20 Bizarre Ways Ancient People Tried To Predict The Future

We know relatively little about the practices of commoners because the majority of historical evidence has come from royal contexts. But get this, in ancient China, people divined the future. Diviners heated cattle bones and turtle shells until they cracked, interpreting the cracks as messages from their ancestors. These oracle bones represent some of the earliest substantial examples of Chinese writing. Go figure!

Extispicy is the inspection of the entrails (internal organs) of sacrificed animals, with the intent of divining the future, a practice especially popular in Mesopotamia. Specialists most likely trained using clay models of livers divided into sections. Intestines, gallbladder, lungs, and liver were all inspected, but the liver received the greatest attention as the primary organ used for divination. Specific signs in or on the organs were thought to indicate coming events, such as disease, warfare, or the fate of a king. Interpretation relied heavily on context and precedent.

The birds’ types, flight paths, flight heights, and actions were watched carefully by the Greek bird-diviners and the Roman augurs to divine the signs from the gods. Roman officials sometimes consulted the sky before confirming or ratifying important matters, including public business, elections, and military expeditions.

One such instance is the bird-watching match between Romulus and Remus, to determine who would found Rome. Remus saw six vultures first; Romulus later saw twelve. They argued as to whether it was more important who saw them first or who saw the most vultures. This account was written down centuries after the supposed founding of Rome and is rightly classified as myth rather than fact. It should be treated with skepticism.

One of the most famous Roman stories about sacred chickens involves a commander named Publius Claudius Pulcher before the Battle of Drepana in 249 BCE. Roman officers commonly traveled with sacred chickens who were consulted before important decisions. When presented with food, the birds would either eagerly eat, a good omen, or not, an unfavorable one. But the sacred chickens under Pulcher refused to eat, and instead of calling off the battle, Pulcher threw the birds into the sea, reportedly declaring, ‘If they will not eat, let them drink!’

Mesopotamian scholars observed the paths of eclipses carefully, and some were considered such terrible omens for the king that the king would hide while a substitute king took his position for the duration of the danger, to take the bad omen onto himself. These substitute kings were generally killed at the end of the dangerous period, although there are some examples of variations on the procedure.

In stark contrast to astrology today which focuses on individual horoscopes, in the early Mesopotamian world, astrology focused heavily on kings and kingdoms. Planetary movements could predict famine, foreign invasion, or danger to the ruler. Individualized astrological predictions came into focus much later; the Babylonian astrologer would have been more concerned with the safety of his realm than your love life.

In Mesopotamian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman traditions, lightning could be a sign from a god, with meaning dependent in part upon where or when it struck. The Romans sometimes considered sites of strikes sacred, and required ritual after certain frightening strikes. The Romans thought the Etruscans were the true experts on lightning, but what is known of Etruscan practice comes mainly from later Roman writers.

In the sanctuaries of Asclepius, the sick performed rituals of purification and left offerings. It was believed that when the sick then went to sleep in sacred quarters they would be visited in dreams by the god Asclepius, who would reveal a cure or diagnosis. Such sanctuaries kept records of those who claimed to be thus healed. Visiting an Asclepius sanctuary was not mutually exclusive with visiting doctors; sanctuaries functioned alongside practical medicine.

Greek and Roman writers paid close attention to dreams. Some classified them as divine messages or mere static in the head caused by poor digestion or other physical problems. Professional dream interpreters paid attention to the dreamer’s financial means, occupation, and life situation, since similar images could have very different meanings to different people. The most detailed dream-interpretation manual to survive is the Greek Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica. Dreams before major battles and famous deaths, as reported, may be real warnings, embellished versions of real dreams, or dreams dreamed up after the events.

People cast dice, sticks, or knucklebones while searching for divine answers, and some sanctuaries matched the rolls to written responses. However, these very same objects were also used as common gaming pieces, or in gambling. Archaeologists are therefore careful not to always assume an oracle when they find a die in an archaeological context; instead, they must consider where the die was found, which will tell them whether it was probably used in divination in a sanctuary, or in an everyday game.

