Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!mtunx!whuts!whutt!mls
From: mls@whutt.UUCP (SIEMON)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Digression
Message-ID: <3103@whutt.UUCP>
Date: 25 Apr 88 14:54:49 GMT
References: <5017@uwmcsd1.UUCP+ <2790@gryphon.CTS.COM> <1221@uop.edu> <1439@uop.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 30

In article <1439@uop.edu>, todd@uop.edu (Dr. Nethack) writes:

> If I must, I will have to go home and start posting from my rather
> unusual library of science, psuedo-science, archaeology, history,
> 
Yes, you must :-)  Babylonian prognostications based on (linear approximation)
phenomena calculations ("phenomena" include rising/setting times, eclipses,
and such like) go back into (but not far into) the 2nd millenium B.C.  If you
care to call omen reading (for success in war, etc., directed at the ruler of
a country, with reference entirely to events of nationwide significance)
astrology, you can make a case for it extending back to then.  And if you get
thoroughly vague about "people responding to regularities in the sky" as being
astrology, you can of course "find" astrology in many cultures stretching back
to megalithic Europe.

BUT the notion of an astronomical configuration corresponding to an individual
and in some sense following that individual through life as a determinant in
the individual's fortune (I've been non-sexist here; actually all the original
cases are for males) goes back to circa 300 B.C. -- the first one known is on
a mountainside carving glorifying one of the Seleucids (Antiochos umpty-umpth.)
The classical form of the horoscope developed very rapidly in the next 100-200
years.  Read Neugebauer for the data (and especially for the fascinating story
of the development of Mesopotamian astronomy.)


-- 
Michael L. Siemon
contracted to AT&T Bell Laboratories
ihnp4!mhuxu!mls
standard disclaimer