All -
I'd be taking a serious look at ancient Chinese astronomy and the Chinese Zodiac, which are so intellectually/spiritually entangled that its pretty clear to me that they ran a simultaneous path from their earliest beginning. There is also a major argument inherent in ancient Chinese culture for the early awareness and cultural followthrough of precession.
Finally, there is no reason that the original Chinese knowledge could not have followed the ancient trade routes, and then was modified by the local cultural gestalt of say, the Middle East, or India.
"Ancient Chinese Astronomy
Ancient Chinese astronomy has a very interesting past. The Chinese empire was one of the first dominant civilizations of the world. Ancient Chinese astronomy has been criticized and put under a lot of speculation, for not being entirely accurate. However, the Chinese have kept the longest continuous observations of the sky. There is a highly debated fact about the earliest recorded observations; some argue around 6000 BC, while others argue for around the 24th century BC. The evidence from 6000 BC appears on pottery and walls. These records were also more like drawings and designs than important observations. The 24th century BC records were based on the oracle bone scriptures. The oracles of the time had begun to write down important phenomena in the sky. The records are at least continuous since the 24th century BC. The earliest credible records were taken during the Shang Dynasty in 1500 BC. Also many are in disagreement about whether Chinese astronomy was influenced by the visiting Babylonians. In any event, the Chinese deserve respect for their contribution to astronomy of keeping continuous records. Most civilizations, during war or some civil conflict, did not always record the sky. The Chinese also had many of the first observations of important astronomical phenomenon.
An important point to keep in mind, when discussing ancient astronomy, is that the civilizations were occurring roughly at the same time with respect to the stars and their positions.
In the night sky the Chinese were able to view about 3,000 stars. From these 3,000 stars they, similarly to the Greeks, divided the stars into easier groups to allow for easy searching in the sky. The Greeks used about 88 constellations, where as the Chinese used about 283. These constellations were then grouped into large groups called mansions, and these were commonly called images, these images were divided into three enclosures. One interesting thing to note about the Chinese constellations is their focus on the natural as opposed to the supernatural. While the Greeks and Babylonians named their constellations after gods and heroes, the Chinese named theirs after whatever the happened to see(such as the Plough or the Ox).
The Chinese are credited with having many of the first observations of significant events in the sky. For instance, the Chinese recorded the first solar eclipse in the 2000 BC. They wrote "5th year of Emperor Zhong Kang of Xia, autumn, 9th month, day gengxu (47), the first day of the month; there was an eclipse of the Sun." The Chinese were actually scared of the solar eclipse. They saw it as the sky bringing despair to earth. Within the moment of the eclipses, sacrifices were performed, banners were hung, and music was played to persuade the sky to have mercy. Therefore it was important to be prepared for another solar eclipse.
Lunar eclipses, however, were not feared by the people because they appeared so commonly. As a matter of fact the earliest recording of one was not until 1065 BC. Before this time, the event was only slightly mysterious.
The Chinese did not try to explain or understand their sightings. The Chinese were the first to record Halley’s Comet. Their recording mentions the "broom star" on the handle of Yin. They also knew of many movements of the stars and were able to determine the difference between stars and planets. They called the North Star, Bei Ji, and they thought it connected to the Plough (The Big Dipper). They also accounted for guest stars being present in the sun. In today’s time these would be referred to as sunspots. They had thought stars were within the sun. The path of the sun and the moon were recorded and studied. The sun and the moon were on separate paths and are important for the complicated Chinese calendar.
The seasons were important for the Chinese because of the need for better agriculture techniques. The only way to predict the start of the seasons was by the positions of the stars overhead. The equinoxes and solstices were the primary way to determine the seasons. The middle of spring was when Niao was overhead, in the mid summer Huo is above, in the mid autumn Xu is in the sky, and in mid winter Mao is overhead. These star positions correspond to the equinoxes of the spring and autumn and also to the solstices of the summer and winter.
The ancient Chinese placed a very heavy importance on creating an accurate calendar. It may be thought initially that the calendar was needed for agriculture, as china was a very agricultural society; however, in reality, the calendar they wanted was much more accurate than was needed for agriculture. The need for such a calendar may be linked to the fact that the emperor was thought to be the link between humans and nature, and any disorder in nature could cause criticism of the emperor. For this reason, and perhaps others unknown, the Chinese tried to predict all that was predictable in the heavens.
