We only know about when humans mastered fire or started using metal. But we know the exact date when the first powered flight took place. What are some really early “first ____” we know the date of for sure?
We only know about when humans mastered fire or started using metal. But we know the exact date when the first powered flight took place. What are some really early “first ____” we know the date of for sure?
It sounds like one complexity is that while eclipses can be run accurately (maybe not where they are visible), the problem is that when the day occurred is not, and you want to know the day. Apparently, there are some unknown factors affecting the rate of Earth’s rotation a bit, and the error is enough that it becomes significant across millennia.
https://theconversation.com/archeoastronomy-uses-the-rare-times-and-places-of-previous-total-solar-eclipses-to-help-us-measure-history-222709
So if you had an event that was recorded happening in conjunction with an eclipse, we could maybe tell you pretty precisely how long ago it was in units of seconds. But we wouldn’t know how many days ago it was, because the day is not a fixed unit of time and we don’t know sufficiently-accurately how the length of a day has changed over that period.