What are the major ancient eclipse records from various cultures that help modern astronomers understand historical variations of Earth?

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And what are their ancient process, methods, or equipment that helped them to learn about planetary science?

In: Planetary Science

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Oh, the ancient records are useless for telling us anything about astronomy. We can calculate eclipses way more accurately than ancients ever managed to record them. But mentions of eclipses sometimes allow us to precicely date historical events, so they are useful for that.

Anonymous 0 Comments

We have tablets from Babylon that record the exact time they saw eclipses. Before we account for the slowing of Earth’s rotation and the moons orbit we calculate the same eclipse should have occured elsewhere on Earth. Eg the 136 BC eclipse would have occured in Majorca.

I imagine the same would be true for any culture that recorded an eclipse occuring that is old enough that the path of totallity would have noticeably moved.