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And so they looked up.
Long before recorded civilisation, humans tracked the phases of the moon. Bone carvings dated as far back as 20,000 BCE, like the famous Blanchard Bone found in France, show tally marks interpreted as lunar calendars. Think about that: Ice Age people, wrapped in animal hide, already watching the night sky enough to know the moon cycled in predictable phases—and marking it down in bone.
As we settled into agrarian life, the need to predict time became even more vital. You can’t afford to guess when to plant or harvest. You have to know. By the 6th millennium BCE, ancient people were building structures like Nabta Playa in southern Egypt. To the untrained eye, it’s just a circle of stones. But its radial alignments point to the summer solstice sunrise, and there’s evidence that its builders understood seasonal star risings like Orion’s Belt. In short, this was a pre-Egyptian sky calendar, standing on the edge of the Sahara, designed to track the turning of the year.
Genesis 1:14 says: God made lights in the heavens for signs and seasons.” With a little practice, it’s possible to know the time of night just by looking at the stars.
Over in Britain, Stonehenge—begun around 3100 BCE and developed over centuries—was no mere druidic hangout. Its megalithic lintels line up precisely with the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset. Archaeologists have shown that its builders tracked lunar eclipses and solar alignments, possibly over entire lifetimes. These weren’t just stone circles—they were stone clocks, anchored to celestial events.
By 3000 BCE, things became more structured. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, priesthoods began formally charting celestial events. The skies weren’t just observational tools anymore—they were sacred texts. Priests became timekeepers because they were seen as the only ones capable of decoding divine rhythms.
So, how did they do it?
They started with horizon watching. Using fixed landmarks or purpose-built platforms, they tracked where the sun rose or set throughout the year. In Egypt, the heliacal rising of Sirius—that is, its first visible return just before dawn—coincided with the annual Nile flood. It became so important that the entire Egyptian calendar revolved around it. They didn’t just observe it; they predicted it, sometimes to the day.
To do that, they kept meticulous logs—rows of hieroglyphs etched into temple walls, or detailed astronomical ceilings in tombs like that of Senenmut (circa 1450 BCE). They noted which stars appeared in what part of the sky, and when. Over time, patterns emerged. From those patterns, they deduced cycles: solar, lunar, and planetary.
The Babylonians, around the same time, took this further. They were masters of positional astronomy. From ziggurat rooftops in cities like Babylon and Ur, they mapped the movement of planets like Venus and Jupiter, the shifting phases of the moon, and the changing positions of constellations. By 1800 BCE, they’d developed star catalogues and detailed lunar eclipse cycles. Their priest-astronomers, the bareû, weren’t just stargazers—they were celestial accountants, scribbling data on clay tablets using cuneiform. What they learned let them predict eclipses and construct one of the first known lunisolar calendars, balancing the moon’s phases against the solar year.
The zodiac, as we know it, also came from them. Not as astrology at first—but as a practical tool. Dividing the ecliptic into twelve segments allowed Babylonian priests to break the sky into manageable parts, useful for both seasonal planning and religious rites. Later, this evolved into full-blown horoscopic astrology, but its origin was timekeeping, not fortune-telling.
In Egypt, the decans—groups of stars rising in 10-day intervals—were used to divide the night sky. They became a method for breaking time into reliable units, even in darkness. That meant priests could track time at night, not just day. Temples, especially in Thebes and Karnak, featured star charts engraved into ceilings that matched specific religious calendars.
This priestly knowledge was passed down, guarded, and refined. It wasn’t public information—knowing when the sun would rise or the moon would eclipse was power. You could time festivals, plantings, and offerings. If your prediction came true, you weren’t just accurate—you were divine.
And when your gods are watching, you learn to read the skies properly.
The connection between astronomy and religion persisted for millennia. From Mayan pyramid-top observatories to the Chinese recording of solar eclipses as omens of dynastic fate, ancient civilisations saw time as something delivered from above, and their earliest clocks were made of stone, aligned not by guesswork but by celestial mathematics.
It’s worth remembering: for thousands of years, time wasn’t measured—it was watched.
