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Ouranos wrote:In Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/science/astr ... -divisions

"The Mesopotamian arrangement of constellations has survived to the present day because it became the basis of a numerical reference scheme—the ecliptic, or zodiacal, system. This occurred about 450 BCE, when the ecliptic was clearly recognized and divided into 12 equal signs of the zodiac. Most modern scholars take the zodiac as a Babylonian invention; the oldest record of the zodiacal signs as such is a cuneiform horoscope from 419 BCE. However, as Greek sources attribute the discovery of the ecliptic to Oenopides in the latter part of the 5th century BCE, a parallel development in both Greece and Babylon should not be excluded.
Hi Ray,

Most scholars do, but by no means all. Martin Sweatman (the author of Prehistory Decoded) summarizes the conventional narrative as well as the problems with it in this video (specifically see part 2, starting on about the 36:00 mark):

https://youtu.be/Eltcdfvo-Vg
Ptolemy’s star list presents a curious puzzle. The southernmost heavens, invisible at the latitude of Alexandria, naturally went unobserved. On one side of the sky near this southern horizon, he tabulated the bright stars of the Southern Cross (although not as a separate constellation) and of Centaurus, but on the opposite side a large area including the first-magnitude star Achernar had been left unrecorded. Because of precession, before 2000 BCE this region would have been invisible from Mesopotamia. Perhaps neither Hipparchus nor Ptolemy considered that part of the heavens unnamed by their ancient predecessors."
This is one indication that the early Greek astronomers (going back to Eudoxos, who first introduced the zodiac to Greece) were working from a considerably more ancient data set. There is other evidence as well that the zodiacal (and other) constellations predate the earliest extant star lists - quite possibly by thousands of years.

The most intriguing that we have up to date comes from the excavation site of Göbekli Tepe (Anatolia), where (arguably) images of zodiacal constellations can be seen that are around 12.000 years old. Prof. Sweatman talks about that in the linked video as well.

As matters stand, his discoveries are surely controversial. However, they tie in nicely with other bits and pieces of information that can be gathered from archaeological, mythological, and esoteric sources. Personally, I believe that further evidence will be coming forth and that the (pre)history of civilization will be greatly revised and rewritten in the years and decades to follow.
If we consider "the Almagest of Ptolemy as a mere compilation who measures about 1,022 stars grouped into 48 constellations", my question here is why has it been diluted and almost lost in modern sidereal zodiac? Why so much emphasis on the zodiac signs? And considering the physical location of the Mesopotamians, the southernmost heavens went unobserved.
"Ecliptic coordinates predominated in Western astronomy until the Renaissance but with the advent of national nautical almanacs, the equatorial system (right ascension measured from the first degree of Aries and declination) analogous to terrestrial longitude and latitude is customarily divided into 24 hours rather than 360 degrees", emphasizing the clocklike behaviour of the sphere and the predominance of the tropical zodiac.
Not really an innovation, though, as this was long predated by another circle of twelve animals called Dodekaoros or 'twelve hours', actually referring to the double hours that were widely used in several ancient civilizations. While closely associated with the zodiac in some ways, the Dodekaoros
was based on the celestial equator rather than on the ecliptic, according to the research of the great German historian of astrology/astronomy Franz Boll.

The Dodekaoros is mentioned by Teucer/Rhetorius. Moreover, there is an IMO reasonable assumption that it is somehow related to the Southeast Asian 'zodiac' best known to us as the Chinese Twelve Animals.
Just asking as a devil's advocate here and as always I am welcoming different viewpoints to keep learning.
Hope I was able to provide you with some! :D - You did ask for it...

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