The Remarkable Science of Ancient Astronomy

By: Bradley E. Schaefer, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Bradley E. Schaefer

Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

In a world without artificial lights, the night sky is ablaze with stars, whose patterns tell stories you have heard since childhood. The Sun, Moon, and stars are crucial to your daily existence, since they tell the time, direction, and when to plant and harvest. The perfect regularity of the heavens is the only guaranteed part of life and inspires deep religious and philosophical ideas, while unexpected events such as eclipses and comets incite fear.

Experience this ancient outlook with noted astrophysicist and historian of astronomy Professor Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University. An award-winning teacher, Dr. Schaefer takes you around the world, exploring the close relationship that people thousands of years ago had with the sky.

The Remarkable Science of Ancient Astronomy covers notable sites and phenomena such as Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid, the Star of Bethlehem, the origin of constellations, Polynesian sky navigation, ancient calendars, and more. Understand the precise alignment of prehistoric monuments with the Sun and stars, learn how to use a medieval astrolabe, and decipher the workings of an astonishing ancient Greek computer called the Antikythera mechanism, which was centuries ahead of its time.

Using only their eyes, ancient astronomers got many things right, and their meticulous records have proved invaluable to modern astronomers, helping them calculate the slowing of Earth’s rotation and the expanding stellar cataclysms called supernovae. Ancient astronomers truly laid the foundation for modern science.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2017 The Great Courses (P)2017 The Teaching Company, LLC

a good listen, however...

A considerable amount of good information presented in a clear fashion. The constant long pauses are particularly annoying and it would be a better presentation overall if the speaker could come across as being a bit less full of himself as he is.

Great job

Maybe ancient alien fans should listen to this lecture. Great overview with a few detailed explanations

One of my favorites…

I’m adding this to Kaler and Shutt as my favorite astronomy Audible books. Definitely a great overview of ancient astronomy. Good to compare what people knew and how they knew it. Schafer’s own research adds to the discussion.

Great book. Listened to the whole thing!

Overall Great book. the author is a bit arrogant, but is well informed, and does a good job explaining it all. The only other problem is their are gaps 5-10 seconds long gaps, once or twice every chapter, it gets kind of annoying but it’s not a big deal. The author’s knowledge is vast, from Native Americans, ancient Chinese observances, too Greek astronomers, he covers it all.

skip the lecture on the Star of Bethlehem

the lecturer promotes the myth that Christmas was originally a pagan festival honoring the sun. He is also clearly unfamiliar with Biblical material, wrongly assuming that the Magi are named and that the little drummer boy is mentioned.

Pretty good

Very interesting info. Would be better if he wasn't always trying to DEBOONK the silly giants he's standing on the shoulders of.

Remarkable

This book is about ancient scientists going back over 4,000 years. this dry subject was brought alive by the narrator who did a very very good job.

obviously a video that audio was taken from

I first learned about Great Courses from the Great Courses video streaming service. I'm pretty sure I watched a few episodes from a different course by this very professor. The weird breaks in audio that occur in this lecture series are obviously where the speaker is showing objects, maps, and graphs to the audience in a lecture hall or video. The audio was taken from a video series without cutting these pauses out of the audio. For some people this will be very hard to deal with.

The performance was not the problem

I don’t usually write full reviews, but I wanted to give a fuller answer as to why I rated the performance so low.
Dr Schaefer show great enthusiasm and knowledge and I enjoyed this lecture.
However, an editor needs to go in and take out the long spaces of silence. It’s very distracting. Once this is fixed, four star rating on performance.

Loved it!

This course was so interesting and really well done. I highly recommend to anyone interested in astronomy!