Cultural astronomy

Cultural astronomy is the study of how different cultures, both ancient and modern, see the stars, planets, and other objects in the sky and connect them to their world. It looks at the many ways people have understood and used the sky over thousands of years. This field brings together many areas of study, including looking at how old societies used astronomy, and learning about the astronomy of different groups of people today.

Cultural astronomy grew out of two main areas of study: archaeoastronomy, which looks at how ancient cultures used the sky, and ethnoastronomy, which combines astronomy with studying texts, cultures, and old images to understand how people lived and worked with the sky. It is also related to studying old astronomical data, the history of how we have learned about astronomy, and the history of the relationship between astrology and astronomy.

People who study cultural astronomy sometimes write about their work in a journal called the Journal of Astronomy in Culture. This journal began in 2016, started by a group called the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture.

Examples

Different cultures around the world have their own special ways of looking at the stars and understanding the sky. Some examples include Ancient Greek astronomy, Astronomy in the medieval Islamic world, and Australian Aboriginal astronomy. Others are Babylonian astronomy, Chinese astronomy, and Egyptian astronomy.

There is also Hebrew astronomy, Indian astronomy, Maya astronomy, Inuit astronomy, Persian astronomy, Serbian folk astronomy, Tibetan astronomy, and the Nakh peoples#Cosmology_and_creation. Each of these shows how people from many places made their own stories and ideas about the stars and planets.