Question:
How did the Sumerians have knowledge of all the planets in our solar system?
anonymous
2008-11-07 15:13:46 UTC
Thousands of years before we knew the world was round, and the sun moved around us.
Twelve answers:
suitti
2008-11-07 15:40:23 UTC
The planets out to Saturn are obvious, even in light polluted skies. They were unusual because, unlike other 'stars', they move. The Sun and the Moon also "move" with respect to the 'fixed stars', and were considered planets. The Sun is kind of a special case - because when it's up, it's hard to tell where it is with respect to the stars, because you can't see the stars when it's up. But after a few months, it's pretty obvious. Still, it's pretty clever that they could tell what constellation it's in.



Many people thought the world was round thousands of years ago. Every time you see a lunar eclipse, where the Earth's shadow crosses the Moon, the shadow is round. These are fairly common, and people saw many of them, and at different times of day or night. The Earth's shadow is always round, which would not be the case if the Earth is flat.



It's often amazing when someone comes up with something. Truly new things are difficult to come by. But there are alot of people, and from time to time someone comes up with some new insight, and it happens to be correct. We know of many things the Sumerians got wrong.
Elizabeth H
2008-11-07 15:22:02 UTC
Newly translated Babylonian texts indicate that the position of the stars and planets were calculated instead according to complex equations inherited from the Sumerian civilization.

The Sumerians had an even more exact knowledge of the solar system and its place in our universe than did the Babylonians, whom they predate. The Sumerian calender was originally crafted as early as 3,000 B.C. and is also the model for our calendar today. They based their calender on the cycles of the moon, thereby breaking the year into 12 months, with a leap month put in every three years. Besides the fundementals of day counting, the Sumerians also had knowledge of more arcane astronomical features, some of which are hard to fathom just how they knew. For example, as the earth spins on it's axis it wobbles, so that a line drawn from the north pole into space traces a circle as the years go by.
Rochel
2015-08-21 12:49:26 UTC
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RE:

How did the Sumerians have knowledge of all the planets in our solar system?

Thousands of years before we knew the world was round, and the sun moved around us.
anonymous
2016-03-13 04:20:25 UTC
You are confusing the dwarf planets Eris, Sedna etc which really exist and have been known for a few years (i.e. they are old news) with the fake Planet X invented by a ratbag called Nancy Lieder. This deluded or fraudulent woman says she is in telepathic contact with aliens from Zeta Reticuli. This is the sort of thing real scientists either dismiss with utmost contempt or laugh at. This fake planet was supposed to be here in 2003. It's so late I guess it isn't coming. Nibiru was invented by Sitchin, a different fraud and is not the same fraud as Planet X. According to him it is not due for about another thousand years. It is a mess of superstition, non-existent astronomy, faked interpretation of Mesopotamian records and lies. I don't criticise Sitchin, I call him a liar. Von Daniken is another fraud and liar. One fraud supporting another fraud makes two frauds lying their heads off. Since the frauds and jokers promoting the 2012 hoax have decided that two different rogue planets invading the inner solar system would strain the credibility of all but the most gullible, they have rolled them together to make one and perhaps in some cases associated them with the rocky iceballs out beyond the orbit of Pluto. There are five or six of these known for sure and there could be up to another dozen or more. Name one working scientist with real credentials in astronomy, or some real historian that has any faith in Sitchin. Go on.
Gnomon
2008-11-07 15:46:19 UTC
The ancient Greek Ptolemy described in his book the Almagest, written in 150 AD exactly how to find all the planets, including details of how to build the equipment needed to measure the planets and the stars.



The Sumerians had the same technology as the Greeks, although they were a few thousand years earlier. There's no reason to think they were any stupider than the Greeks, so they could easily come to the same conclusions, although I'd never heard until now that they had an accurate view of the planets.
Chris O
2008-11-07 15:28:25 UTC
Well, when you do not have anything to do but eat, sleep, reproduce, and look at the sky at night. Then you begin to notice changes of some points in the sky. They(the Sumerians) studied these changes and concluded that they were closer to the Earth than anything else. They DID NOT, however, conclude that they were planets. Knowledge of plants was not placed into perspective until it was dicovered we revolve around the sun. The Mayans built observation using many mirrors in a pyramid as a telecope ( i saw it myself in Chi Chenit Ha)

I'm not too sure if the Sumerians had any sophisticated technology, tho, but they did have eyes...
Brant
2008-11-07 16:41:24 UTC
Saturn is easy to see.



