ABSTRACT
Among the earliest traditions of every primitive race may be found traces of attempts to explain the elementary phenomena of the heavenly bodies. It could hardly be otherwise, since the succession of day and night, of winter and summer, and the phases of the moon could not have passed unregarded, even in the most uncivilised times. Plato's criticism goes plainly too far, as observations are quite as indispensable as theory, but it leads us to infer that the theory in his time was not regarded as of very great antiquity. It will be easily understood that the sign opposite to that in which the sun is situated will be towards the south at midnight, will rise at sunset, and set at sunrise, and so could be determined with fair precision; so that from a zodiacal map the sun's approximate position among the stars would be at once inferred.
