New Astronomy (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1875 edition. Excerpt: ... Man Las been present at the climacteric and geological evolutions, which have made their work with the help of millions of years. In the ancient alluvions, belonging to the quaternary epoch, there have been taken out fossils and extinguished species of animals, human bones, found with remains of mastodons and rhinoceros, hatchets, points of arrows made with silex, and thousands of specimens of the primitive industry, which bear the indisputable mark of man's hand. In considering the past under that point of view, we are allowed to state, tbat the community of astronomical ideas among the old nations of the antiquity, must proceed from an anterior antiquity. However, the state of minds to which the origin of that community answers, is not a primordial state. The Chaldean period of 432,000 years, and the period of 30,000 years which the Egyptians counted from the commencement of Typhon to the death of Osiris, are generally known. The chronologist, to reconcile these enormous accumulations of years with the exigencies of their systems, have some of them, taken each year to mean a day, and others a lunar month. It will be seen by the dissertations to which these periods have given rise, that opinions vary as to their duration. The generally accepted view in our time, fixes the Chaldean period at 432,000 days, and the Egyptian period at 2,424 solar years. In the colleges, a totally different interpretation prevails. There, they are treated as fables, invented by national vanity, to push back beyond reasonable limits, the antiquity of the political existence of Chaldea and Egypt. This explanation refutes itself, if we consider that these long periods are found precisely in the recitals of those races who studied astronomy. The 432,000 years of the...