When you have a society that is fascinated by the stars, has a basic knowledge of mathematics, has written records to pass to the next generation, and a zest for knowledge that is unclouded by religion, you can discover many things about the universe even without a telescope.
But that sure a hell doesn't mean the world is gonna end.
They had knowledge of orbits,planets,galaxies that we discovered 10-20 year's ago using orbit telescope.
And check it out,thers an ancient tribe "Dogon"
"The Dogon are famous for their astronomical knowledge taught through oral tradition, dating back thousands of years, referencing the star system, Sirius. Sirius is the dog star. It is linked with the Egyptian goddess Isis. The astronomical information known by the Dogon since that time, was not discovered and verified until the 19th and 20th centuries, making one wonder how the Dogon came by this knowledge. Their oral traditions say it was given to them by the Nommo.The amfibios god"
"As the story goes ... in the late 1930s, four Dogon priests shared their most important secret tradition with two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen after they had spent an apprenticeship of fifteen years living with the tribe. These were secret myths about the star Sirius, which is 8.6 light years from the Earth."
The Dogon priests said that Sirius had a companion star that was invisible to the human eye. They also stated that the star moved in a 50-year elliptical orbit around Sirius, that it was small and incredibly heavy, and that it rotated on its axis.
Initially the anthropologists wrote it off publishing the information in an obscure anthropological journal, because they didn't appreciate the astronomical importance of the information.
What they didn't know was that since 1844, astronomers had suspected that Sirius A had a companion star. This was in part determined when it was observed that the path of the star wobbled. In 1862 Alvan Clark discovered the second star making Sirius a binary star system (two stars).
The Dogons have described perfectly the DNA pattern made by an elliptical orbit created by the two stars of Sirius as they rotate make around each other. They believe Sirius to be the axis of the universe, and from it all matter and all souls are produced in a great spiral motion.
http://www.crystalinks.com/dogon.htmlMakes you wonder huh?