The heavens in Antiquity

All the cultures of the Antiquity , beyond their development, saw the sky with curiosity and identified certain groups of stars in the night.And although many of these groupings correspond to the particular perception of each society, sometimes there were amazing coincidences.

According to astronomer Julius Staal (1917-1986), among the Native Americans there was a widespread tradition that also identified a bear formed by the stars α, β, γ, and δ of the Big Dipper .In the three stars that form the spear of the Chariot or the handle of the Spoon (a part of the Big Dipper), saw three hunters, while in the classical Greek tradition formed the tail of the oso.

Another recurring mythical source of this const Elacion is what is associated with a wagon or car , as taught by some Babylonian and other representations of ancient China.

But what was the original impulse that motivated man to create maps and give names to the constellations ? In the first place, it is known that the ancients were, for the most part, lunar but not solar, and it is very likely that it was the desire to trace the trajectory of the Moon that ended up leading to a systematization of the stars.

An early and popular development was the tabulation of the lunar mansions .Lunar mansions are groups of stars or stellar regions aligned along the ecliptic, or the equator in ancient China, by which the lunar trajectory can be determined.Arabic were known as al-manazil , in India under the name of nakshatra , and in China as hsiu .

A second fundamental element for observation is the apparent daytime rotation of heaven.The great astronomers of history, the priests of the Assyrian Babylonian culture crystallized this phenomenon in the three "paths" of the three gods called Ea Anu Enlil and dating from 1400 BC

Ea he took the outer path, from the stars south of the celestial equator.His son, Enlil , received the inner path of the circumpolar stars. Anu got the path from the center, around the equator.Along each of these paths, twelve gods represented by twelve stars announced the months of the year, and at any time 18 of these stars were visible at once.

From the 6th century BC, the Ancient Greece assimilated much of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian knowledge of the heavens, and the Ea Anu Enlil seirvio de based on the zodiac Greek.Already for the 2nd century AD, Claudio Ptolemy I re-elaborate the existing data and make a catalog with more than a thousand stars visible from the countries Mediterranean.

I group them in 48 constellations (the 12 signs of the zodiac, another 21 constellations of the north, and about 15 in the south).The catalog of Ptolemy was modified over the centuries, but laid the foundations of the current celestial map accepted by contemporary astronomers.

Heaven was probably the only thing that these distant civilizations shared among themselves.The diverse way in which each people watched the stars, always fixed, always eternal, offers a clear example of the rich and undeniable cultural relativity of humanity.

Sources:

• Cornelius, G.: Manual of the heavens and their myths, Blume , 1998.
• Levinas, M.: The Images of the Universe, Buenos Aires.