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| | The Sky At Night, 700 BC - A Scholarly Detective Story |
 | | The poem, an admonishment to Perses, the poet’s lazy brother, to give up his lazy ways and start working, includes a calendar which uses astronomical signposts to guide farmers on when they should perform various tasks throughout the year, such as ploughing, sowing and reaping. |
 | | It wasn’t long before they were able to provide him with a star chart for 700 BC, showing the configuration of the sky as Hesiod himself would have seen it from his home village of Askra (today called Askri), which nestles in the Valley of the Muses near Thebes in central Greece. |
 | | Armed with sky charts for the period, Dr Cronin travelled to the valley, stood where Hesiod might have stood and, after a period of careful study of the evidence, concluded that the poet’s calendar was specific to the valley and to the farmers living and working there in 700 BC. |
| www.universityscience.ie /pages/scimat_sky_at_night.php (461 words) |
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