The earliest development place of human civilization
Mesopotamia is one of the earliest places where human civilization developed in the Tigris River and Euphrates River in the current Republic of Iraq.fromA.DDuring the three thousand years from the formation of Sumerian city state around 3000 BC to the extinction of Rome in 64 BC, cuneiform characters were always used, although the dominant ethnic groups changed many times.They have created a rich and colorful material civilization and spiritual civilization, some of which have been applied to today.For example, minute is 60 minutes, minute is 60 seconds, and seven days is a week. Constellation
Math andastronomyIs the greatest achievement.It is said that in the late thirtieth century BC, there had been a calendar.The names of the months at that time varied from place to place.The mud board found today has the names of 12 months in the ancient Babylonian calendar (about the 19th century BC to the 16th century BC) adopted by the Assyrians in 1100 BC.Because the year then began at the vernal equinox, the month of the ancient Babylon calendar is equivalent to March to April now.There are 354 days in a year with 12 months, big and small, 30 days and 29 days.In order to fix the beginning of the year at the vernal equinox, we need to use the leap method to make up the difference between 12 months and the year of return.Before the sixth century BC, there was no certain rule for leap, but the king announced at any time that the famous legislator Hammurabi had announced a leap in June.Since Darius I (reigned from 522 BC to 486 BC), there has been a fixed leap cycle, first 3 leap cycles in 8 years, then 10 leap cycles in 27 years, and finally 7 leap cycles in 19 years were established by Sidanus in 383 BC.
Babylonians start a month with the first appearance of the new moon. This phenomenon occurs one or two days after the sun and moon merge, depending on the speed of the sun and moon and the height of the moon on the horizon.In order to solve this problem, the astronomers of the Seleucid Dynasty began to draw up a daily and monthly movement table in 311 BC. Now, they choose a paragraph as follows: this table has only data and no explanation.Its mystery was finally revealed by Yiping and Kugler at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. They found that the fourth column is the sun in theZodiacThe third column is the degree of the sun in the house at syncopal time (18).The ordinate of the intersection point of the first two lines=M=30 ° 159, the ordinate of the intersection point of the second two lines=m=28 ° 103940, and the monthly average travel of the sun:
[230-01]。If you plot data for consecutive years, you can get a broken line.The distance between two adjacent peaks on this broken line is the length of the regression year expressed in the new moon, 1 regression year [230-02] new moon.[1]
Babylonian chronometer
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In this daily and monthly schedule, there are as many as 18 columns.In addition to the above four columns, there are also the length of day and night, the change of monthly speed, the length of the new moon, the date of continuous syncopation, the intersection angle of the ecliptic to the horizon, the latitude of the moon, and so on.It is easy to calculate lunar eclipses when there is a sun moon running table.In fact, as far back as Sargon II (about the ninth century BC), it was known that an eclipse must occur in sight, and only when the moon was close to the yellow white intersection.But recently, some people think that the statement that the Chaldeans discovered the Saro cycle (223 new moon=19 eclipses) during the New Babylonian Dynasty (626-538 BC) (see solar eclipse) is unreliable.
Cycle calculation
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Babylonians not only measured the cycle of the sun and the moon accurately, the error of the new moon was only 0.4 seconds, the error of the near moon was only 3.6 seconds, and the convergence cycle of the five planets was also very accurate:
