Richard Collins: Moonlight assists night-time hunting success

People, long ago, thought that the sun was a god. They weren’t far wrong; all living things around them depended on the great fiery ball in the sky, so bright you couldn’t even look at it directly. However, sacrificing animals or people, as the Aztecs did, to keep the sun happy, was a bit ‘over the top’.

The moon, controller of the tides, was a lesser deity. Her role as fertility goddess was prophetic; the ancients could not have known it, but she regulates the breeding cycles of many marine creatures.