The graphics which Zechariah Sitchin used to make the claim that ancient Mesopotamian societies had knowledge of all the planets is not of the solar system. Sitchin is a prolific fraud who publishes in the popular media where there are no standards. Several REAL archaeologists have systematically unraveled his entire thesis. The object he claims is the sun, is not. The sun symbol appears all over the place in that culture and the design with the "planets" in it is not the sun symbol. The diagram of circles is believed to be the Pleiades and any details on the circles are associated with *stars* in other pictograms.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin
?
2008-11-07 15:18:32 UTC
The Sumerians didn't have knowledge of any planets beyond Saturn. Those who claim otherwise are misinterpreting the early texts.
vorenhutz
2008-11-07 15:31:26 UTC
they looked. have you ever looked at the sky without the light pollution of a nearby city? saturn is easy to see. we moderns are sometimes too quick to congratulate ourselves I think. the ancients demonstrated that you can get quite far with not much more than the eye, hand and brain that nature provided. personally I'm a little surprised that no ancient civilisation recognised uranus, as it is often naked-eye visible.
anonymous
2008-11-11 07:41:28 UTC
They were a high civilization right before the end of the last age.



http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/01jan/annunaki2.jpg

http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/01jan/annunaki.jpg
anonymous
2008-11-07 15:31:53 UTC
They were told everything they knew by the Annunaki.



