Eclipses through the Centuries - Portal do Professor

and its coat seemed a starry sky.
d) In Japan, wells were closed to prevent the sky poison, hidden by the
eclipse, from falling into them. 6
e) In Scandinavia, two wolves named Skoll and Hat were believed to terrorize
the Sun and Moon.
f) In India, a dragon named Rahu, would have the head of a dragon and
the tail of a comet. It rode in a chariot drawn by eight black horses that
represented the sky.
g) The Aztecs believed that Tzitzimine were star demons who caused eclipses
when they waged battles with the Sun.
h) In Bolivia, it was believed that dogs chased after the Sun and the Moon
and the tore the Moon’s face apart with their teeth. It was the Moon’s blood
that would turn the Moon red. The people howled and wailed in order to
chase the dogs away. 7
The fact is that humanity has never been indifferent to eclipses. Through the
centuries, they have been mentioned as affecting or even determining important
historical events. Empires would rise or fall, kings would be crowned or
dethroned, and battles would be lost or won because of chance alignments of
the Sun, Earth and Moon.
3. Eclipses and the Advancement of Science
From a scientific standpoint, eclipses have often opened doors to important
knowledge. In early times, for instance, lunar eclipses constituted an important
proof of the sphericity of the Earth. Lunar eclipses were central to debates
of Pythagoras, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers. Thus, if we have an
eclipse of the Moon by the shadow of the Earth, the shape of that shadow must
represent the profile of the planet. 8
For instance, Aristarchus (310 - 230 BCE) used eclipses to estimate the relative
sizes of the Earth and Moon by the curvature of the Moon’s disk and the
curvature of the Earth’s shadow cast on it, having the Sun, Earth and Moon
aligned in this sequence. He also estimated the distance of the Earth to the
5