Zodiacal Light From ChinvatBridge to False Dawn (Recovery of Sciences of Ancient Iran; an Independent Study)

In our time Zodiacal Light (ZL) is not amongst the most evident of astronomical phenomena, however the results of this paper suggests that this was not so in the world of antiquity. The aim of this paper is to show that there is a direct link between the numbers of bright naked eye comets and the brightening or fading of the ZL. To prove this phenomenon a 500 year time span was studied. The role of ZL in giving rise to the formation of spiritual afterlife beliefs was also studied, eventually showing that a large part of such beliefs may have been closely related to astronomical observations of this type and this has led to devising a number of mechanisms to explain the observed phenomenon, whilst the suggested mechanisms display a uniform correlation in a wide space-time expanse. The most recent find of this study is that the East-West directed Neanderthal burial sites may display the oldest scant observational record of the ZL.The first part of this study deals with the observations of ZL in Iran and Eurasia before the rise of Islam, suggesting ‘hairy style’ designs on the Sialk pottery may depict 1st millennium BC cometary observations. The Treaties on Describing the Mechanism of the Zodiacal Light (Risāla Dar Bayān-i Ṣubḥ-i Kādhib) by Naṣīr al-DīnṬūsī is published here for the first time; photos of the manuscripts included.The second part is devoted to the efforts of Iranian astronomers to understand the nature of ZL from a mathematical and physical point of view.