{"id":942603,"date":"2026-10-22T22:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T22:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/942603\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T22:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T22:46:12","slug":"oct-22-2137-b-c-e-an-eclipse-darkens-skies-over-ancient-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/942603\/","title":{"rendered":"Oct. 22, 2137 B.C.E.: An eclipse darkens skies over ancient China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1000\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/eclipse_1-e1752701173106.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"A stark, high-contrast photograph captures a solid black circle perfectly centered against a jet-black background. A bright, glowing ring of white light radiates outward from behind the dark circle, creating a soft, hazy halo with faint streaks extending into the surrounding darkness.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMany of the earliest-known human records of eclipses come from ancient China. Credit: NASA\/Gopalswamy\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The earliest solar eclipse for which we have a record appears in the ancient Chinese text\u00a0Shujing, traditionally said to have been compiled by the philosopher Confucius, which reads: \u201cOn the first day of the last month of autumn, the Sun and Moon did not meet harmoniously in Fang.\u201d What an understated way to describe an eclipse!<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pinning the exact date of this event is somewhat problematic; originally, scholars stated it occurred either in 2136 or 2128 B.C.E. The mention of \u201cFang,\u201d though, ultimately holds the key: This term refers to a section of the sky mainly in Scorpius. Furthermore, we know the eclipse happened during the reign of Zhong Kang, an emperor of the Xia Dynasty. Based on these details, the only eclipse that could have been seen from the capital city <a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/science\/a-history-of-solar-eclipses\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">was on Oct. 22, 2137 B.C.E.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s also a long-standing tale \u2014 which may be true but very probably isn\u2019t \u2014 about this eclipse and two royal astrologers, He and Ho. In at least one version, they were drunk prior to the event and didn\u2019t warn the emperor that the eclipse was coming. Whether or not they even knew it was coming is debatable. Long story short, they reportedly were killed for their mistake.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Michael E. Bakich\u00a0is a contributing editor for\u00a0Astronomy\u00a0magazine. With degrees in astronomy and planetarium education, he has led many eclipse tours, published several books on observing, and logged thousands of hours at the eyepiece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Many of the earliest-known human records of eclipses come from ancient China. Credit: NASA\/Gopalswamy&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,70805,66,306],"class_list":["post-942603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-eclipses","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}