It might shock you to learn when Austin’s last total solar eclipse was

The last time Austin was covered in darkness by a total solar eclipse was in 1397.

1397? That was 626 years ago. Texas didn't exist. Austin didn't exist. Bread hadn't been sliced. Beyoncé was nowhere to be found. Did anyone even know what was happening with whales? It's simply too much to consider. But then, so is a total solar eclipse.

During a total solar eclipse, the moon passes in front of the sun, blocking its light and leaving areas in its path in total darkness. Austin's first total solar eclipse since the 1300s will be on April 8. But when researching solar eclipses last month, I couldn't find out when Austin was last in an eclipse's path of totality from a trusted online source. So I called NASA.

Does it feel kind of silly to be a local newspaper reporter calling the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to ask about the moon? A little. I left a voicemail and just assumed I'd never hear back because it is NASA. They are busy doing stuff with the moon! The moon! Well, Alex Young, an astrophysicist at NASA, called back and left a voicemail because I had the nerve not to be next to my phone when NASA called about the moon. My eyes grew right out of my head when I heard "1395" and "most recent" in his message. (There was another total solar eclipse in 1395; we'll get there.)

When I followed up with Young in a phone interview a few days later, he made it even clearer how rare total solar eclipses are: Total solar eclipses happen only about once every 18 months and cannot be viewed from everywhere, said Young, who is also an associate director for science in the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. After 2024, the next total eclipse that will be viewable from the U.S. won't be until Aug. 23, 2044.

"Any one place only sees a total eclipse about every 350 years," Young told me. (Cue my eyeballs again.)

Oddities exist — Austin hasn't seen one for more than 350 years, while Carbondale, Ill., had the 2017 total solar eclipse and is on the path of totality for 2024, Young said. Is all the fanfare starting to make sense? This won't happen again in Austin until Feb. 25, 2343 (yes, more than 300 years), and the path of totality is only about 100 miles wide, Young said.

How does NASA know about 1397?

NASA is able to determine these dates using a catalog of eclipses created by astrophysicist Fred Espenak, aka "Mr. Eclipse." The catalog includes dates 5,000 years into the future and into the past that Espenak calculated, Young said.

The two most recent total solar eclipses that could be seen from Austin happened on May 26, 1397, and Jan. 21, 1395, he said. The total solar eclipse April 8 will be viewable from Austin between 1:35 and 1:40 p.m.

A different kind of eclipse will be visible Oct. 14, when our area will be in the path of the next annular solar eclipse. When the moon is farthest away from Earth, it does not block the entire view of the sun, creating an annular, or ring-shaped, solar eclipse. People will be able to see a "ring of fire" as the outer edges of the sun remain uncovered by the moon.

More:When is the next solar eclipse in Texas? Here's where, how you can see it in Austin

What was happening here in 1397?

Those who grew up going to Texas history classes know that the Republic of Texas wasn't formed until 1836, Austin was founded in 1839, and the state didn't join the union until 1845. If that's where your knowledge of what was happening in Texas starts and ends, don't worry. We had to call an expert.

Indigenous hunting and gathering groups, such as the Tonkawa tribe, were active in Central Texas in the 1300s and 1400s, said Fred Valdez, director of the Texas Archaeological Research Lab at the University of Texas. Many groups moved through the area while following bison toward the coast on foot, as horses hadn't been brought to the area yet, he said.

They probably set up camp along the Colorado River, which is where the animals they were hunting would be, too. Smaller groups would join to form larger groups along streams because of the bounty of resources, Valdez said. Groups ate white-tailed deer, insects, pecans, possums, mice and other rodents, he said.

The life expectancy wasn't very long.

"My guess is someone living into their 40s and 50s was doing pretty good," Valdez said.

If the people had much clothing at all, it was made out of animal skins, he said. They lived in hutlike structures made out of poles and grass.

Rituals were conducted when smaller groups came together, he said. Marriages, contests, music, and ceremonies where girls are recognized as women and boys as men would occur, and groups would exchange ideas and items. But once resources at streams were depleted, they'd splinter off to scavenge for food for their nuclear families, Valdez said.

For subscribers:Before Austin was Austin: What you need to know about the early history of the Texas capital

He wondered how people in 1397 reacted to the total solar eclipse.

"It would have been something mystical and magical and so forth," he said.

He wondered if smaller groups were on their own at the time or if they had joined together.

"I can imagine (the eclipse) was kind of a weird omen," he said.

Valdez doesn't know if there's any folklore or oral history related to the total solar eclipse, especially since the last one was so long ago. But lots of drawings, called pictographs, can be found in cave areas and rock sites in Southwest Texas, he said.

"It'd be interesting to know, and I do not know, unfortunately, if anyone painted something about (the eclipse) in one of those rock shelters," he said.

What can we expect in 2024 during the total solar eclipse?

The April 8 event won't be any different from the 1397 one, other than that we know it's coming. For starters, you're probably planning a spot to view the eclipse with friends. And it will be a mystical and magical thing.

Young has experienced four total solar eclipses from different spots around the world. Even if it's cloudy, he said, it really is an experience. The environment will change, temperatures will cool, and animals might start acting weird because they'll think it's night all of a sudden, he said.

As the moon inches closer to being directly in front of the sun, crickets may chirp and farm animals may start to head back to their barns, because it'll look like a sunset outside, Young said.

"The first time I saw it, and this has happened every time since, I felt chills, like goosebumps, and all the hair on my arm stood up. It was like this rush of adrenaline came over me because of the change in the environment," Young said. "Getting cold and getting dark happens so quickly that your mind is confused."

Unlike actual sunsets, this "sunset" will happen almost instantaneously instead of taking awhile, he said.

The sun will look like a tiny black disc with a ring of what looks like spiderwebs around it. Those spiderwebs are the sun's corona, which can be seen only during a total solar eclipse, Young said. The corona is the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere.

It will feel like time stopped, Young said. But as quickly as the eclipse comes, it will leave, he said. You'll start to see a flash of light and then suddenly, it'll be over.

"It's really, really amazing," Young said. "It is just such an amazing experience."