On April 8, a total solar eclipse was visible across a large territory of North America. During this eclipse, the Moon was 5.5 percent larger than average.
The stunning celestial spectacle brought 4 minutes and 28.13 seconds of totality, a path of semidarkness through Mexico, 15 U.S. States and Canada — where some lucky ones were able to see the moon entirely cover the sun’s disk, according to NASA.
—yes, the moon completely blocked out the sun for those few minutes, in fact during a total solar eclipse, the new moon appears almost exactly the same size as the sun, so blocking the entire sun. This rare and spectacular event, results in a beautiful totality during which the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona is visible to the naked eye.
Photo by my brother @Alberto Sanchez, a stargazing neophyte.
But what did ancient humans think about eclipses? How did they see the darkness of the sun? What did they make of those minutes without bursts of light, when the usual flow of light illuminating the earth stopped?
Some of them viewed those celestial events as messages from the gods, a cue to end a war or leave a settlement and move far away. In ancient China an eclipse was a signal that the sun was devoured by a dragon. The Greeks were studying eclipses as far as the 5th century BCE. Thales of Miletus , a Greek philosopher one of the Seven Sages of Greece credited with saying “ Know thyself“, predicted a famous solar eclipse that occurred in May 28, 525 BCE.
Early cultures like the Mayas and the Aztecs tracked the sun’s movements to predict future events, such as astronomical cycles. On the Aztec `s Cuauhxicalli Eagle Bowl, a 24-ton basalt disc shaped stone more than 12 feet (3 meters) in diameter and 3 Feet thick (91.44 cm) , the death of the Sun God Tonatiuh during the darkness of the sun is represented in its center. You can see the original monument today in Mexico City in the National Museum of Anthropology.
Are you also in awe of nature?
(To be continued with the Spanish version of this post.)
©2024 BiBoX All Rights Reserved
LEARN SPANISH 