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Updated: June 22, 2025
The Chinese boast of having noticed and recorded a series of eclipses extending over a period of three thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight years, and it is probable that they anticipated the Greeks two thousand years in the discovery of the Metonic cycle, or the cycle of nineteen years, at the end of which time the new moons fall on the same days of the year.
It is thought by various writers that the knowledge of the ancient Hindoos regarding the movements of the sun and moon in their cycles of nineteen and six hundred years the Metonic cycle, and the Neros proves that long before the birth of Hipparchus the length of the year was known with a degree of exactitude which that astronomer had not the means of determining.
In fact all that may be gathered concerning the ancient Etrurians, a people who by the most able writers upon this subject is believed to have been one of the first to leave the Asiatic hive, is in perfect accord with the facts already set forth regarding that mighty nation, perhaps of upper Asia, who carried the study of astronomy to a degree of perfection never again reached until after the discovery of the Copernican system, who invented the Neros and the Metonic Cycle, who colonized Egypt and Chaldea, and who carried civilization to the remotest ends of the earth.
The Chinese boast of having noticed and recorded a series of eclipses extending over a period of thirty-eight hundred and fifty-eight years; and it is probable that they anticipated the Greeks two thousand years in the discovery of the Metonic cycle, or the cycle of nineteen years, at the end of which time the new moons fall on the same days of the year.
Only noting as we pass, how, thus early, we may see that the progress of exact science was not only towards an increasing number of previsions, but towards previsions more accurately quantitative how, in astronomy, the recurring period of the moon's motions was by and by more correctly ascertained to be nineteen years, or two hundred and thirty-five lunations; how Callipus further corrected this Metonic cycle, by leaving out a day at the end of every seventy-six years; and how these successive advances implied a longer continued registry of observations, and the co-ordination of a greater number of facts let us go on to inquire how geometrical astronomy took its rise.
Doubtless the doctrines of Re-incarnation and Karma were set forth by those very ancient philosophers who were the near descendants of the inventors of the Neros and the Metonic cycle those who believed in the indestructibility of matter, and that spirit proceeds from or is evolved through it.
Stukeley both make the inner oval to consist of nineteen stones, answering to the ancient Metonic Cycle of nineteen years, at the end of which the sun and the moon are in the same relative situation as at the beginning, when indeed the same almanack will do again.
This is not the same as the Egyptian and Chaldean eclipse cycle called Saros of 223 lunations, or a little over eighteen years. The Metonic cycle is 235 lunations or nineteen years, after which period the sun and moon occupy the same position relative to the stars. It is still used for fixing the date of Easter, the number of the year in Melon's cycle being the golden number of our prayer-books.
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