Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Zodiac

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Several thousand years ago, astronomers in the Middle East studying the night sky divided it into 12 equal regions. Each region was given a name, was associated with an animal and a constellation.   These divisions became the basis for the nascent disciplines of astronomy and astrology. Today, the system created by those ancient astronomers can still be found in the pseudoscience of horoscopes and the very much science of astronomy.  Learn more about the zodiac and the signs of the zodiac, where they came from, and how they spread around the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Search Past Episodes at fathom.fm Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Several thousand years ago, astronomers in the Middle East studying the night sky divided it into 12 equal regions. Each region was given a name associated with an animal and a constellation. Those divisions became the basis for the nascent disciplines of astronomy and astrology. Today, the systems created by those ancient astronomers can still be found in the pseudoscience of horoscopes and the very much science of astronomy. Learn more about the zodiac and the signs of the zodiac, where they came from and how they spread around the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. I'll start this discussion by noting that the Zodiac is technically different from the collection of constellations found within the zodiac. The zodiac is just the region of sky that is approximately 8 degrees north or south of the

ecliptic. If you recall from past episodes, the ecliptic is the plane in which the Earth orbits the sun. From the Earth's vanish point, it's the path that the sun makes in the sky. The moon and all the other visible planets can be found in the same region of sky because they all have orbits on the ecliptic plane. So the zodiac is just the belt in the night sky that surrounds the ecliptic. This is an actual astronomical concept and not an astrological one. And before I get much further, I should point out that thousands of years ago, and even hundreds of years ago for that matter, there really wasn't a difference between astrology and astronomy. The main reason anyone cared about tracking the stars in the sky was for

purposes of divination and religion. Even if the way the observations were used weren't scientific, the observations themselves certainly were. So within this belt in the sky that we call the zodiac are 12 constellations that you're probably familiar with. So what's the deal with those? And where did they come from? The signs of the zodiac were given to us by ancient Babylonian astronomers. Now, for certain, humans had been looking up at the night sky

for hundreds of thousands of years, and during that time, pretty much every group of humans probably gave names to collections of stars that they found interesting. The Babylonians really took sky observations to another level. If you remember from several previous episodes, the Babylonians had a system of numbers which was base 60, as opposed to our system of numbers, which is base 10. The Babylonians gave us a circle with 360 degrees,

which makes perfect sense if you have a base 60 numbering system. They then took the zodiac band of the night sky and divided it up into 12 different sections to correspond to the number of months in a year. Over 4,000 years ago, the Egyptians had their own system where they divided the night sky into 36 different zones called a Deccan. It isn't known if the Babylonian system came from the Egyptian system or if it was developed independently.

Each of the 12 zones had a primary constellation which defined the zone and for which it was named after. Their divisions of the sky were more approximate than precise because they didn't have the ability to measure down to a level beyond that. When they saw the new constellation start to rise over the horizon, they would then know that they were entering a new part of the zodiac. I should note that while each zodiac constellation is set within a region of sky, they're all different sizes. Virgo, for example, is five times larger than Scorpio. Unlike modern astrologers, each part of the zodiac was set against the stars, not the sun, for the Babylonians.

It's common today to define Ares, for example, as beginning with the vernal equidodox in March. However, in reality, the Vernal Equinox is now actually in the constellation of Pisces. This change in zodiac constellation that the Vernal equinox appears in is due to procession. As I mentioned in previous episodes on Milankovic cycles and on the calendar, we measure our years as solar or tropical years, so equinoxes and solstices are around the same date. However, there is also something called a sidereal year, which is slightly different from a solar year. This measures where the Earth is with respect to the stars. The difference over a whole year is only 20 minutes, 24 and a half seconds.

