Ancient (BCE-40 CE)

This major British Library exhibition traced the West's response to the oldest intellectual challenge facing the human mind: what is the shape and the extent of the earth and of the cosmos which contains it? The problem has been the province of religion, poetry and myth, but in the western scientific tradition it resolved itself into the twin enterprises of mapping the earth and the heavens. The exhibition of more than one hundred maps, books and artefacts, drew on a thousand years of science and art. It showed the progress of scientific knowledge of the earth and the heavens, and also the ways in which art and symbolism have been used to make statements about man's relationship to his world and the mysteries of the universe.

With these words Virgil invokes the Muses, that they may disclose the secrets of the sky, the eclipses and the phases of the moon: this particular task is traditionally set to Urania, Muse of Astronomy. She is the one who elevates man's thought from terrestrial to celestial objects, giving him harmony and peace.

Two are the main versions of the myth of Urania, deity who derives her name from Ouranos (sky): according to the Herodotean tradition she is daughter of Sky and Light, corresponding to the Assyrian Mylitta, to the Phoenician and Carthaginian Ashera (Astaroth), to the Arabian Alilat (from the Arabic a-lilat = night) and to the Scythian goddess Artimpara. This tradition identifies Urania with Aphrodites Urania, or celestial Venus; Hesiod probably knew the oriental tradition himself, as he refers to Aphrodite as Uranus' daughter ( Theog., 989).

Not just one calendar
There is not just one Aztec calendar, there are two more or less independent systems. One calendar, called the xiuhpohualli, has 365 days. It describes the days and rituals related to the seasons, and therefor might be called the agricultural year or the solar year. The other calendar has 260 days. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, it is called the tonalpohualli or, in English, the day-count. Most information on this Internet-site refers to the tonalpohualli, which is the sacred calendar.

As a testament to the value of this material, numerous copies of this material (in various stages of revision) are found all over the web. Entering ``strobel astronomy'' in any of the internet search engines will bring up a lengthy list of some of the copies out there. If you find an old copy, please let the web site manager know of the official Astronomy Notes web site at www.astronomynotes.com

FINDING INFORMATION AT NOBLE (AND HAYDEN) LIBRARY
The history of astronomy goes far back to the time of the Ancient Mesopotamians, Ancient Indian, Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Mesoamerica (i.e., southern North Ameican and Central America). Today the study of ancient astronomy is called archaeoastronomy or archeoastronomy (the first spelling being British and the second American). Archeoastronomy is an interdisciplinary study of ancient writings, buildings with astronomical alignments, and other artifacts dealing with astronomy.
Subject Categories:
Broad and Specific Terms: Archaeoastronomy (also Archeoastronomy), Ancient astronomy, Astronomy, history
Related Terms: Ethnoastronomy, Astronomy of a specific place or culture (e.g., Assyro-Babylonian astronomy, Greek astronomy, etc.), Prehistoric astronomy,

The Maya lived in the area in Central America which now consists of Yucatan, Guatemala, Belize and southern Mexico (the Chiapas and Tabasco provinces). This whole area lies south of the tropic of Cancer, and north of the equator, and is about 900 kilometers from north to south and 550 kilometers in the east-west direction. Theirs was a true Stone Age Culture, although the Maya at the time of Spanish contact in the sixteenth century, did know about working with copper and gold. While the Spanish prized gold highly, the Maya venerated jade.

Imhotep, the Wise, as he was called, was the Grand Vizier and Court Physician to King Zoser...He became a deity and later a universal God of Medicine, whose images graced the first Temple of Imhotep, MANKIND'S FIRST HOSPITAL.

Important Astronomers, their Instruments and Discoveries
by Paul M. Rybski
Part 1
Pre-telescopic Instruments, their Inventors and Users

In the late 1970s, interest in a natural history museum grew beyond the reach of the sciences. The trustees wished to add programs and facilities for the general public to the existing school-focused program at Fernbank
Science Center.
Fernbank, Inc. hired Graham Gund Architects to design the striking, 160,000 square foot museum. Ground was broken in 1989, and on October 5, 1992, Fernbank Museum of Natural History opened, becoming the only natural history museum in the world located in a natural environment.
Since then, the Museum has continued to grow and expand its collection. In 2001 Fernbank became the first museum in the world to display the world's largest dinosaur, Argentinosaurus. This gargantuan sauropod is now a permanent feature in the Museum's 86-foot tall atrium along with the world's largest carnivorous dinosaur, Giganotosaurus, a flock of pterosaurs and a variety of other contemporaneous species in the Museum's newest permanent exhibition, Giants of the Mesozoic.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (fl. 500-480 BC), also known as "the Riddler" and "the Obscure," was the eldest son of a leading aristocratic family. He was a loner with a general distaste for mobs. Consequently, he had no pupils, though a small book that he wrote had a rich tradition of its own and attracted many followers; the Stoics recognized it as the source of their doctrines. All that survives of this book is a series of quotations that scholars have been able to extract from other sources -- see the Fragments of Heraclitus -- and that reveal an enigmatic and oracular style, perhaps adopted by Heraclitus to protect its true contents from commoners. Owing to its obscurity, the book engendered many anecdotes about its author, most of them intending to malign him, and so it is difficult to know much about his life and character that is reliable. It is equally difficult to discern the details of his true thought.