Ever lay back in the grass at night and stare up, watching the stars twinkle as time slowly drags on? Ever wonder why we, as a human race have looked to the stars and still do quite often as curious little creatures staring at the infinite and vast universe wondering if other lifeforms are staring back at us…
Astrology is the oldest natural science known to man. From prehistoric roots, Mesopotamia, Meso-America, and all the way to the Copernican Revolution. We figured out pretty quickly, as a species, in ancient times that planets move and stars stay relatively still in our skies. We have attributed everything from religion, mythological, and even calendrical meanings to the stars. These attributes are still present even to this day in our astrological and astronomical sciences.
The Aztec society based their cyclical calendars on the stars, the Egyptians built whole pyramids aligned to the heavenly bodies up in our sky, even our prehistorical selves knew that the heavens were of significant value and measure, the theory suggests that bones found that pre-dated 35000 BC was possibly (still debated) a lunar calendar or a guide to the lunar cycle.
Our oldest Mesolithic calendar comes from Scotland:
The Warren Field calendar in the Dee River valley of Scotland‘s Aberdeenshire. First excavated in 2004 but only in 2013 revealed as a find of huge significance, it is to date the world’s oldest known calendar, created around 8000 BC and predating all other calendars by some 5,000 years. The calendar takes the form of an early Mesolithic monument containing a series of 12 pits which appear to help the observer track lunar months by mimicking the phases of the Moon. It also aligns to sunrise at the winter solstice, thus coordinating the solar year with the lunar cycles. The monument had been maintained and periodically reshaped, perhaps up to hundreds of times, in response to shifting solar/lunar cycles, over the course of 6,000 years, until the calendar fell out of use around 4,000 years ago.[5][6][7][8]
For many, many centuries we have been looking to the heavens for either guidance or beauty to behold. Perhaps, if some theories are correct, we are looking to our roots from which we came considering that some scientific data seems to suggest we ourselves are partly made of stardust. Whether you are looking to your roots, for the big dipper (or little one), or communing with the universe on your front lawn at midnight enjoying the stars is time tested hobby passed from generation to generation. May you find the shooting star that brings you good luck!
