Tag Archives: Ancient Astronomy

A section from page 49 of the Dresden Codex, one of the three surviving books from the Maya civilization, illustrating a segment of the cycle related to the appearances and disappearances of Venus and the Moon goddess Ixchel.
c. 1000: Unveiling Mayan Astronomy – Insights from the Dresden Codex

The Dresden Codex, a surviving document from the Mayan civilization, reveals their advanced astronomical knowledge, rivaling that of early Greek and Arabic scholars. It includes detailed tables for tracking celestial bodies, predicting eclipses, and aligning [...]

A reproduction of a portion of Aristarchus's original third-century BCE calculations, showing the relative sizes of the Sun, Earth, and Moon, which supported his revolutionary idea of a heliocentric universe.
c. 280 BCE: Aristarchus and the Concept of a Heliocentric Universe

Aristarchus, a Greek astronomer, challenged ancient geocentric beliefs by proposing a heliocentric universe, a revolutionary concept that wasn't widely accepted until centuries later with the works of Copernicus and Kepler