[njarboe]

Like most dangers communicated to people in the modern world, the danger of looking at the sun is way overblown. You can look at the sun for over a minute straight without any damage. How much damage, how fast, what kind of damage, and how this varies with peoples genetics is not well known, of course. Doing such experiments would harm peoples eyes. How long can you look at a little bit of the sun right around the total eclipse? Very not known. But "safety first" and you get things like and emergency warning sent out to all cell phones before the eclipse saying not to look at the sun. Looking at the bright sun is not a pleasant sensation. I imagine people in ancient times were more in-tune with their physical senses and were less likely to do things that hurt them just for curiosity sake.

[theoh]

"What kind of damage" is pretty well-known.

See e.g. "Light-Induced Damage to the Retina" http://photobiology.info/Rozanowska.html

[njarboe]

You are right. Many experiments on animal eyes are highly likely to translate well to human eyes.

With a little more thought maybe all these warnings exaggerating the dangers of the sun to your eyes are a good idea. It seems that humans know or learn "Don't stare into the sun" is a good idea but during an eclipse some people forget that.