Early Astronomy Author:Hugh Thurston The earliest investigations that we can relate to today's science are observations of the sky: astronomy. The earliest written records of every civilisation we know of - from China, Egypt, the Tigris-Euphrates and Indus valleys, Central America, the Andes, and so forth - all contain at least some astronomical texts. There are in addition monumen... more »ts and artefacts that show a clear interest in astronomy, such as Stonehenge and rock paintings, from cultures that left no written records. The interest in celestial phenomena contributed to the development of Babylonian arithmetic and Greek geometry. This book covers the history of astronomy from the earliest observations to the 16th century. Before around 1700, nearly everyone assumed that the earth was stationary at the center of the universe. The work of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo (published in the last decades of the 16th and first decades of the 17th century) demonstrated that it is far more useful to think of the Sun as the centre of the planetary system, including the Earth's orbit; this revolutionary insight marks the beginning not only of modern astronomy, but also of modern science. The work of earlier astronomers of all civilizations still remains as a triumph of the human intellect.« less