Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

The Moon in Ancient History
Charles Hapgood displays recently unearthed early cartographic
maps from the Persian era, showing the southern
ocean with New Zealand (Los Roccus Insulis) as two tiny
islands, and more importantly, Antarctica with no snow on
it, as verified by the United States Air Force Research Division
in Massachusetts. The last time snow was absent in
Antarctica was 6000BC. For such early navigation by Europeans,
sound knowledge of mathematics and global distances
would have to have been known, along with teaching
techniques.
The Moon was always numerically tied to the whole
celestial environment. In ancient astronomy there were
seven celestial bodies visible to the naked eye and thought
to revolve in the heavens about a fixed earth and among
fixed stars. These seven bodies were Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn and the Sun and the Moon. But because it is
our nearest neighbor in space and makes visible changes
day by day, it is not hard to see that the Moon has fascinated
humankind the most. Little wonder that it has been
considered responsible for such variances as tides, moods,
battles, weather and sexual attraction.
Inhabitants of coastal villages for thousands of years
have relied on fishing for survival, and have needed lunar
data for tide variations. It would not have gone unnoticed
that the menstrual cycle too is lunar and tidal, tying us, especially
women, to the Moon’s possible influence. But in
our species’ biological history could the cycle of the Moon
have become the cycle of ovulation?
Being hunter/gatherers, early humans, probably the
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