A brief history of Ancient Astronomy

1. Ancient Astronomy
A Brief History of Ancient Astronomy
Rayyan Abdullah

2. Introduction
• Astronomy: A very old subject
• Recorded history: 5000 years
Why they need astronomy?
• daily time keeping
• tracking the seasons
• monitoring lunar cycles
• Navigation and much more

3. Cave painting, Lascaux, 5000 B.C
Nebra sky disk from northern Europe, 1,600 BC
Ancient people of central Africa (6500 BC) could predict
from orientation of crescent moon near the western
horizon

4. Their Stories If we told stories

5. Mesopotamia (Babylonians)
• founders of astronomy
• cuneiform texts
• named constellations
• sexagesimal system (base 60)

6. Egypt
• 3rd Millinium BCE: 365 day year solar calender
• Observation of stars for annual flooding of Nile
• Pyramids aligned towards pole star
• Obelisk sun dial

7. Ancient Greece
• Observed celestial objects, unlike sun, moon
and stars, called Planets(Greek for wanderer).
• Retrograde motion
• Ptolemy’s geo-centric model (140 A.D)
• This model survived for 13 centuries

8. Conclusion
• Astronomy played a significant role for the people
• The sky was a clock, a map, a calendar and a book of stories
• All cultures made observations of the sky

9. Thank You