The Origins of Babylonian Astronomy

The Babylonian civilisation, centred on the Euphrates River in modern day Iraq, was another of the early agricultural societies which sprang up in the second millennia BC. The moor-appen tablets are probably the first extant object in the history of science which we might reasonably recognise as scientific data. They record a list of stars and constellations seen in the night sky. These dates correspond to dates in the Babylonian calendar, which was based on the lunar cycle. This meant an observer watching a particular constellation dip or rise above the horizon in the east can infer the time of the year. But they also developed advanced mathematical models which could describe these observations. For example, by using the