Astronomy's Past

There are records of ancient civilizations that kept track of time and learned new things by what they saw in the heavens. Here are some examples:

somewhere in the process of studying the heavens, the concept evolved that the configurations and actions of the celestial bodies absolutely affected human destinies and were symbols in the heavens’ from which inevitable events could be foretold,

the early people observed the stars on clear nights, devising a godlike power there, and they selected certain collections of stars, which they named after the champions of their stories, and after customary animals,

after calculating time in lunar months for thousands of years, the Egyptians perfected a more accurate calendar with the aid of a star,

by observing the Sun’s rising point on the horizon every morning, ancient astronomers discovered that the point relocated each day,

the early development of Astronomy was devoted to the difficultes of the determination of the seasons and the calendar,

the first phenomena to be famed was the regularly repetitious dawn, sunset, daylight, sunrise , twilight, and night, and

the contrasted groups of stars that humankind named after their heroes and well recognized animals were called constellations.