how did past people observe solar eclipses withought damging their eyesight?

Question

Pre-renaissance, medieval, roman, etc, did they know they shouldn’t look directly at the eclipse?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

Tsunami’s weren’t all that frequent, but I imagine mass death caused by one would quickly become part of the cultural identity. In much the same way, I’d expect mass blindness to enter into the cultural memory. This, in turn, would lead to quick glances, smoked glass usage or pinhole images. People in the past had the same intelligence as today and while they may not have understood the exact science, they certainly understood cause and effect.