age is 360 years for a total eclipse to be seen at the same location, with some areas seeing eclipses more frequently and other over even greater periods of time.
Imagine what a total eclipse was like for the people of ancient times. To some it was an omen of some natural disaster that was to befall them or the death of a ruler. The Chinese thought it was an invisible dragon trying to consume the Sun. They made a lot of noise and beating of drums and pans to scare the dragon away and restore the light and even as recent as the last century the Chinese Imperial Navy fired its ceremonial guns during an eclipse to frighten off the invisible dragon. The dragon theory seemed popular also in India where people immersed themselves in water up to their necks, believing this act of worship would help the Sun and Moon defend themselves against the dragon. In Japan the wells were covered so as to prevent poison from dropping into them from the darkened sky. In Tahiti the eclipse was seen as the Sun and Moon making love. In Arctic America the Eskimos, Aleuts and Tlingits believed that the Sun and Moon momentarily left the skies to insure all was as it should be on Earth.
The people who constructed Stonehenge in England, some believe them to be Druids, had been able to mark the summer solstice the longest day of the year through the alignment of the massive heel stone, thus marking the beginning of each year. By counting the days between the annual alignments they could determine the length of the year, mark holidays and seasonal festivals and ensure the timely planting and harvesting of crops. However to predict eclipses they had to know two other cycles one the length of the lunar month which is simply the number of days between one full Moon and the next. The other was more complex as it was the knowledge of the rotation of the two invisible points in space where the Moon's orbit tilted at a slight angle intersects the plane of the Earth's orbit. There is evidence showing that the builders of Stonehenge did have the knowledge to predict eclipses. It would have taken decades of watching countless rising and settings of the Moon to figure out the cycle of the lunar nodes, Latin for "knot" when the intersection would occur. It is believed that information which must have been handed down through the generations was preserved at Stonehenge. Even more amazing when you look at the time of the construction of Stonehenge being before the first metal tools were used by man. The law of averages confirm that either a partial solar eclipse or lunar eclipse can be seen from the same point on the Earth about once a year. This does not explain the ancient people of the Stonehenge recording these periods as danger periods or an omen of disaster. What seems to hold more merit is the eclipse being an element of their religion. Stonehenge may have been the center of some kind of worship, a sacred place where at special times such as the solstices, equinoxes and eclipses people came to reaffirm their belief through ritual practices. The Druids were known to worship the serpent and serpent temples, similar stone circles were called "Dracontia". Draco is the Latin for "serpent" or "dragon".
As the Babylonians were developing the science of astronomy the ancient Egyptian civilization was thriving. Pyramids and temples marked the high state of development of their art and technology. The length of the year was measured by observing the rising of Sirius the brightest star in the sky. The Great Pyramid of Giza is aligned to the four points of the compass. This was a people who watched the heavens and observed celestial movement, however there is no mention of an eclipse of either the Sun or the Moon in all of ancient Egyptian history. An apparent gap in Egyptian astronomy with confirmation that ancient Egypt had been in the paths of total eclipse visible from across the Nile Valley in the second and third millennia B.C. The solar corona was visible from somewhere in ancient Egypt during this period on an average of once every 75 years. It is hard to accept