The calendar they devised was a lunar-solar calendar in that it used the cycles of the sun and the moon as measurements of time. This is one concept of their calendar that causes them to run into problems as we will see. As in all other calendars that have been derived throughout human existence, "daylight and night make one day," and by the end of the first millennium BC, they had established midnight as the end of one day, and the beginning of the next. They then created a sixty day naming system using ten stems and 12 branches. The stems would get more and more ahead of the branches every ten days, and it would take sixty days get back to the beginning of the cycle. They also used this system to name sixty year cycles.
Lunation, or the lunar cycle, was used to define a month. The point at which the moon passed closest to the sun, conjunction, became the first day of the month. During this time, there are generally three moonless nights. The first of these is the last day of the month, the next is the day of conjunction, and the third is the second day of the month. The Chinese encountered a number of problems with the monthly cycle. First, they wanted their months to have whole numbers of days, and the time of conjunction can occur at any time of the day. In addition, the time of conjunction can only be observed in the case of a solar eclipse.
The Chinese attempted to build up "nests of cycles." In their calendar, the start of one unit of time marks the start of each subunit within the unit. When a new year begins, so must a new month, day, etcetera. This also required that each unit contained a whole number of days. Twelve lunar months will be eleven days shorter than a solar year. This caused the months to get behind their seasons, which posed a problem for the Chinese and their rituals. They had problems finding the "grand origin point" at which all the cycles began. They attempted to measure a year in a variety of ways. First, they used a tall pole, and measured its shadow. The day the shadow is its longest is the winter solstice, the day it gets the shortest is the summer solstice. A problem is that the shadow moves so slowly that it’s hard to tell exactly when these occur. They also found that some cycles lasted 365 days, and some lasted 366. We know now that it actually lasts 365.25. This is because the solstice does not necessarily occur at noon, but could happen at any time. They thought that all four seasons should be of the same length. These seasons were then divided by six, making twenty four equal length periods. They used this to make sure that the months kept up with the seasons. Two of these periods related to each of the twelve lunar months. The two periods can be called a solar months. These months, however, do not have a whole number of days. Another way they measured this, was with solar right ascension. The ecliptic was divided into 28 "mansions," each one a little slice of the celestial sphere. These slices could be from 1.5 degrees to 30 degrees, and each one was marked by a reference star. As the brightness of the sun made it impossible to observe the lodges directly, they mainly looked at stars that were "centered" in the sky at dawn or dusk, and used the different stars to measure time. This was a star that crossed the observer’s meridian due at that time. This last method was the easiest observable way to make sure the calendar kept track with the heavens.
The earth and space is made up of interlocking cycles, and the Chinese saw all motions in the heavens as one single phenomenon. By observing one set of motions, they thought they could predict patterns in any motion. In reality, their calendar was flawed, like many early calendars, because of some strong misconceptions.
The Chinese had three theories for the model of the universe. The first proposal was that the sky (heaven) was a large dome which was over top the earth and moved naturally. The Chinese were more involved with everything being related to nature and the natural world. They would not have envisioned the stars as having supernatural characteristics. Another model is that the universe was infinite and contained celestial bodies held up by winds in the sky. The last was that earth inside a sphere, like the yolk of a chicken egg. Each of the theories also included winds that pushed the celestial bodies throughout the sky."
Bibliography:
http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/archeo/ ... china.html.
http://www.chinapage.com/astronomy/syho.html.
Xiaochun, Sun and Jacob Kistemaker. The Chinese Sky During The Han. Brill. New York. 1997.
Xu, Zhentao and David W. Pankenier and Yaotiao Jiang. East Asian Archaeoastronomy. Gordon and Breach Science Publishers. Amsterdam. 2000.
Astronomy and mathematics in ancient China: the Zhou bi suan jing by Christopher Cullen. Cambridge University Press 1996. Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge.
The above is a terribly brief overview, but there's lots more interesting stuff out there. Note the comment about "oracle bone scriptures".
john
ps
"Like other pre-Columbian civilizations, the Maya had a profound knowledge of the sky. Their priests recorded astronomical observations and passed them down from generation to generation. The result was an extremely accurate calendar that predicted the coming of eclipses and the revolutions of Venus to an error of one day in 6,000 years.
Only a handful of the parchments that chronicle this knowledge survived the zealous bonfires of the missionaries; those that did are now called codices. In one, for example, Venus is represented as a figure with two masks, symbolizing its appearance in the early morning and evening.
The calendar itself was divided into cycles 3 million years long, subdivided into units of 20 years, 400, 8,000 and 158,000 years. There were also subunits for marking the death and rebirth of the sun and fire. Rituals punctuated the cycles and acted like the needles of a clock, marking the passage of time."
Look up the Dresden, Madrid, Paris and Grolier Codices of the Maya.
Good stuff.
j
