THALES vindicated/O. Neugebaer disproved!

World renown mathematician and expert in ancient astronomy claimed that
Thales could not have predicted the 585BCE solar eclipse because of lack of
expertise at the time by either the Greeks or Babylonians. But a recent
solar eclipse series discovered proves Babylonians/Assyrians knew of a
predictable eclipse series and likely passed this on to Thales allowing him
to predict an eclipse in 478BCE which duplicates the pattern.

This new discovery proves Neugebauer was wrong about what the Babylonians
could do though he knew it was theoretically possible to predict the time
and location of a solar eclipse if based upon ancient records of a possible
eclipse pattern that allowed for this. He was not aware that such a pattern
actually existed and thus discounted both Thales and the Babylonians who are
now vindicated!


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Here's the rare predictable eclipse series observed by the Babylonians and
Assyrians establishing predictable solar eclipses:
http://www.geocities.com/siaxares/comp532-478x2j.JPG

Here's the matching pattern for the Thales predicted eclipse in 478BCE
during the corrected two-year reign of Nabonidus (480-478BCE):
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/4653/709.gif -

QUOTE REGARDING ISSUE OF THALES:

It is reported that Thales predicted an eclipse of the Sun in 585 BC. The
cycle of about 19 years for eclipses of the Moon was well known at this time
but the cycle for eclipses of the Sun was harder to spot since eclipses were
visible at different places on Earth. Thales's prediction of the 585 BC
eclipse was probably a guess based on the knowledge that an eclipse around
that time was possible. The claims that Thales used the Babylonian saros, a
cycle of length 18 years 10 days 8 hours, to predict the eclipse has been
shown by Neugebauer to be highly unlikely since Neugebauer shows that the
saros was an invention of Halley. Neugebauer wrote:

.... there exists no cycle for solar eclipses visible at a given place: all
modern cycles concern the earth as a whole. No Babylonian theory for
predicting a solar eclipse existed at 600 BC, as one can see from the very
unsatisfactory situation 400 years later, nor did the Babylonians ever
develop any theory which took the influence of geographical latitude into
account.

After the eclipse on 28 May, 585 BC Herodotus wrote:

.... day was all of a sudden changed into night. This event had been foretold
by Thales, the Milesian, who forewarned the Ionians of it, fixing for it the
very year in which it took place. The Medes and Lydians, when they observed
the change, ceased fighting, and were alike anxious to have terms of peace
agreed on.

Some doubt that Thales predicted the eclipse by guessing writing:

.... a more likely explanation seems to be simply that Thales happened to be
the savant around at the time when this striking astronomical phenomenon
occurred and the assumption was made that as a savant he must have been able
to predict it.

http://phoenicia.org/thales.html