[HelloMcFly]

I think you're underselling the accomplishment of determining some of these things, particularly predicting eclipses. And I think there's quite a bit to be said about novel applications that emerge out of tracking the sun, like announcing seasons for citizens to help know when to plant, reap, store, etc. to manage agriculture across empire. Often they amazing thing was taking a small thing and spinning into a massive, society-impacting solution.

[antognini]

One of the most impressive aspects of Babylonian and Chinese eclipse predictions was simply the social organization that was required to collect the necessary data. These records were collected almost continuously over centuries. The Babylonian astronomical records which span around seven centuries and are arguably the longest continuous scientific program any civilization has produced.

[shagie]

It then helped establish the study of the precession. Hipparchus used the Babylonian astronomical information to look into changes over hundreds of years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy#Influence...

> In 1900, Franz Xaver Kugler demonstrated that Ptolemy had stated in his Almagest IV.2 that Hipparchus improved the values for the Moon's periods known to him from "even more ancient astronomers" by comparing eclipse observations made earlier by "the Chaldeans", and by himself. However Kugler found that the periods that Ptolemy attributes to Hipparchus had already been used in Babylonian ephemerides, specifically the collection of texts nowadays called "System B" ....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchus

> Earlier Greek astronomers and mathematicians were influenced by Babylonian astronomy to some extent, for instance the period relations of the Metonic cycle and Saros cycle may have come from Babylonian sources (see "Babylonian astronomical diaries"). Hipparchus seems to have been the first to exploit Babylonian astronomical knowledge and techniques systematically.

> ...

> Hipparchus probably compiled a list of Babylonian astronomical observations; Gerald J. Toomer, a historian of astronomy, has suggested that Ptolemy's knowledge of eclipse records and other Babylonian observations in the Almagest came from a list made by Hipparchus. Hipparchus's use of Babylonian sources has always been known in a general way, because of Ptolemy's statements, but the only text by Hipparchus that survives does not provide sufficient information to decide whether Hipparchus's knowledge (such as his usage of the units cubit and finger, degrees and minutes, or the concept of hour stars) was based on Babylonian practice

[WalterBright]

> you're underselling the accomplishment of determining some of these things, particularly predicting eclipses

If you keep records over the decades, you can predict it. It's just a pattern, not an understanding. It wasn't until the last century, however, that the application of math to the precise orbits was able to predict the track of an eclipse very accurately.

[HelloMcFly]

> If you keep records over the decades, you can predict it.

Of course we know that now, but that level of understanding is hardly trivial to societies at those levels of development. To use our current understanding to be so underwhelmed - and to not be at all impressed by the scale at which they applied it for transforming and modernizing aspects of their growing societies - I don't know man, it honestly kind of shocks me and bums me out in equal measure.

[WalterBright]

When I was a boy, I had a newspaper route. It required me to deliver the newspapers at around 5AM, when it was still dark. While biking around the neighborhood throwing newspapers at houses, I would also watch the night sky.

It wasn't long before I started noticing patterns.

Ancient people also lived largely outside. They'd see the patterns, too. This isn't amazing or sophisticated or incredible.