The last time we had one like this, my girls were only three weeks old (August 1999) which is a slightly alarming way of measuring the passing of time!
The whole thing got me thinking about what our ancestors must have thought during a solar eclipse (yeah I often think weird things like this).
It’s easy for us today. We understand what’s happening, we can predict an eclipse years in advance, and we know that the Sun is going to reappear. But imagine living 1,000 years ago and watching the Sun slowly disappear over the course of an hour.
People understood just how predictable the rising and setting of the Sun was, and more importantly, how essential it was to their lives. Then, one day, in the middle of its normal journey across the sky, something starts taking a bite out of it.
Without knowing why it was happening, or whether the Sun was actually going to come back, that must have been terrifying.
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