The April 8 Eclipse: Unveiling Ancient Fears in Modern Times

In less than a month, I am looking forward to (and dreading) the full eclipse on April 8. Our town is preparing for a ton of visitors. Schools across Ohio are closed for the day and hotels have been booked up for a few years. My husband’s job has even closed for the day!

Many are worried about traffic, people acting weird, etc. Our sleepy town is not used to tourists and we are not looking forward to an influx of visitors. It is kind of annoying actually!

Smithsonian magazine recently talked about how our ancestors approached eclipses. Not well!

To our ancestors, an eclipse would almost certainly have been seen as an omen, Schaefer says. “The sun and the moon are typically the chief gods in your pantheon — and there’s the sun, dying in front of your eyes. That’s not good.”

Around the world, myths and legends grew up around the phenomenon. In ancient China, a solar eclipse signaled that the sun was being devoured by a dragon; people would bang drums and make loud noises to scare off the beast and bring back daylight. In South America, the Inca saw solar eclipses as a sign of the sun god’s displeasure; leaders would try to divine the source of his wrath and appease him with an appropriate sacrifice.

But researchers can’t say which specific…