The Myth of Advanced Ancient Astronomy

This cartoon perpetuates the nearly universal misconception that ancient civilizations possessed an advanced knowledge of astronomy that may well have been superior to our own.  How did this misunderstanding come about?  I’ll venture a guess.  I once rode a tour bus from London across the beautiful Salisbury plains to the historic city of Bath.  Midway on our journey we stopped for a brief visit of Stonehenge where I was greatly impressed.  However our tour guide had made no attempted to prepare us by explaining the megalithic monument ahead of time, and so not everyone shared my enthusiasm.  Some of my fellow travelers were openly disappointed. 

“Well that was a big nothing burger,” the guy sitting next to me complained.  “Stonehenge is a World Heritage site, or so I was told.  I thought it’d be something amazing.  But what was it really?  As far as I could see nothing but a random assortment of big rocks,”

“The main axis is aligned with sunrise on the morning of the Summer solstice,” I replied trying not to sound like a know-it-all.  “That means the builders of Stonehenge had some interest and understanding of astronomy.”

My traveling companion was stunned.  He was a man of the 20th Century and yet he wasn’t quite sure what the solstice was and without referring to a calendar he had no idea how to find it.  As a result my friend formed the completely false impression that the stone age inhabitance of England had an understanding of astronomy that rivaled our own.  They did not.

Why was Stonehenge built?  What purpose did it serve?  No one knows, but I like to think that Stonehenge is a message from the people of the neolithic to the people of today.  I like to image that thousands of years ago men and women looked up at the night sky in wonder and they yearned to travel to the moon and the planets.  Those long ago people realized that for them such a journey was impossible.  Yet they dreamed of a day when their descendants would be equal to the challenge and they wished the children of their children’s children a hundred times over safe passage across the perilous sky.  So they marshaled their strength and they built a great monument that would challenge the ages and stand for five thousands years.   And endure it has.  As mighty empires rose and fell and kings achieved fame only to fall into obscurity the stones remained faithful to those who set them and their message is profound.  Silently they state that four thousand years past humans gazed in wonder at the night sky and endeavored to decipher the mysteries of the stars.   The stones say, ‘We from times gone by send our hopes to you of the future.  May you tread the soil of other worlds.’