Introduction

Our ethnic astronomy came into scientists’ scope of interest rather late. In 1935 Zigmas Masaitis, a mathematician and an educator, encouraged to collect and systematize information of our folk science of the heavenly bodies (Masaitis 1935, 13-14). Having studied astronomical data from different cultures, Bernardas Kodaitis, an astronomer, started to collect astronomic records in Lithuanian folk culture as well. In 1936 he published an article ‘‘Apie senovės lietuvių astronominę medžiagą’‘ (On astronomy of the ancient Lithuanians) (Kodaitis 1936, 10-16) where we gave a general overview of the Lithuanian astronomical awareness and cosmological concepts. It revealed the fact that in the ancient Lithuania culture there was existed verbal tradition of astronomical data accumulation and he found some material empirical astronomy traces. B.Kodaitis invited Lithuanian intelligentsia to accumulate and to approach systematically all the astronomical remains. In 1938 Lithuanian folk archive under the supervision of J.Balys issued Questionnaire No5 ‘‘The Sun, the Moon and Other celestial Bodies’‘ which yielded thousands of answers. Unfortunately, World War Two interfered with the further activities. Not a small number of Lithuanians emigrated. J.Balys, an immigrant to the United States, in 1951 published an article on the basis of the questionnaire No5 data where he gives a rather thorough overview of the astronomic information ‘‘Folk Lore on the Sky’‘ (Balys 1951). In the Soviet period there have never been more prominent researchers of the folk astronomy with the exception of P.Dundulienė who was among the pioneers to discriminate folk astronomy from the folk treasury and with the help of Vilnius University students systematize data. In the 70s her first articles on the Sun and the Moon appeared (Dundulienė 1972, 1974, 1975 and 1984). Later in 1988, Dundulienė collected most of the material for the publication of the book ‘‘Lithuanian Folk Cosmology’‘. Folk astronomy was also collected by the ethnographer J.Šliavas and enthusiasts of astronomy, educators V.Šlapkauskas' students. In 1988 J.Vaiškūnas, an employee of Astrophysical department of the Institute of Physics of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences started to organize astronomic compilation. A new specialized questionnaire on folk astronomy (Vaiškūnas 1989a, 1989b) was prepared and publicized in revision of the previously used questionnaires. Since then collection of the astronomic data bore a systematic character.

Unfortunately, Lithuanian astronomy is as yet not fully compiled nor researched. The slow progress in this area is predetermined by the specificity of the research area. Folk astronomy is separated by the unabridged gap from the science of astronomy, ethnography, and dialectology. Astronomers claim that the information pertaining to the former should be collected by the ethnographers while the ethnologists tend to think that the research requires education in astronomy.

It is determined that folk astronomy dates back to the early Paleolithic period. As early as Paleolithic there appeared myths to explain the movement of the celestial bodies in the sky. On the basis of the observation of the movements of the Moon and alterations in these movements the record of time was kept and lunar calendar created. Our forefathers named the stars, they could orient themselves in the sea, tell the time of the day and the season of the year, predict weather, the future harvest and, possibly, one's fate.

With the change of the mode of life, spread of scientific information and scientific worldview, with the appearance of the printed calendars a lot of information of the heavenly bodies fell into disuse and deteriorated. At present the system of knowledge about the heavenly bodies is completely destroyed. In the course of expeditions it only happens to record separate details of the old system of lesser or greater consequence. But, on having accumulated and processed a larger chunks of data we often come by more meaningful and occasionally quite interesting and unexpected information. Thus while we still posses live bearers of the traditional way of life it is a vital necessity to collect the relics of astronomic data. Baltic mythology researchers often overlook this material. It is doubtless that the data of the folk astronomy which is kept in the archives and the data that is still possible to obtain today could help to reveal the ethnic concept of the structure of the universe and through this our ancient mythology and religion. Without this field of the folk knowledge it is impossible to penetrate the depth not only of the folklore and mythology but also the national language and spiritual evolution.

Recently for the denomination of the folk astronomic knowledge Elizabeth C. Baity's term ethnoastronomy offered in 1973 (Baity 1973, 389-390) is used. The very ethnoastronomy is suggested to be seen as part of the wider discipline of cultural astronomy that researches relationship between the individual and the astronomic knowledge in the context of the whole culture (Iwaniszewski 1991, 283-288).

The following overview of Lithuania ethnoastronomy is taken from Lithuanian dictionaries of the 17 th and 19th centuries and different written sources from the 19th and 20th centuries held in the Academy of Sciences of Lithuania, Institute of Folklore and Literary Manuscripts and also records of the authors brought from different expeditions in the period of 1987-1998.