It's not much, but it adds up over time. In fact, every 2,160 years, the difference between solar and sidereal years will be big enough that the vernal equinox will be in a new zodiac sign. This period of time is known as an astrological age. When the Babylonians first figured it out, it was the age of the age of the world. Aries. Currently, it's the age of Pisces, which is coming to a close. The next age will be the Age of Aquarius, which is a phrase you've probably heard before, from the hit song for the 1969 musical, Hair. The problem is that there is no set dividing line for when these ages

begin or end. Some say that we're in the age of Aquarius now, and some say we're still centuries away. The time it takes to go through all 12 of these ages is known as a great year, and it takes 25,920 years to go through a complete procession cycle. While it's generally agreed upon that the Babylonians were the inventors of the Zodiac and the 12 Constellation System, most of what you might know about the zodiac isn't Babylonian. It's actually Greek. The Babylonian system became the basis for the astronomical and astrological systems for many different cultures. Hebrew astrology was based on the Babylonian system, and there are some who

argue that these 12 signs of the zodiac are reflected in the 12 tribes of Israel. The Indian system of astrology was based on the Babylonian system, but it most probably arrived in India from Greece via Alexander the Great's invasion. The words for the signs are different, but the symbols and what they represent are pretty much the same. The Indian system has stuck with the original sidereal signs, whereas the modern Western system has gone with solar or tropical systems of zodiac signs. The Western system, which astrologer, still used today was developed by the Greco-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy in the first century. Likewise, most Chinese researchers agree that the system of dividing the sky into 12 sections

probably came into China from Babylon. However, China took it in a totally different direction and created a totally different zodiac, which will be the subject of a different episode. It was the Greeks who also took the Babylonian symbols and expanded upon it. The name of the zodiac signs that we know today came from Greek or Latin. and I'm lumping those two together because it was yet another thing the Romans just ripped off from the Greeks. The word zodiac is in fact a Greek word. It comes from Zodiacos Kikolos, which means circle of small animals. Just to go through them briefly, even though I'm sure most of you have heard of them,

these are the 12 signs of the Western Zodiac in what they represent. Aries, the ram, Taurus, the bull, Gemini, the twins, Cancer the Crab, Leo the Lion, Virgo the Maiden, Libra the Skod, the Skod, Scales, Scorpio the Scorpion, Sagittarius the Archer, Capricorn the Goat, Aquarius the Water Bear, and Pisces, the Fish. The use of zodiac signs in Western astrology, horoscopes, and other mystical divinations, all derived from the aforementioned Ptolemy's Tetrabiblios, or Four Books. The Tetra Biblios laid the foundation for Western astrology for 2,000 years, including uses by pagans, Christians, and Muslims.

astrology was considered to be very compatible with both Christianity and Islam for centuries, and was practiced at the highest levels. Centuries ago, there were court astrologers for both Christian popes and Islamic caliphs. While astrological predictions eventually fell out a favor in religious circles, although it never completely went away, the use of the zodiac for astronomy lasted through the Renaissance. If you visit some older cities in Europe, you can still find references to the signs of the zodiac used as a reference for astronomy.

The most famous example of this would be the Prague astronomical clock. One of its rings shows the signs of the zodiac as one of the clock's complications. It was built in the early 15th century to display just how advanced and progressive Prague was. Likewise, astronomers used the zodiac as a reference point when describing features in the night sky, as there really wasn't any other reference system. This system eventually fell out a favor for the far more accurate system of right ascension and declination. Despite the scientific revolution, some people have never stopped believing in astrology, even though Western astrology is actually not even based on the location of the constellations

that the astrological signs are named after. Today, when you hear the word zodiac, your mind probably immediately jumps to horoscopes or serial killers. However, there was a time when the zodiac was actually the most advanced system of astronomical categorization. The system, which gave us a pseudoscience, was also a very important. also responsible for laying the foundations of the very real science of astronomy. Everything Everywhere Daily is an airwave media podcast.

The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener C-Crash over at Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, 84 to Go. Gary is amazing. How do you do it? I believe I better start supporting you. It's only fair.

Actually, let me go do that right now. Thank you, C-crash. If you'd like to support the show over at Patreon, well, don't let me stop you. Actually, I figured I'd let everyone know that starting this month, I'm going to begin doing some shorter, more off-the-cuff audio updates for patrons over at Patreon. These will not be full-blown episodes, as I do not have the time to do more than what I'm doing now. That being said, I do come across things all the time that I don't think I can make into full podcast episodes, but I still think they're of interest.

And there are always updates in the news to previous episodes that would probably be worth mentioning, like the Artemis program missions. So, think of them as shorter episodes without a script. My first one is going to be on some of the ways you might not realize Bugs Bunny has impacted popular culture. So, if you'd like even more Gary in your media diet, as well as support the show, head over to patreon.com slash everything everywhere, or click on the link in the show notes.