How 3000-Year-Old
Babylonian Science Guided
the Mars Rover Perseverance
to Its Landing
"True color image of Mars taken by the OSIRIS instrument
on the ESA Rosetta spacecraft during its February 2007 flyby of the planet.
The image was generated using the OSIRIS orange (red), green, and blue filters."
on the ESA Rosetta spacecraft during its February 2007 flyby of the planet.
The image was generated using the OSIRIS orange (red), green, and blue filters."
Some of my readers may think that it is a stretch to connect Babylonian/Mesopotamian math and astronomy, at least 3000 years ago, to today's state of the art landing of the Rover Perseverance on the surface of Mars at a specific crater, the Jezero Crater, 300 million miles from Earth. But it is not. In fact, this is one of the easier things to prove.
The small frame in the upper right is a photograph of the "descent stage holding NASA’s Perseverance rover [which] can be seen falling through the Martian atmosphere, its parachute trailing behind, in this image taken on Feb. 18, 2021, by the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The ancient river delta, which is the target of the Perseverance mission, can be seen entering Jezero Crater from the left."
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
I'll begin with the simple stuff and then move on to the more complex.
First of all, it was the early Sumerians (ancestors of the Babylonians) who invented the sexagesimal system of math, a system based on 60 rather than 10. There is universal agreement that this was their invention and that they knew how to put it to good use.
While not to get too detailed, 60 is a much more convenient number to work with as it can be divided evenly by numbers 1-6 and then 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60 which, as you will see, is quite useful.
We still use this today with sixty minutes to the hour and sixty seconds to the minute. But it is also still used for defining circles -- as a circle is 6 X 60 or 360 degrees. And as you know, if you do a 180 you have turned half-way around.
"Map of the night sky: star positions
from the Bright Stars Catalog, 5th Edition. Rasterized." 2006.
This modern map of the stars visible in the Northern Hemisphere
is based on the Babylonian model. The white curved line is the zodiac.
Notice the faint horizontal and vertical grid lines and the 360-degree indicators.
from the Bright Stars Catalog, 5th Edition. Rasterized." 2006.
This modern map of the stars visible in the Northern Hemisphere
is based on the Babylonian model. The white curved line is the zodiac.
Notice the faint horizontal and vertical grid lines and the 360-degree indicators.
Next, the Babylonians conceived of the sky as a circle and then divided the sky into 12 sections exactly 30 degrees apart making a yearly total of 360 degrees that completed the repeating yearly celestial cycle. Each 30-degree section was a constellation in the Zodiac, or the ecliptic, the path that the sun, moon, and planets all followed. Finally, the sky in a circle was divided into a grid pattern of declination and right-ascension which can be thought of today as latitude and longitude on Earth projected into the sky. And with these two coordinates, any star could be pinpointed. In a modern modified version coordinates can locate any point on Earth or a crater on Mars where Perseverance landed.
The Babylonians worked out this grid pattern in the sky which was then later applied to the Earth when its global structure was fully understood. And then later still this grid pattern was applied to celestial bodies such as our moon and the planet Mars.
The Mars map next shows the southern region in a circle which is divided into 360 degrees (which you can read on the side) along with the grid marks of circles and opposing lines.
SOUTH POLAR REGION OF MARS
Topographic Map of Mars
M 25M RKN
By U.S. Geological Survey
There were five different major insights and inventions by the Sumerians and then the Babylonians
#1. Using 60 as the numerical base
#2. Conceiving of the sky as a circle that repeated
#3. Giving the circle a total of 360 degrees
#4. Defining vertical and horizontal lines, measured in degrees and fractions of degrees, to pinpoint a location with coordinates
#5. The above configuration allowed the relationship between the stars to be expressed mathematically and also allowed a calculation for the relationship between the fixed stars and the moving planets
And BTW this was all based on hundreds and perhaps thousands of years of observations and measurements of the stars and planets.
"Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa"
This detail of a cuneiform tablet records observations of Venus
made around 1500 BCE for a period of about 20 years
by astronomers in Mesopotamia.
made around 1500 BCE for a period of about 20 years
by astronomers in Mesopotamia.
So this is the part where today's Mars Rover Perseverance comes in. Using a modified system of longitude and latitude, "Percy" (the Mars Rover nickname) used these coordinates to take her through the Martian atmosphere down to her precise landing spot. And without this grid system, she would have been flying blind.
And how important is this? The modern world could not function without it. Today there are over 2500 satellites that circle the Earth for a variety of purposes such as cell phones, the Internet, and television communication. Satellites radio their current position in space, for example, using this grid structure. Earth observation satellites, for weather and climatology, monitor the Earth using latitude and longitude. Planes navigate using this grid and GPS, of course, operates this way as well.
"Globe with the Earth surface divided into 1:1,000,000 map sheets
of Soviet topographic maps."
One of many designs based on latitude and longitude.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Division_of_the_Earth_into_Gauss-Krueger_zones_-_Globe.svg
of Soviet topographic maps."
One of many designs based on latitude and longitude.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Division_of_the_Earth_into_Gauss-Krueger_zones_-_Globe.svg
WHY DID I WRITE ABOUT THIS?
I was compelled to write this article because just last week I had finished another article describing how the craft of basket-weaving, which was a Mesopotamian obsession, may have led to the conception of the sky as a circle with grid lines. A basket was often constructed using a vertical and horizontal pattern that resembled the grid lines on Babylonian star maps.
For the last two years, I have been writing about the development of basketry and how this may have been a major technology along with stone tool-making in the Paleolithic era. In my previous article, I showed how basketry involved a substantial amount of math, geometry, engineering, and conception. The Sumerians and the Babylonians were avid basket makers and users as this was a key technology for their civilizations.
Baskets were often made in circles with horizontal and vertical fibers. And kings performed ceremonies relating to the gods and the stars that often involved basket rituals. It is my contention that baskets may have been a model that led to the creation of star maps as discussed here.
Click here to see a detailed explanation
of the Babylonian star map
in my previous article:
of the Babylonian star map
in my previous article:
"Map of the Moon, Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas, 1st Edition,
Leipzig (Germany) 1881, Page 4.'
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MoonMap1.jpg
Leipzig (Germany) 1881, Page 4.'
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MoonMap1.jpg
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