Every culture, across every habitable continent and thousands of years, seems to devise different ways to predict the future. From the ancient Babylonian, Chinese, and Egyptian dynasties, through transformations in the Greek and Roman worlds, across oceans to the Mesoamerican civilizations, and back to Yorubaland of West Africa, humans have been asking the same questions as long as history has been recorded. As they attempted to answer these questions, people developed predictive systems that sought to foretell what lay ahead. In this portion of the course, explore a portion of the fascinating and vast array of ancient divinatory prediction methods. By first learning about how humans have always predicted, gain insight into prediction as a human venture to deepen your understanding of how we predict today and how you use prediction in your own life.

 

Select which ancient form of prediction you want to study first using the clickable image map below or enroll in the course on edX to gain access to more content.