One of the most interesting things about the Babylonians is that they had an incredibly sophisticated computational astronomy but essentially no physical theory to go along with it. For astrological reasons they had observed the sky and made detailed records of the locations of the Moon and planets. In fact, these records constitute the longest continuous scientific research program in history, being essentially unbroken for 6 or 7 centuries. Over this time they noticed patterns in planetary motions, some of which were many decades long, and from these patterns were able to make extremely accurate predictions for where the planets would be in the future. But as far as we know, they had no interest whatsoever in developing any physical theories to explain the motions they observed.
By contrast the ancient Greeks basically did nothing but come up with physical theories of the universe, but really couldn't be bothered to make regular observations of the heavens. By the time they started to really try to model the motions of the planets they had to rely on Babylonian observations for their data because no one in Greece had regularly kept records.
(As a shameless plug, if anyone is interested in learning more about Babylonian astronomy, I do a podcast on the history of astronomy and Episodes 2--6 cover the astronomy of the Babylonians: https://songofurania.com/)
Thank you, I'll be listening to your podcast on the morning drive. I'm also very interested in the history of astronomy and your podcast is right up my alley.
If you have information on the Jewish aspect of stargazing, I would love more information. Stargazing was no less important to the Jewish ritual and culture than to other ancient cultures, yet I can find very little information on it. Even until today, Jews observe the stars to determine the daily change of the day - especially important on fasting holidays. When can I eat?!? Yet the information seems to be lost in the ages, as I suspect that Jewish stargazing was mostly practical and less research or discovery than other cultures had.
I do reference ancient Jewish astronomy a couple of times in the episodes on the Babylonians. Since they were both Mesopotamian societies they had many cultural similarities that extended to their astronomy. (E.g., they both marked new months when the crescent moon was first visible after the new moon.)
But I would like to devote at least a full episode on Jewish astronomy, both ancient and medieval. There's a nice chapter by Tzvi Langermann in Astronomy Across Cultures on the subject. My plan is to briefly cover the Romans after finishing with the Greeks, and then turn to the astronomy of cultures that fall outside the "main thread" of Western astronomy (e.g., paleolithic European, Chinese, Indian, Mesoamerican, Subsaharan African, etc.). Then the plan is to turn to medieval astronomy in the West, starting with the astronomy of Islamic civilization and moving on to the astronomy of Western Europe.
Sounds like an excellent plan, and you should have enough material to last dozens of episodes.
Another interesting subject to cover might be prehistoric or even preagricultural astronomy. By definition, we know very little about the prehistoric but we have many hints, such as the significance of the name Kohab. And we know just a smidgen of preagricultural astronomy from stories such as the famed "seven sisters" stories common to several diverse cultures, even though the Pleiades has had only six visible stars for tens of thousands of years.
I might suggest an episode dedicated to the things that you can't find research as well. I'm sure as you compile your episodes you have some questions that you cannot find the answers for. Even discussing those questions would be very interesting.
I'm guessing I'll try to talk somewhat about preagricultural astronomy when I go over the astronomy of paleolithic peoples. But you're right that there's a lot we don't know, and even just talking about what we don't know would be interesting.
The Seven Sisters stories are fascinating. As I recall something like 60 or 70% of cultures enumerate seven members in their story and the other 30-40% enumerate six. (Maybe I have that backwards.) Even more interesting, a small number of cultures have stories about how there once were seven, but one of the sisters died, leaving six. There's a great paper that argues that due to the proper motion of one of the stars there were seven stars visible tens of thousands of years ago, but that it is now too close to another to be distinguished, leaving six. [1]
By contrast the ancient Greeks basically did nothing but come up with physical theories of the universe, but really couldn't be bothered to make regular observations of the heavens. By the time they started to really try to model the motions of the planets they had to rely on Babylonian observations for their data because no one in Greece had regularly kept records.
(As a shameless plug, if anyone is interested in learning more about Babylonian astronomy, I do a podcast on the history of astronomy and Episodes 2--6 cover the astronomy of the Babylonians: https://songofurania.com/)