Time Telling in the "Land Between the Rivers"
The Chaldean priests in ancient Mesopotamia told time by the stars, thus combining science with religion.
Imagine, then, the two armies about to go to battle when suddenly something appeared to go wrong with the sun. There to their amazement, in a cloudless sky, a dimming shadow touched the edge of the sun's shining disk and began slowly to blot it out. The warriors forgot to fight each other and stared in terror at the sky. The sun dwindled to a crescent; a weird twilight fell upon the earth. Finally, the last thread of brightness disappeared leaving a dull circle in the sky, surrounded by faint bands of light. The gloom of night fell upon the ground. Birds and animals went to their rest.
No further evidence was needed by the superstitious and frightened soldiers. It must be true that Phoebus Apollo was grievously angered, and they forthwith laid down their arms. The sun god, of course, soon showed his approval of this action by coming back into the sky.
This is only one of many tales which might be told to show the state of superstition in those days. Learning, then, was confined to the few, and in many instances was used to mystify or terrorize the mass of the people and thus keep them submissive. At best, new ideas were slow to grow or to be believed.
For example, Pythagorus, the great Greek philosopher of the sixth century B. C., believed the earth to be a globe, but it was not until Columbus discovered America—twenty centuries later—that people generally began to know that it was not flat. Even in these modern days of the public school, the press, the telephone, the telegraph, the wireless and other means for the wide-spread distribution of knowledge, how slowly does truth find its way to acceptance! To this day, superstition is by no means dead.
Even Mark Twain, who scoffed at superstition all his life, often said that, as he came into the world with Halley's Comet, in the year 1835, so he expected to die in 1910, the year of the comet's next appearance. Strangely enough, his half-jesting prophecy was fulfilled, for he really did die in that year.
Astronomers to-day can figure out in advance what is to happen in the heavens with an exactness which would have seemed magical in olden times, and is hardly less astonishing even now. Their power is largely due to improved scientific instruments, proficiency in mathematics and greater accuracy in the measurement of time. Not only is the date of an eclipse of the sun now known in advance, but so also is the exact path of the shadow across the world, and the instant of its appearance in any given place.