The upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 has got the World History Center thinking about the place of these phenomena in world history. Eclipses are rare global events that take different paths across the globe, and historically they have helped humans make sense of the world around them.
A total solar eclipse requires the stars to align, or more literally, one star (the Sun) to align with the Earth and the Earth’s moon. As the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, it blocks out the sun’s light entirely. During a total solar eclipse, the sky becomes as dark as if it were nighttime, and the sun's corona becomes visible as a halo around the moon.
In Pittsburgh, the eclipse will be visible at 97% of totality at 3:17 PM. It will be more than a century before another solar eclipse of this magnitude will be visible in the Pittsburgh region. In honor of this historic event, the World History Center is cancelling the spring open house that was originally scheduled during the eclipse.
At the World History Center, we focus on how people in the global past have interpreted solar eclipses. WHC Director Ruth Mostern notes that “human history is about people making sense of the world around them in culturally specific ways. This has always involved the celestial world as well as the terrestrial one.” Historians, and scholars in related fields like archeoastronomy, study cultures of celestial understanding like the history of calendars, and the history of astronomical observations reflected through religion, science, politics, and cosmology.
For thousands of years, people around the world have created calendars based on terrestrial and celestial observations. Stephen McCluskey’s ethnoastronomical studies of the Hopi people of southwestern North America show that the Hopi carefully observed the movement of the Sun from different shrines to determine the best times of year to plant crops. Other calendars that have existed throughout world history, and some that still exist today, define months of the year around observations of the lunar cycle. Calendars balance celestial cycles with the time-keeping needs of human societies. Today’s historians also use past records of rare celestial events such as solar eclipses to date events that occurred in the human past.
Celestial phenomena have also shaped ideas about cosmology in world history. In many cultures, solar eclipses were interpreted as a negative sign. The Inca and the Tewa peoples of the Americas, as well as the Mediterranean ancient Greeks, believed that solar eclipses were signs of divine anger that had to be appeased by providing offerings or hiding important political and religious leaders from heavenly wrath. In ancient China, observers thought that partial solar eclipses were the result of a celestial dragon attacking the sun. Ancient Persians interpreted eclipses as a trickster hiding the sun as a prank, unveiling it from view as the moon continued its orbit around the earth.
For some, an eclipse was a time to reflect on humanity. The Batammaliba people of Togo and Benin in West Africa thought human anger and fighting spread to the sun and moon, which fought with one another to cause an eclipse. To stop the celestial fighting, Batammaliba people aspired to peace on earth, and used the occasion of an eclipse to make amends for old feuds and disagreements.
If you experience the eclipse on April 8, 2024, you will be joining a community of celestial observers that spans millennia of human history. As you enjoy the eclipse, we invite you to think about what people throughout world history would have thought of this event from their unique cultural perspectives and historical situations.
Image Descriptions
1) Diagram of a solar eclipse from the Rice Space Institute.
2) A Babylonian clay tablet is inscribed with a list of solar eclipses that occurred between 518 B.C. and 465 B.C. from Astronomy.com.
References
Michael E. Bakich, "These are the Most Noteworthy Solar Eclipses," April 2, 2024. https://www.astronomy.com/science/a-history-of-solar-eclipses/
Stephen McCluskey, “Calendars and Symbolism: Functions of Observation in Hopi Astronomy,” Archeoastronomy, 1990.
Melissa Petruzzello, “The Sun Was Eaten: 6 Ways Cultures Have Explained Eclipses,” Encyclopedia Britannica.
P. Kenneth Seidelmann, editor, Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac/
Lyle Tavernier, “The Science of Solar Eclipses and How to Watch With NASA,” March 18, 2024. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2023/9/28/the-science-of-solar-eclipse...