Ancient Astronomy Quotes

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.

Note to academics: Aristarchus' track record of astronomical research would probably have guaranteed him tenure somewhere, if tenure had been invented. His stack of reprints included measuring the distances of the Moon and Sun.

Astronomy is ... the only progressive Science which the ancient world produced.

Nobody has ever convinced me that ancient aliens have visited Earth. Not even close.

An astrolabe is relatively unknown in today's world. But, at the time, in the 13th century, it was the gadget of the day. It was the world's first popular computer. And it was a device that, in fact, is a model of the sky.

While most of those who hold that the whole heaven is finite say that the earth lies at the center, the philosophers of Italy, the so-called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary. They say that in the middle there is fire, and that the earth is one of the stars, and by its circular motion round the center produces night and day

I'm fascinated by anything that deals with the unexplained. I love any show that totally makes me want to know more. How did they build these pyramids? Why did they find these carvings that look like spaceships?

Every time I'd read about the stone circles, it would describe how they worked as an astronomical observance. For example, some of the circles are oriented so that at the winter solstice, the sun will strike a standing stone.

Remembering that Eratosthenes of Cyrene, employing mathematical theories and geometrical methods, discovered from the course of the sun, the shadows cast by an equinoctial gnomon, and the inclination of the heaven that the circumference of the earth is two hundred and fifty-two thousand stadia, that is, thirty-one million five hundred thousand paces.

Like many of the ideas that mattered in the American Revolution, extraterrestrials got their start in antiquity. The Greek philosopher Epicurus speculated that the universe must be infinite, eternal and abounding in 'worlds' just like our own.

We find it hard to picture to ourselves the state of mind of a man of older days who firmly believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and that all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. He could feel beneath his feet the writhings of the damned amid the flames; very likely he had seen with his own eyes and smelt with his own nostrils the sulphurous fumes of Hell escaping from some fissure in the rocks. Looking upwards, he beheld ... the incorruptible firmament, wherein the stars hung like so many lamps.

All the arts: military, religious, mechanical and astrological, which gave them [the Aztecs] of the stars. For this they possessed large, beautiful books painted in hieroglyphics, dealing with all these arts which were used for teaching.

The concept of zero is attributed to the Hindus. The Hindus were also the first to use zero in the way it is used today.

Perhaps these ancient observatories like Stonehenge perennially impress modern people because modern people have no idea how the Sun, Moon, or stars move. We are too busy watching evening television to care what's going on in the sky.

This excerpt is presented as reproduced by Copernicus in the preface to De Revolutionibus: "Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center."

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

When we look back at the Mayans or ancient Egypt, we look at their art.

To ancient Chinese fancy, the Milky Way was a luminous river, - the River of Heaven, - the Silver Stream.

Meton (astronomer in 5th century BC): With the straight ruler I set to work To make the circle four-cornered .

Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet.

The black man in Africa had mastered the arts and sciences. He knew the course of the stars in the universe before the man up in Europe knew that the earth wasn't flat.

Eratosthenes's only tools were sticks, eyes, feet, and brains; plus a zest for experiment. With those tools he correctly deduced the circumference of the Earth, to high precision, with an error of only a few percent. That's pretty good figuring for 2200 years ago.

Complex astronomical instruments like the Antikythera Mechanism and the Nebra Sky Disk were made by Pagans. Our Pagan intellectual heritage includes poets and scientists and literary intellectuals of every kind, especially including those who wrote some of the most important and influential books in all of Western history.

The African had opinions about the universe that eventually turned out to be true.

Most of the Pyramids were observatories in perfect alignment. Some Pyramids were aligned so that the sun would hit them at a certain time of the year. And yet, it could rain all year, and not a drop of rain could get inside. No one covered the hole. So that took some high intelligence to line a thing up so that the exact time of year when the sun was in the exact position, it would light up the inside of that crypt.