A history of solar eclipses and strange responses to them.

As one of the last big events of 2020, the sun will go dark. Fortunately, this is expected to be only temporary and due to the only total solar eclipse of the year.

Unlike the great eclipse which was at least partially visible to many Americans in 2017, the 2020 eclipse on December 14 will only be visible in its entirety from the southern tip of South America and parts of the Atlantic and Pacific. Although it will be possible to watch from anywhere through a live broadcast.

Although a total solar eclipse Lasting only a few minutes, the rare phenomenon has a long history of provoking all kinds of strange reactions from beings that it briefly covers with the darkness of day.

The Vikings made loud noises to scare Skoll and Hati, the two wolves in Norse mythology who chased the sun and moon and occasionally caught them, causing an eclipse. Centuries later, a woman haunted by the fatal judgment associated with a 1748 solar eclipse “locked herself in a room and cut off her arm in such a way that she bled out,” according to the London Evening Post at the time.

Some of the strangest responses occurred in earlier centuries, when understanding of the causes of these stellar abductions was less widespread. But we, the enlightened, modern people are not immune.

In her 1982 essay Total Eclipse, Annie Dillard recalls hearing screams of terror and / or jubilation when she saw a solar eclipse that swept through Washington state in 1979.

Steve Ruskin, astronomy historian and author of America’s First Great Eclipse, also discovered something in common.

“What I find most amazing, having studied eclipses throughout history, is that regardless of the time period or scientific knowledge (or lack thereof), human responses to an eclipse are consistently, universally , expressions of wonder and amazement, and even fear and terror, “Ruskin told me.

He says that Nordic wolves were not the only creatures, according to ancient myths and legends, that caused eclipses by devouring the sun. The Mayans, who learned to predict eclipses, sometimes described them as a giant serpent. The Inca seemed to believe that a jaguar swallowed the moon to cause a lunar eclipse.

“A fairly unique and largely unknown response to an eclipse is found in an 1886 account of Aboriginal Australians,” says Ruskin. They reportedly “believed that the eclipse was caused by another tribe on the moon itself, a people who were sick and angry, and who were showing their ‘bad mood’ with the Aboriginal Australians below.”

Real concerns

The ancient Babylonians had a knowledge of mathematics advanced enough to predict eclipses, but still viewed them as bad omens for their royalty. They often place a commoner on the throne during an eclipse so that if something dark happened to the king, it would fall on the false king. After the eclipse, the royal surrogate was rewarded for his service by being killed, just to make sure any bad eclipse lice died along with him.

Court astronomers in ancient China met a similar fate when they couldn’t predict an eclipse, supposedly because they were drunk. The anecdote 4,000 years later inspired a poem that has been passed down for centuries:

“Here lie the bodies of Ho and Hi, whose fate, although sad, was visible, being hanged because they could not spy on the eclipse that was invisible.”

Arguably the most famous solar eclipse was the one that coincided with the death of King Henry I of England in 1133. Chaos and civil war followed.

A eclipse in Turkey in 585 BC. C. had the opposite effect. Armies at war took it as a sign from the gods that perhaps they should try to get along. Thus, the story goes, 15 years of struggle ended suddenly.

Blown minds

After the eclipse of 647 BC. C., the Greek poet Archilochus found himself considering what other tricks the gods might have for mortals below:

“After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. None of you will be surprised in the future if the land beasts switch places with the dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and they like the waves more from the sea to land, while dolphins prefer the mountains. ”

According to Ruskin, an eclipse had even darker implications for native Jamaicans when Christopher Columbus, the super idiotic sailor, used the event to convince locals that it was best to feed his crew or risk angering their god. The arrival of the eclipse helped Columbus subjugate the natives.

Perhaps the strangest response in history to a total solar eclipse was the least hysterical. When the sun faded shortly after rising early in the morning over Europe in the year 1230, local workers apparently gave it little thought. They simply went back to bed, according to historian Roger de Wendover, only to be shocked when the sun returned to its normal brightness within an hour.

It still amazes me to see the sun go away

“Most of the time, (eclipses) were a source of fear and anxiety,” says Ruskin. “Until the period known as the European Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, scientific explanations of the motion of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon tended to alleviate such anxieties, at least among Europeans.”

This scientific illumination allowed us to breathe deeply and look around during eclipses. It turns out that the event also has a strange effect on animals.

“A raven was the only animal near me; it seemed quite puzzled, croaking and flying back and forth near the ground in uncertain ways,” wrote John Couch Adams of a 19th century eclipse.

Scientific curiosity around eclipses also sparked some allegedly anxiety-inducing efforts, such as Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev’s use of a balloon to view an 1887 eclipse from more than 2 miles up in the air.

So now that we look back at some of the irrational, illogical, and downright weird reactions to this trigonometry trick, try not to judge. Even today, the myth persists that an eclipse is somehow a danger to pregnant women. When that which sustains all life suddenly disappears from the sky, who can say that it might not unleash some deep primal instinct that supersedes the more rational responses of the conscious mind?

You will have the opportunity to find out first-hand if you can reach a place in the path of totality on December 14.