This week, instead of a BTN video we could write a 321 reflection on a video about space (since space is our topic for this term). Hope you enjoy!
If you want to see the video, its on a blog called antsclass. Go check it out!
Blue = Facts
Red = Understandings
Green = Questions
This science video is about how ancient humans were fascinated by astronomy and how they talked about it then and now. The three main races that looked into astronomy the most were Mayans, Babylonians and Ancient Greeks. These 3 races discovered so much about astronomy and made us understand space a whole lot better. Especially Babylonians, they very advanced astronomers (and very interested in space) since they had created a writing system that allowed them to record a lot of information about space. This system helped Babylonia create mathematical models like calendars and these type of things were very helpful to them back then. Especially in the city-state of Ancient Babylon, which is located near modern Baghdad. These smart Babylonians were also able to predict astronomical phenomena, although they didn’t see things in a scientific standpoint. But their work has influenced astronomy and has created the birth of early forms of modern horoscopic astrology.
The race of Mayans is a group of Mesoamerican Indians. Even present day, we still don’t know a lot about this race and their knowledge about astrology (since the Spanish Conquistadors burned all of their records). But a very famous creation was from the Mayans, and that was the Mayan Long Count Calendar. This calendar was a very sophisticated system that uses base 20 numbers. This calendar is very famous because the Mayans believed that the world was going to end on the 21st of December 2012 (since that was when the calendar ended). This prediction was incorrect, so that means that Christmas and New Year’s Eve could be celebrated! Although the prediction was incorrect, it helped the Mayans discover the eclipse which was used to prognosticate important events, as well as predicting things like the motion of the planets.
The last race that was very interested in astronomy was Ancient Greece. A very famous ancient astronomer from Greece was called Claudius Ptolemy who invented the Ptolemaic system. This astronomer was a Greco-Egyptian writer, mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. Ptolemy had a lot of jobs because at the time (90 AD – 168 AD), there wasn’t that much knowledge about science so people interested in science had to have a lot of other jobs. But nowadays, there is more knowledge about science therefore you can just focus on science if you want to.
Claudius was also a Greek citizen of the Roman emperor, and was born in ancient Egypt in Alexandria (when it was under a Roman emperor). This Ptolemaic system showed how earth was in the middle/centre of the universe, and this fact has influenced humans for hundreds of years. This system was a drawing that shows earth was in the centre of the universe, but Ptolemy was known largely for it. But knowledge today is showing that heaps of Ptolemy’s knowledge actually came from another person,
Euclid (father of Geometry) who is an ancient Greek mathematician and a lot of people would say the greatest astronomer of all time. He categorised hundreds of stars, as well as discovering the Precession of the Equinoxesa (the wobbling of the earth around its axis). This Precession explains why in 12 000 years, the northern star won’t be Polaris anymore, it will be Vega.
An understanding I now have is some of our science knowledge was found out years ago, and a lot of our knowledge id from people in the past. Also that the knowledge we got from the past has really influenced us on our opinion of space.
2 questions I have now are:
- Who created the Mayan calendar or the Babylonians calendar?
- How did they find out all of this information when they didn’t have the technology we have today?