The story of the stars

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We look up today and see the stars divided into the same familiar shapes as our ancestors, but how did the constellations come to be?

The story of the stars : Read more

 

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The article reports, "It’s difficult to trace back when exactly people started looking up and taking note of familiar patterns that were formed by these points of light, but some propose that 17,000-year-old cave paintings in Lascaux, France, depict the constellations we today know as Taurus and Orion."

Indeed, tracing the constellations back some 17,000 years ago is difficult. "The Sun lay in Taurus on the first day of spring when our Western zodiac was invented, about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago." S&T, Northern Hemisphere's Sky, Sky & Telescope 121(1):42, 2011 (January 2011).

My observation - the Sun spends about 2,150 years in a sign (constellation) other sources 2131 years. It takes about 2150 years to drift 30 degrees through a constellation of the Zodiac before precession of the Equinoxes (about 26,000 year cycle) causes it to move into another sign. For example, near 2,500 B.C. the pole star was Thuban in Draco but today is Polaris in Ursa Minor. In a time span of about 6,450 years, the Sun would pass through 3 Zodiac signs. As an example, between 4,000 B.C. and 1800 B.C., the Sun at the beginning of spring (Vernal equinox) was in Taurus, today it is in Pisces. For much of ancient Greek and Egyptian history that is known, the vernal equinox is recorded in Aries.

Examining archaeology records like this and the Sun's position change in the Zodiac over thousands of years, places constraints on interpreting cave paintings as pointing to Taurus for example. To my knowledge there is no astronomical evidence that shows more than 3 Zodiac sign changes of the Sun in human history, e.g. the Vernal equinox taking place in Leo, Cancer, Gemini and moving into Taurus during Sumerian history, about 3,000 BC.