27 Ways Ancient Civilizations Interpreted Meteor Showers and Built Religions Around Them

27 Ways Ancient Civilizations Interpreted Meteor Showers and Built Religions Around Them

For most of human history, a meteor shower was not a scheduled event on a stargazing calendar. It was an intrusion — sudden, unexplained, and bright enough to wake people from sleep screaming. The explanations that emerged from every corner of the ancient world say something profound about what happens when human beings encounter something they cannot explain: they build a story around it, and they build it fast. Those stories accumulated into c…