The Song of Urania

Episode 47: Clock Around the Rock

We turn to the astronomy of Mesoamerica, with a particular focus on the Maya and Aztec. The central feature of their astronomy was a pair of interlocking calendars which

Episode 46: The Stars from Starboard

The most important application of astronomy in Polynesian societies was oceanic navigation. Polynesian navigators regularly traversed from one small island to another acr

Episode 45: Looking Up Down Under

Aboriginal Australian societies are believed to be among the oldest continuous cultures on the planet. Some of their oral traditions appear to preserve a cultural memory

Episode 44: Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam Per Astra

In his second attempt, Matteo Ricci was able to gain access to the Forbidden City. Over the next century, the Jesuits came to surprising influence in China through their

Episode 43: When the Saint Comes Marching In

After the fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty drove the few small Nestorian Christian communities in China underground and largely closed China off to forei

Episode 42: A Tale of Two Reforms

After Wang Mang had usurped the Imperial throne, a disastrous series of reforms led to the collapse of his dynasty. The reestablishment of the Han Dynasty called for yet

Episode 41: Liu Xin's Theory of Everything

After Wang Mang deposed the Han Dynasty and instituted his new Xin Dynasty, he needed to promulgate a new calendar to mark the occasion. One of his court astronomers, Liu

Episode 40: Emperor Wu's Woo

We learn about the political events and omens that led to the calendar reform of 104 BC.

Episode 39: The Guest Stars

We turn to the ways that the Chinese Emperor's astronomers predicted and interpreted eclipses, as well as the so-called "guest stars" that they occasionally reported obse

Episode 38: The Organization of Heaven & Earth

This month we turn to the astronomy of China in the early Imperial Era. We look at the way that the Emperor's astronomers were organized within the imperial bureaucracy a

Episode 37: The Mandate of Heaven

We start to explore the relationship between the heavens and the Earth in Ancient China, along with the role of astronomers. One of the most important concepts in Chinese

Episode 36: Aryabhata & the Siddhantas

In our final episode on ancient Indian astronomy, we tour the five astronomical Siddhantas, and then meet some of the astronomers whose names and works survive to us, mos

Episode 35: The Vedanga Jyotisha & Beyond

We delve into the contents of the Vedanga Jyotisha, the earliest Indian text to deal explicitly with astronomy. Then we turn to early Hindu cosmology and their explanatio

Episode 34: What Happened in Harappa

India developed one of the most advanced astronomies of any of the ancient cultures, even rivaling European astronomy in its accuracy by the 18th century. We look at how

Episode 33: How the Moon Became Blue

We take a break from the main narrative in honor of this month's blue moon and turn to a somewhat more frivolous topic — how the term "blue moon" came to mean the second

Episode 32: All Along the Watchers of the Hour

This month we tour the astronomers of ancient Egypt from the Old Kingdom to the last native Pharaoh of Egypt just prior to Alexander's conquest. We look at how astronomer

Episode 31: We Need to Talk About Khufu

Before getting back into Egyptian astronomy proper, we start by looking at Nabta Playa, a site of megalithic activity in the Nubian desert during the late neolithic. Then

Episode 30: Egypt in a Nut-Shell

We turn to ancient Egypt, one of the oldest and most beguiling of the ancient civilizations. Egypt is particularly notable for the sheer conservatism of its civilization

Episode 29: The Astronomy of Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa

The oldest plausible astronomical artifacts known are African, as are many of the oldest megaliths, around 10,000 of which dot the Sahara and whose orientations are astro

Episode 28: The Stars in Stone

We turn the clock back to the astronomy of the Paleolithic and Neolithic. Clues about humanity's interest in the heavens during the Paleolithic can be seen in linguistic,