The Ancient Astronomy

The Jupiter, is mysterous for ancient people.

As I said, in the past, rich people were served by their servant, so they had nothing to do. Therefore, they had time to imagine many things.

Since ancient people discovered other planet, they started to imagine how the solar system comes. In that time, people thought Earth was the centre of the solar system, because they considered that Earth was the most sacred planet, where humans live.

And the nearest planet from Earth, Venus, can be seeing by eyes, in the early morning and evening. And it might be the first planet humans discovered. Its beautiful colors let people thought it was the embodiment of beauty, and it was named after the name of the god of love and beauty.

The second nearest planet, Mars, was named after the name of the god of war. In Greece, Mars was Ares; Mars was called by the Romans. Mars’ red colored surface made people felt bloody, same as war, which brought death and blood to people.

And the smallest planet of all, Mercury, was named after the name of the god of messenger. It was because of the speed of Mercury surrounding the Sun, it was the fastest. Mercury the god has a pair of winged shoes that let him flies to deliver things.

Jupiter’s size made it easy to see, although it was far from the Earth. Jupiter was the largest planet in the solar system, and some of its satellites are bigger than Mercury. Because of its great size, people named it after the name of the major god, Zeus. Zeus is called by Greek; Jupiter was the Romans’ call.

Saturn’s symbol was a ‘K’, symbolizing Kronos the titan. Kronos was the son of the sky god Oranus (Uranus was named after him). I don’t know why people gave a name to Saturn.

Egyptian and Greek had advance astronomy knowledge; they studied planetary for a long period. But their calculations were almost wrong, and even their concluded that Earth was the centre of the solar system. These errors were affected by their trust; they had puzzled by those prophets or sorcerers’ defined view. They believed that the gods were the mightiest, and gods created a world that only wonderful things can exist.

So, they thought this world was wonderful, like: a planet is always a round; a planet’s orbit is always rounded. But they’re absolutely wrong.

We can’t always trust gods, we must believe ourselves, that we can do anything.