Anania Shirakatsi Has Possessed Knowledge That Mankind Would Acquire Only Centuries Later

Russian TV channel “Russia-Culture” has recently shown a documentary film titled “When the Gods ruled the earth: On the trail of mystery” telling about the unique discoveries of Armenian scientists ahead of world science.

The story of the authors of the documentary begins with the discovery of a unique map of Mars with one satellite in the vaults of the Holy See of Etchmiadzin. This discovery has been made by a young researcher from Moscow Viktor Harutyunyan in 1939.

The film notes that the map, which was lost after its transferal to the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts of Matenadaran in Yerevan, along with such documents as astronomer and mathematician Anania Shirakatsi’ works may indicate that ancient scientists possessed knowledge ahead of everyone.

“Even before the invention of the telescope, Shirakatsi claimed that the Milky Way was a cluster of stars. He wrote that the moon shines with reflected sunlight and compiled a table of eclipses for the entire 19-year lunar cycle,” the authors of the film say.

Experts emphasize that Shirakatsi became the author of the world’s first arithmetic manual. And in his work “Ashkharatsuyts”, he 8 centuries before Columbus spoke about the people on the other side of the earth.

It is also noted that the great Armenian scientist has also drawn his knowledge not only from Armenian translations of ancient Egyptian manuscripts but also from rock paintings from the Neolithic period discovered not far from an ancient settlement near the town of Metsamor in Armenia.

“When the Gods ruled the earth: On the trail of mystery”

The documentary is in Russian, but you may enable translated subtitles from the cogwheel settings menu. Go to Subtitles/CC, choose Auto-translate, and select the target language.