In cultures around the world, people see various gods and demons, an old man with a bundle of sticks on his back, a toad, a rabbit, a Polish fellow named Mr. Twardowski, and even Jack and Jill of nursery-rhyme fame. Above all, the changing phases of the moon have symbolized birth and death as a the old moon dies and is reborn as the new moon every month. In many ancient cultures, the moon is the direct cause of fertility in humans, animals, and plants. In the phases, various cultures see the signs of pregnancy and birth. For others, the light from the moon makes the crops grow.
Some farmers still plant their seeds by the light of the full moon to ensure a healthy harvest.
The job of knowing what our forebears thought about the heavens falls to the folklorist and the archaeoastronomer, a discipline that has the dubious distinction of having four straight vowels in its name. From ancient writing, pyramids, pottery painting, carvings on walls, and burial mounds, the archaeoastronomer attempts to tell us what humans thought about the sky in ancient times. Among the most distinguished of living archaeoastronomers is E. C. Krupp, Director of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory. In books like Echoes of the Ancient Skies, he has cataloged the mysteries of our past as seem though the dim light of the stars and the artifacts left to us by ancient peoples. The old stories tell us quite a lot about those ancient cultures, as an old tale from India recounted by Krupp in his book Beyond the Blue Horizon illustrates.