2012 Conspiracies..

The ancient world had a keen awareness of time, and they were aware of the change in the annual time changes, even though they didn't know what the cause was. It should also be noted that it can't be taken for granted that all ancient civilizations were equally ignorant of this aspect of the nature of earthly behavior. Too often we forget that the history of human knowledge is recorded for only the one recognized as our forerunners.

EDIT: Despite the fact that they believe that the celestial bodies were the ones revolving around the Earth, rather than the opposite, the perspective of time would still have been the same.

Actually, Aristarchus proposed the theory that Earth revolved around the Sun about 260 BC. Ptolemy proposed the same around 140 AD, but you're right. It wasn't until the time of Copernicus, about 1400 years later, that the theory was revived and accepted. But that wouldn't have made a difference in the observed solar and lunar cycles. Egypt had a solar-lunar calendar around 2,000 BC.

I feel much younger now after all this talk about the multitude of centuries.

I don't feel any younger, but it does tend to put life into perspective.

It seems appropriate to insert that the Hebrew calendar year is 5769, which indicates how long that they have been calculating time via the lunar cycles. This represents their calculation of time since Adam and Eve (or perhaps more accurately, the amount of time since time began, since time is a human concept).

seekermeister said:

carwiz said:

Actually, Aristarchus proposed the theory that Earth revolved around the Sun about 260 BC. Ptolemy proposed the same around 140 AD, but you're right. It wasn't until the time of Copernicus, about 1400 years later, that the theory was revived and accepted. But that wouldn't have made a difference in the observed solar and lunar cycles. Egypt had a solar-lunar calendar around 2,000 BC.

One theorist earlier than those:

Philolaus (4th century BC) was also one of the first to hypothesize movement of the Earth

Copernican heliocentrism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's questionable but not unproven. His movement of the Earth idea was based on a broader scale--Think Milky Way. He grouped the known planets and the Sun together on their movement and not specifically that the Earth revolved around our Sun. At the time, our Solar System was the known Universe so he was indeed ahead of his time.