Its role in the development of religion-Mesopotamian priests recorded the Moon’s position to make predictions about the Moon god-created the earliest known empirical, scientific observation.īoyle deftly reframes the history of scientific discovery through a lunar lens, from Mesopotamia to the present day.
While the Sun helped humans to mark daily time, hunters and gatherers used the phases of the Moon to count months and years, allowing them to situate themselves in time and plan for the future. It was these tides that mixed nutrients in the sea, enabling the evolution of complex life and, ultimately, bringing life onto land.īut the Moon also played a pivotal role in our conceptual development. The Moon pulls on the ocean, driving the tides. The durability of this tilt over millennia stabilizes our climate.
The Moon stabilizes the Earth’s tilt toward the Sun, creating reliable seasons. An intimate look at the Moon and its relationship to life on Earth-from the primordial soup to the Artemis launches-from an acclaimed Scientific American and Atlantic contributorįar from being a lifeless ornament in the sky, the Moon holds the key to some of science’s central questions, and in this fascinating account of our remarkable satellite, award-winning science journalist Rebecca Boyle shows us why it is the secret to our success.
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