It is unclear when or to what extent bibliomancy — divining answers from random passages of books — was used, and at least some extant accounts could be retrospective fictions rather than true anecdotes. In one common form, the Sortes Vergilianae, a random passage of Virgil’s poetry was chosen to provide an answer to a question. Similar practices based on religious writings arose in later traditions.

Necromancy (necro, dead + mancy, divination) was the divination practice of seeking knowledge from the soul(s) of the dead through visions, dreams, graves or ritual offerings. Those who had died violent or premature deaths were considered easier to contact. The most famous example appears in the Odyssey, when Odysseus consults with the soul of Tiresias. In ancient Greece, there were ruins known as the Necromanteion that were believed to be the remains of a structure built specifically for necromancy rituals; however, later scholars have disputed this interpretation.

Much of the lore we know about oracles comes not from records at the sites, but from later writers who may have been editing, reconstructing, or even polishing their answers. And though we think of oracles when we think of ancient Greece, there was more than one. Delphi, Dodona, Didyma, and Claros were all sites of major oracles. Some featured inspired priestesses, others, male prophets. Some featured the interpretation of trees, written questions, water, or dreams, and consulting with Apollo at Delphi was not the same as visiting the oracle at Dodona.

Not all oracles were like the one at Delphi, with its human priestess, and at Dodona (one of the oldest oracle sites in Greece), visitors called to Zeus for messages through the medium of the sacred oak tree. (Yes, trees.) The method of extracting messages from the sounds associated with the oak tree appears to have changed over time.

Diviners have also long gazed at reflective surfaces, searching for signs or movement. The ancient Mesopotamians, before crystal balls, used this technique, pouring oil onto water; this practice is called lecanomancy in modern times. In later iterations, a medium or child relayed what they saw. Ancient people searched these reflections for many reasons: to find a lost item, discover an occult truth, or predict the future, and modern titles might assign it neat categories, but the distinction among these methods may have been less clear to the ancients.

Unusual births were considered in various ways. Writings from Mesopotamia record atypical births in humans and animals, and attribute political significance to many such births. In the ancient Roman world, an extraordinary birth could sometimes signify a disturbance in divine order that required a sacrifice or a ritual purification. Not surprisingly, responses to unusual births varied in different times and places. Nor were all unusual births considered private, domestic events. Some ancient reports may reflect real medical conditions, and some likely did not. Exaggerated or false reports likely served literary purposes in many cases.

Indeed, some omens and prophecies might have been crafted after the fact by historical writers recording the deaths of famous people or great military defeats. But the ancients were certainly attentive to out of the ordinary animal behavior. For instance, we read about snakes and bees acting in ways that people saw as ominous, with snakes entering houses and bees forming hives on temples. Other behaviors of ordinary animals also alarmed people, including wolves entering cities, dogs howling at unusual times, and animals resisting sacrifice. It didn’t matter if these animals were magical, only that their behavior was unusual.

Sacrifice was also attended by watching the way the smoke moved and the color and smell of it. The fire sputtering or the flame not catching could be taken as signs of divine disapproval. In general, abnormal occurrences could be the occasion to postpone the event, for example, even to delay a military action.

Divination, then, served many purposes beyond the religious sanction it offered. This same function could easily serve as politically motivated cover. A ruler sensitive to his reputation might genuinely be unwilling to continue a military campaign in the face of divine disapproval, but might also conveniently use the pretext that “the gods objected” to excuse a plan that upon further consideration turned out to be strategically unsound. And so, some supposed omens may have been manufactured, but that doesn’t mean the men who relied on them were simply duped or deceived; religion and self-interest are rarely mutually exclusive, and a man might be sincerely pious as well as politically functional, trained as well as occasionally calculating, without contradiction. No theory can account for all cases of divination.

This content was created with the help of AI.