 1968/69 Inhalt der Abschnitte: Großer Enthusiasmus bei Auffindung der Gilgamesh-Keilschrifttafeln. Im Rahmen eines Wintersemesters von Gilgamesh zu handeln, mag dem Eingeweihten als Arroganz erscheinen, dem Fernerstehenden als unangemessene Zeitverschwendung. Da ich-obgleich der einschlägigen Sprachen unkundig-ausreichend initiiert bin, stimme ich für die Eingeweihten, wennschon aus anderen Gründen als diese: das Vorhaben ist weit eher eine Vermessenheit denn "tant de bruit pour une omelette". Sintemalen es jedoch in diesem Semester wie in früheren und wie ganz generell darum geht, ein paar richtige Fragen zu stellen, anstatt voreilig tellerhafte Interpretationen anzubieten, geschweige denn ein gegebenes Thema "erschöpfend" zu behandeln, ist die Vermessen-heit so arg nicht. Aber fassen wir das präziser: es kann nicht davon die Rede sein, dass hier dem Gilgamesh inadaequat Maß genommen wird, indem man ihn augenscheinlich nur so beiläufig in einigen Stunden abtut, obschon er Jahre verdiente: der sogenannte Heros wird sich über Mangel an Respekt nicht zu beklagen haben. Wer sich beschweren könnte, sind die schriftgelehrten Experten, die sich in einer wahren Sintflut von Publikationen unaufhörlich an dem Epos und seinen 'Helden' ver-messen haben und fortfahren, solches zu tun in dem Wahn "the general trend of the story is quite clear" (Heidel, p.2). Wohingegen ich behaupten möchte, dass wir vorläufig von dem Gilgamesh Epos schlechterdings nichts verstehen. (Zur Ehre von Benno Landsberger sei vermerkt, dass er wenigstens so viel zugibt-in: Gilgamesh et sa legende, p.32-: "Trotz des Fortschrittes in der Kenntnis von Grammatik und Lexikon des Akkadischen, die man bisher gemacht hat, ist uns.... der wirkliche Sinn mancher Stellen des Epos noch unbekannt"). Die Leistung der Assyriologen soll nicht gering geschätzt werden: Keilschrifttexte zu 'lesen', wäre eine ausreichend beschwerliche Arbeit, selbst wenn die Tafeln heil wären, was sie, wie Sie wissen, beinahe niemals sind; zur Hälfte oder zu drei Vierteln zerstörte Tafeln zu entziffern, ist eine wahre Sisyphos-Aufgabe. Und das Zusammenfügen der zahlreichen fragmentarischen Tafeln, die in ebenso zahlreichen Museen aufbewahrt werden, war auch beileibe kein Kinderspiel. Kurzum, ungeachtet häufiger Schmähungen, deren ich mich schwerlich werde enthalten können, ziehen wir erst einmal den Hut vor diesen-heutzutage als Fach-Idioten bezeichneten-gelahrten Entzifferern, die mit unübertrefflicher Emsigkeit ihr sogenanntes 'Bestes' getan haben. Aber auch der kleine Kai aus Andersens Märchen von der Schneekönigin tat sein Bestes, die aus Eis gehauenen Buchstaben zu Worten zu fügen: er kam damit nicht zu Rande, weil ein kleines Stückchen Glas von des Teufels zerbrochenem Spiegel in seinem Auge steckte. Und ein solcher Teufels-Splitter sitzt eben im Auge eines jeden unserer heutigen Schriftgelehrten und Archäologen. p02 Wenn Ihnen der Teufel nicht behagt, halten Sie sich an ein anderes Beispiel: Sie alle kennen Geschichten von wohlerzogenen, noch sehr kleinen Buben und Maidlein, die häufig nicht imstande sind anzugeben, mit welcher Art von Nackedeis sie im Planschbecken gespielt haben, weil Bub oder Mädchen nur an ihrer Kleidung erkannt werden-jedenfalls war das früher so, heute kann man das

If there were geese anywhere in the universe besides earth, we should probably expect to find them in the constellation Vulpecula. Vulpecula the Fox was contrived by Johannes Hevelius, the famous Polish astronomer who was based in Gdansk in the seventeenth century. Hevelius originally named this constellation Vulpecula & Anser, or the Fox & Goose. It’s no longer possible, however, to take a gander at the Goose. The Goose is long gone, ingested by the Fox in whose jaws Hevelius mapped its neck. Vulpecula is located right next to Cygnus the Swan, and for this 2005 Boeing Science Writing Contest article, Bernie Taylor has allowed those extraterrestrial geese to migrate to an imagined planet in the Swan, Cygnus 3. Bernie Taylor is a quantitatively-minded naturalist living in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. His 2004 book, Biological Time, examines the rhythms that regulate the lives of animals and plants and documents as well as ancient and indigenous knowledge of these natural cycles.
Some of these biological rhythms are modulated by celestial phenomena, and so Mr. Taylor asks whether different astronomical circumstances would alter the behavior of geese on another world or even eliminate the possibility of their existence. His imaginary planet in some ways parallels the earth. It is the third planet from its sun, a solar-like star in Cygnus. Notwithstanding the similarity of Cygnus 3 to earth, looking for geese on that planet could be a wild-goose chase.
The ancients imagined the constellation Cygnus as a swan in flight, headed south. They linked its seasonal departure from the night sky to the autumn migration of water fowl. Our failure to find any geese on Cygnus 3 wouldn't necessarily mean they don’t exist. They could, after all, have just gone south on us. What’s good for the Goose is sauce for the Swan. —E.C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory

