It's highly likely ancient people would be very well spoken, given they had to talk and convince each other of things all the time. Also most of their recreation would have involved talking to some degree or another.
So I would probably do a poetry sesh about how this fucking bonkers terrifying and um could the sun come back please?
idk. Some people in historical eras could predict them pretty well. A bunch of old monuments and big rocks are designed to line up with different astronomical dates. Maybe people thought it was super weird and scary, or maybe they were just like "Huh, I guess moon just passed over the sun. Wild. Hey grandpa you know any stories about this?"
I'm sure it was shocking and frightening if you didn't know it could happen.
Ancient people weren't stupid though. Sure there would be those who thought the world was ending, but we have a lot of evidence that people attempted to understand these phenomena to the best of their abilities. For example, one of the leading theories on the purpose of Stonehenge was that it was an observatory designed to predict eclipses. As for me, I'd probably start worshiping the sun after the eclipse is finished so that it wouldn't go away again, then start building Stonehenge of course hahahaha.
leading theories on the purpose of Stonehenge was that it was an observatory designed to predict eclipses
Xena taught me that it's the remains of a temple for the cult of Dahak, the One God of Evil.
If we're talking literal cavemen, like hunter gatherer societies that hadn't really discovered the technology of farming yet, then I'd believe the world was fucking ending for about an hour. Then be like "oh... it didn't... back to figuring out how to not die today."
probably more like 20 mins tbh. it's not that noticeable until very close to totality
but yeah for those 20, sheer panic lol.
I feel like, because you can see the moon moving towards the sun for the hours leading up to the eclipse, and see it moving away from the sun in the hours afterward, you'd be able to put two and two together even if your sense of scale is way off.
Plus there's gonna be institutional knowledge whether you're agricultural or not - eventually you're going to see multiple eclipses, and eventually your tribe will have elders telling kids about them, and eventually someone will think to record when they happen and start being able to predict them.
I would assume it was a message from an all powerful god selecting me to be the ruler of the universe. and that I should masturbate more frequently.
so, basically the same as how I interpret one today.
extremely valid reaction. there's an old man on tiktok that's been slowly reading it, spoiler free, he's an absolute casca-head, and he is almost to the eclipse. i am genuinely afraid for this stranger's mental health.
I saw the movie trilogy first and was still upset when I got to it in the comic. Honestly wish I could have gone into it completely blank but then again, it may have felt even worse lmao
I'm just bummed Muria died just as we got to having Casca's mind restored. He said we were about 3/5ths of the way through. We were going to see Guts and Casca reunited to take out Griffith.
A sign from the universe to not touch grass and go back to talking shit on the cave wall forums.
I'M SORRY I CALLED GLART A GRUMBLEGLORT THEN FARTED IN THEIR BED, I PROMISE I WON'T DO IT AGAIN! BRING THE SUN BACK!
The only reason anyone would have any misconception about what an eclipse was was if they didn't go outside and look at the sky regularly. If you looked you'd see that sometimes the moon shows up during the day and that sometimes it manages to pass close to the path of the sun. An eclipse might come as a surprise to people but you'd have to be pretty ignorant to not understand what it was.
There is a misconception about ancient peoples that they were stupid. The human brain hasn't change much in the last half a million years. There were cavemen that were smarter than Einstein. The thing that has changed over the years is our technology to record, access and share information. People today don't have to figure out how to calculate the length of a triangle's hypotenuse because somebody wrote down and shared the formula. That doesn't mean that person who wrote it down figured out "a squared + b squared =c squared." The concept was actually in use 1000 years before Pythagoras. His recording was just the one that got shared the farthest.
I would have no clue and would start swinging my cave club at whoever was near and hope that violence appeases the gods
sure hope i don't get betrayed by the leader of my warrior band in a hellish sacrifice