Although I have no idea why the Annunaki would tell all that to slave race...
anonymous
2016-04-06 02:04:15 UTC
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You're confusing a bunch of new age hogwash with actual science. The planet the Sumerians were talking about is the planet we call Jupiter. But economist Zechariah Sitchen declares himself to be a paleoastronomer and identifies their name "Nibiru" as some Earth-killing fantasy asteroid that's supposed to return and demolish Earth. That concept gets lumped under the heading "Planet X," which refers to any number of fringe theories about "extra" planets in our solar system. None of it really makes sense. It's just the latest doomsaying craze. You seem to have started from the proposition that NASA is evil and untrustworthy, and then gone from there. Further, you seem to be scrambling for any and all reasons to accuse them. Doesn't that sound a tad biased? EDIT 1: Thank you for confirming that you're getting your ideas from Zechariah Sitchin. Now please explain why real scientists and real astronomers should pay attention to an economist with no prior training or experience in astronomy and no prior training or experience reading the Sumerian language and interpreting their culture. Real astronomers don't believe Sitchin and cite very good reasons why his claims don't make sense. Real archeaologists of Sumeria don't accept Sitchin's interpretation of Sumerian reliefs and cite very good reasons why not. None of that stops Sitchin from hopping on every new discovery made by real scientists, trying to shoehorn it back into his claims, and waving his hands vigorously saying he somehow "really" discovered it first. Give it a rest -- Sitchin is a wannabe trying to make a buck off of people's gullibility. EDIT 2: Please supply the names of the qualified, accredited, published scientists who endorse Zechariah Sitchin and his Nibiru claims. I want people who have made reputations for themselves BEFORE endorsing Sitchin, not BECAUSE they endorse Sitchin. What makes you think his and Von Daniken's claims are not "easy to dismiss." These gentlemen each are JUST MAKING IT UP. Their rhetoric consists largely of incessant complaining about how shabbily they were treated by the "mainstream" scientific community, and then scrambling to warp their theories to make them sound congruent to new discoveries. Sitchin pretended to translate Sumerian at a time when it would have been relatively difficult to check up on him. Now that Sumerian is a much more accessible language, Sitchin's translations have been revealed to be so much gibberish. He bluffed, and got caught. Why shouldn't I dismiss it? Von Daniken's fanciful interpretation of artifacts was similarly made when few readers could check up on him. Now decades later his bluffs have been called too. Both these authors bank on their readers' unwillingness to check up on the claims. They simply make it up, count on their readers to believe in it, and dismiss any eventual criticism by saying the critics are ideologically motivated or simply trying to protect their mainstream scientific hegemony. People who find it hard to "dismiss" those findings are the people who desperately want to believe in this New Age hogwash and accordingly turn to people like Sitchin to provide a pseudo-intellectual veneer over what is essentially a belief taken on faith. Pseudoscience is not hard to recognized. Zechariah Sitchin has absolutely ZERO stature in the real scientific community. EDIT 3: I asked for qualified scientists, not more pseudoscientists. Have you actually read anything by qualified scientists? Or are you simply steeping yourself in this New Age rubbish written by self-proclaimed "experts," to the exclusion of all else? EDIT 4: Yes, when cornered pseudoscientists will just accuse their critics of being blind or stubborn. Consider that the reason your arguments aren't convincing is not because I'm stubborn but because the arguments are strained. I think it's hilarious that the web site you posted NAMES several prominent scientists, but doesn't say where they endorsed Sitchin. See, that's Sitchin's whole scam. He and his supporters glom onto the legitimate science of others, which often alludes to some of the same ideas as Sitchin, and try to warp it to fit their wacky interpretations and theories. They think that the superficial similarities will somehow convey the confidence that Sitchin was on the right track. You say these scientists "confirm" Sitchin. But confirmation is an explicit act, and here it has not occurred. I'm reasonably sure Plato, Einstein, and Charles Darwin and all the other cited scientists did not each write somewhere, something along the lines of "Zechariah Sitchin's interpretation of Planet X is correct." You simply don't understand what it means to "confirm" something. Simply having mentioned some of the same words and concepts is not a confirmation of someone's explicit claims. Can you provide the names and references of any appropriately qualified scientists who MENTION ZECHARIAH SITCHEN BY NAME and specifically endorse his ideas? EDIT 5: That's ludicrous. Bob can't say that Steve endorses Ted's ideas if Steve mentions neither Bob nor Ted. But if Bob wants to make it seem like Steve confirms Ted's claims, then he can simply find a few sentences written independently by each person that seem to allude to similar concepts, and try to manufacture a connection. That doesn't mean Steve agrees with the connection. As I mentioned, this is Sitchin's little game. He borrows a little bit from mainstream authors, and retrospectively warps his earlier claims to seem congruent with new discoveries. This is so he can borrow credibility from real scientists. I told you Zechariah Sitchin has no stature in real science. Your inability to name even one single qualified scientist who specifically endorses the claims made by Sitchin is ample proof of that. Handwaving about famous people who wrote about superficially similar topics is not confirmation. You have no idea what confirmation entails. EDIT 6: What's the mystery? If you claim Person A endorses the ideas of Person B, how can you do that without pointing where Person A has said, "I'm aware of Person B's ideas, and I think they're correct." If all you do is point out that Person A and Person B wrote independently about, say, microwave cookery, and never mentioned each other, you have absolutely no basis for saying that Person A has confirmed or endorsed Person B's ideas -- or in fact even knows about them. The implied confirmation scam is very common in psuedoscientists. "Einstein wrote about quantum physics. I write about quantum physics and borrow some concepts from Einstein. Therefore Einstein confirms my findings." NO, NO, NO. That's not how confirmation works. Now do you or do you not have any references from appropriately qualified people who ACTUALLY mention Sitchin and endorse his specific claims? Yes or no. EDIT 7: "Too shocking to accept." Please don't patronize us. The problem with Sitchin is not that his findings would blow our fragile little minds. The problem with Sitchin's findings is that he blatantly lied, and got caught; and that the implications of his findings are completely contradicted by direct observation. Why do you keep ignoring those very simple facts? You're trying to maintain that Sitchin is "somehow" still correct. Please -- the man is an exposed fraud. Give it up. EDIT 8: No, it's not "my opinion." You are the one who said scientists had confirmed Sitchin. In FACT you cannot name one qualified scientist who agrees with him -- only names of people from whom Sitchin stole tidbits of material or to whom he and his followers allude. So because Plato talked about catastrophes, and Sitchin foretells a catastrophe, then Plato "confirms" Sitchin. No. And because some scientists before Sitchin talk about trans-Neptunian objects, Sitchin's later SPECIFIC claims about a SPECIFIC trans-Neptunian object are "confirmed" by them. No. That's the sort of vague handwaving on which most pseudoscience is based. Nor is it merely an opinion that Sitchin lied about being able to read Sumerian. His translations were revealed as purely made-up hogwash. Why would someone only innocently trying to find the truth do something like that? Why would he pretend to read Sumerian unless he was trying to be deliberately dishonest. Go ahead -- keep believing in the Sitchin Planet X religion if you want. But don't try these handwaving stunts to make it seem like Sitchin's claims have any sort of scientific legitimacy. Zechariah Sitchin has absolutely no stature in the scientific community, and nothing you've been able produce has changed that fact. You simply desperately want to believe in Sitchin, Velikovsy, von Daniken, and all the other Ancient Astronaut crackpots. So go right ahead. Don't let the facts stop you.


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