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Space & the UniverseFunding

What did the night sky look like 10,000 years ago

PN
Priya NairPosted Mar 30

Before light pollution, before cities, before agriculture really. Which constellations would early humans have seen on an average night? Would the Milky Way have been visible as a continuous band? Were there stars prominent enough to navigate by that have since faded or moved? I know precession changes star positions over millennia - I'd love to see this modeled properly and presented in a way that non-astronomers can actually visualize.

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JK

The anthropological angle here is underexplored. Many pre-agricultural cultures had cosmologies intimately tied to specific star positions that no longer align with the solstices or seasons the way they once did. The sky those cultures described is not the sky we see.

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Bex RowlandFunderApr 2

Stellarium can simulate this - precession is well-modelled so the star positions are calculable. What's harder is simulating the sky brightness without light pollution. There are estimates based on current dark-sky site measurements but nothing that really communicates the experiential difference.

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Priya NairOPApr 3

The experiential gap is exactly what I want to bridge, not just a technical model but something that helps a modern person understand what it felt like to navigate and live under that sky every night.

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