Looks like for 755 the Anglo Saxon Chronicle had a guest blogger who'd taken considerably better notes than the usual lazy-assed scribe.I know you're joking, but as the Chronicle wasn't begun until the late 800s, earlier entries are built up from different sources. Some of which are more or less wordy, and may not have even been originally broken down into years, but rather an ongoing narrative. The entries for the early history of Wessex tend to repeat every 4 or so years, and it may be that somebody just mechanically cut up an existing saga into chunks and put bits of it in. Even entries made after the chronicle was begun may differ, as there are five or more versions kept in different places, and undoubtedly the writers changed as the years went on. Sometimes the entries veer from "Bishop Soandso died. Murrain of cattle." to long descriptions of events, including individual motives. Regardless of the actual historical content, even just figuring out the different sources, voices, biases, and so on, is a life's work.
One thing that's easy to forget nowadays, except when you go camping and sailing and stuff, is that people didn't spend a lot of time outside looking at the sky at night. For the vast majority of humanity for the vast majority of history, all the daytime hours were spent working very hard just to stay alive, illumination was an expensive luxury, so mostly what you did at night was sleep.For farming societies (such as in Old England) this can often be true, inasmuch that some times of year are unbelievably work-heavy. But other times of the year were relatively slack. Between sowing and harvest was often one, and between winter slaughter and first fruits was another. This could depend on how much livestock you had, and needs for milking, shearing and haymaking. But before harvest was often a time of festivals and the like. However, for hunter-gatherer societies, it definitely isn't true. They often worked much less and had a great deal of leisure time. Again, there was some difference depending on where they lived and what they lived off, but they had plenty of time to stare at stars. Also, in both times the sky was much brighter than today due to the lack of air or light pollution, and it is believed that two sleeps split by an hour or so of nighttime waking was common practice.
One thing that's easy to forget nowadays, except when you go camping and sailing and stuff, is that people didn't spend a lot of time outside looking at the sky at night. For the vast majority of humanity for the vast majority of history, all the daytime hours were spent working very hard just to stay alive, illumination was an expensive luxury, so mostly what you did at night was sleep.posted by delmoi at 4:42 AM on September 2, 2012
Yeah, I don't think that's true at all. First of all, if you go camping or sailing (or whatever) where there isn't much light pollution, the stars are much, much more vivid.
Second of all, all these societies employed astrologers who tended to write a lot of this stuff down. So we actually have records of all this kind of stuff.
In fact, we have lots of records of Supernovas from early history.
Also, Supernovas leave behind remnants that can still be seen using telescopes. So if there was a supernova on that date, the leftover shell should be visible somewhere. Ancient records would (I guess) help narrow down where in the sky to look, though.
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posted by never used baby shoes at 12:04 PM on September 1, 2012