How many of us today can accurately identify the stars and constellations, the phases of the moon, or the hour and position of the sunrise? Few modern city-dwellers can, but for our forebears had an intimate relationship with the heavens. People and the Sky explores how ancient hunters, farmers, sailors, rulers and storytellers were all once cosmically grounded.

Leading astronomer Anthony Aveni reveals how hunter-gatherers depended on signals in the sky for survival, how Polynesian navigators charted across a seemingly limitless sea by naked-eye star bearings alone, how social cohesion in cultures as diverse as the Pawnee and the Inca was mirrored in celestial imagery and how the cosmic connection between the arrangement of Chinese and Aztec cities and the constellations served as an expression of political authority.

For most of human history the sky was relevant. Throughout the seasons people found meaning in the dance of the cosmic denizens. Today, the fruits of scientific technology relegate us to a cold, indifferent universe that we rarely trouble to look at. What have we lost with this gain in knowledge? What aspects of everyday intimate contact between how we live and what happens in the sky have disappeared from the sphere of human concern? Did our ancestors have an understanding of the cosmos that we ourselves lack? How and why did it all happen? These are the questions addressed in this engaging and erudite book.