Wouldn't it have been great if Stonehenge came with inscriptions...? I wonder what we would make of Mesopotamian culture without their discovery of cuneiform writing! I would definitely like to learn more about the origins of the zodiac, and I also very interested in the intersection between divination and astronomy. In the Lindberg book, I was really intrigued by his observations about Babylonian astronomy, and he put a big emphasis on the importance of divination in the development of what we would now call science. That makes sense, though: much of what we want science to do for us is to tell us about the future, to accurately predict (on the basis of scientific laws) what will result if we do (or don't do) such-and-such. That quest to know about the future prompted the practice of divination in cultures all over the world, but now we look to scientists to tell us about the future, like predicting the weather tomorrow, predicting our health if we undergo a medical treatment, predicting the future or our environment based on scientific claims about global warming, etc.
As for the zodiac, just this weekend I found a lovely inclusion of the zodiac animals in one of the sundials I have been working on (inspired by this class to do so!). So here it is as an image to include here... from ancient Mesopotamia to
a Tyrolian sundial!
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