The Grolier Codex (Codice Maya de Mexico, CMM) is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

ll libro ripercorre la storia di Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, l'insigne astronomo italiano, indagando, attraverso i testi di più autori, le diverse fasi della sua attività umana ed esplorativa: dalla fanciullezza e gioventù saviglianese alla prolungata direzione dell'Osservatorio di Brera, attraverso le scoperte compiute durante le opposizioni di Marte ed i numerosi suoi lavori scientifici pubblicati in tutto ilo mondo (qui ordinati per la prima volta in modo sistematico)

According to the conventional chronology for the Egyptian VXIII Dynasty, this period coincides with a statistically rare concentration of total eclipses visible from Egypt. In addition, a boundary stela from Amarna links the building of the city to a series of 'evil omens'. This paper considers whether these omens could have been the eclipses; and discusses the consequences both for the conventional chronology of this period and the evidence for changes to the Earth's rotation.

This paper was originally made available to a small audience in 2006 following publication of Under Ancient Skies in 2005 and reformatted with unchanged content in 2020 for publication in Prehistory Papers.

Recorrido crítico por la figura y la obra de Metón, astrónomo (¿astrólogo?) y cronógrafo ático del demo de Leucónoe, que realizó su actividad en la época de la Guerra del Peloponeso (fl. mediados/finales del s. V d.C.). Con sus discípulos, jugó un papel importante en los orígenes de la astronomía en Grecia. Se le tiene por el autor de un ciclo luni-solar de 19 años compuesto por 6940 días y 235 meses lunares sinódicos, conocido como "El (gran) año (o ciclo) de Metón". Esquema del capítulo: Bibliografía. Datos biográficos. "El año de Metón". ¿Compuso un calendario civil ateniense? ¿Recibió influencia babilonia (caldeos)?

Neste trabalho analisam-se as referências astronómicas encontradas em diversas obras de Camões, dando-se ênfase a "Os Lusíadas". São apresentados esquemas ilustrativos de algumas estrofes para melhor se entender o pensamento astronómico do poeta.

This is a most comprehensive collection of Neo- and Late-Babylonian eclipse observations, updated to 2003. It includes a detailed overview of philological and astronomical questions, transliteration and translation of texts, data analysis and statistics, solar and lunar eclipse canons for Babylon, besides computer-generated maps of eclipse circumstances (the last ones omitted in this pdf).

Mayans were not only accomplished astronomers but also very resourceful mathematicians. They were able to transform their observations into mathematical form producing a calendric system based on the correlation of the orbital values of the Moon and Venus. There were able to reduce the complex celestial movements into relatively simple tables applicable to tracking days, weeks, months, years and longer periods very accurately. This note explains conceptually how Mayans were able to accomplish this.

Una inevitable sensación de fascinación y asombro se apodera de quienes contemplan por primera vez las enormes proyecciones temporales registradas por los antiguos Mayas en sus milenarias inscripciones. Viajes en el tiempo del orden de miles y millones de años transportan a los epigrafistas que han conseguido descifrar sus textos jeroglíficos, hacia recónditas regiones en las que acontecen eventos míticos extraordinarios.

Una vez superada esta primera impresión de perplejidad, surgen de inmediato infinidad de interrogantes acerca del significado, valor y propósito de estos intrigantes intervalos que vinculan sucesos significativos de la vida de sus gobernantes con remotas acciones en las que suelen intervenir una serie de deidades y seres fabulosos.

En el presente estudio, centraremos nuestra atención en dos inscripciones jeroglíficas de Palenque que utilizaremos para establecer algunos paralelos de carácter astronómico, que finalmente nos habrán de conducir hacia un intervalo múltiplo del ciclo de precesión de los equinoccios, en el que convergen de manera simultánea 25787.722269 años-trópico de 365.242199 días, y 25786.722267 años siderales de 365.256363 días.

A short essay arguing for a potential connection between the proposed Younger Dryas boundary cataclysm, and the impact of a comet resonant with Planet X (possibly in the form of Planet Nine).  This article also speculates on the nature of the ancient community that constructed the monuments at Göbekli Tepe, in the context of this catastrophe and its aftermath.

A number of researchers have suggested that the winter solstice alignment at the Newgrange Passage Tomb in Ireland had a fertility purpose. In this article I build on the knowledge of many experts to arrive at a possible reason for the monument and its meaning to these Neolithic people.

The Antikythera Mechanism is a unique Greek geared device, constructed around the
end of the 2nd Century BC. From previous work1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 it is known that it calculated
and displayed celestial information, particularly cycles such as the phases of the moon
and a luni-solar calendar. Calendars were important to ancient societies10 for timing
agricultural activity and fixing religious festivals. Eclipses and planetary motions were
often interpreted as omens, while the calm regularity of the astronomical cycles must
have been philosophically attractive in an uncertain and violent world. Named after its
place of discovery in 1901 in a Roman shipwreck, the Mechanism is technically more
complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards. Its specific
functions have remained controversial11,12,13,14 because its gears and the inscriptions upon
its faces are only fragmentary. Here we report surface imaging and high-resolution X-
ray tomography of the surviving fragments, enabling us to reconstruct the gear function
and double the number of deciphered inscriptions. The Mechanism predicted lunar and
solar eclipses based on Babylonian arithmetic-progression cycles. The inscriptions
support suggestions of mechanical display of planetary positions9,14,16, now lost. In the
second century BC, Hipparchos developed a theory to explain the irregularities of the
Moon's motion across the sky caused by its elliptic orbit. We find a mechanical
realization of this theory in the gearing of the Mechanism, revealing an unexpected
degree of technical sophistication for the period.