NATS 1740 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Chichen Itza, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Archaeoastronomy

• School: York University
• Department: Natural Science
• Course: NATS 1740
• Professor: Radu Campeanu

Document Summary

Old and new questions about the universe: Originally the answers came from clerics and philosophers, but more recently they came from astronomy, physics, cosmology. Archaeoastronomy has dealt with practical things such as: Predicting eclipses of the moon and the sun. Constellations were recorded by the sumerians, greeks, chinese, babylonian and egyptians. Round-shaped earth - pythagoras the size of earth erathosthenes (size given in stadia; 1 stadium=160m) Aristarchus (earth not at the center of the universe) The ionian school introduced the idea that the universe can be explained through general laws. This important idea survived for only a short time. Pythagoras not only created his theorem which is a famous contribution in geometry, but also introduced the notion of mathematical proof . Following his work a religious cult called pythagoreans tried to prove mathematics" mystical power focusing on music. They also helped in politics and economy, but were considered elitist and were eliminated.