How did they come up with the signs for the zodiac?

Question

Some of the signs like capricorn and sagitarius sound like they were thought up by people who were really stoned.

Answer 1

yep - and they all got together and had a great ol' time with it.....

Answer 2

The Zodiac constellations are the ones on the ecliptic. Since the earth follows this line around the sun, the Zodiac constellations are like the 12 hours on the face of a clock, they mark off the passing of the year. The namers must have been at least a little stoned when they named these because most of them (except for maybe Scorpio) don't look anything like what they're supposed to represent. Sagittarius looks more like a teapot, and many astronomers now refer to it as that. The spout of the teapot even has steam coming out of it (the Milky Way). Gemini is two stars and they're not even twins. Leo looks a little like a lion. Taurus looks like a V (the horns, I guess). Libra and Aries are insignificant. I can never find Aquarius. Capricorn is up there somewhere. Did I miss any?

Answer 3

The names of the signs are derived from the names of their corresponding star constellations.

"The zodiac (which is derived from the Greek word meaning "circle of animals") is believed to have developed in ancient Egypt and later adopted by the Babylonians. Early astrologers knew it took twelve lunar cycles (i.e., months) for the sun to return to its original position. They then identified twelve constellations that they observed were linked to the progression of the seasons and assigned them names of certain animals and persons (in Babylonia, for example, the rainy season was found to occur when the sun was in a particular constellation which was then named Aquarius, or water bearer)."

Answer 4

By 2,000 BC, the Egyptians and Mesopotamians marked the seasons by the constellations we now call Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. But the marking of seasons by constellations may go back to 5,000 BC.[5] The division of the ecliptic into the zodiacal signs originates perhaps in Babylonian ("Chaldean") astronomy as early as the 1st millennium BC (likely during Median/"Neo-Babylonian" times) (Powell 2004).

It is not entirely clear how ancient astronomers responded to this phenomenon of precession once they discovered it. Today, some read Ptolemy as dropping the concept of a fixed celestial sphere and adopting what is referred to as a tropical coordinate system instead: in other words, one fixed to the cycle of the Earth's seasonal cycle rather than its orbital cycle. Such a view is consistent with the reading of Ptolemy as a geocentrist. The geo-centrist view understand the motion of celestial objects in strict relation to the Earth as a fixed frame of reference. This view understands the celestial sphere as rotating around the Earth like the spheres of the other planets and the moon: only more slowly. The Earth is the center of everything and is fixed in the same frame of reference as the Universe. The stars precess in relation to the Earth not the other way around. Modern astronomers typically read such a view in Ptolemy who writes: "the sphere of the fixed stars also performs a motion of its own in the opposite direction to the revolution of the universe, that is [the motion of] the great circle through both poles, that of the equator and that of the ecliptic." By "revolution of the universe", Ptolemy refers to the daily cycle that heliocentrists understand as the rotation of the Earth. However, one also finds evidence in Ptolemy's The Almagest that he expresses a view of a fixed celestial sphere; or at least that he understand the difference between the relative motions of each. After cataloging over 1,000 stars he describes a method for constructing a model of the stars:"Since it is not reasonable to mark the solstitial and equinoctial points on the actual zodiac of the globe (for the stars depicted [on the globe] do not retain a constant distance with respect to these points), we need to take some fixed starting-point in the delineated fixed stars." (emphasis added; brackets are translators insertions). So Ptolemy's response to the issue of precession is that the zodiac moves through the equinox and also he makes it clear he understands that the equinox moves through the zodiac.

The zodiacal signs remain in use as the basis of an ecliptic coordinate system, though modern astronomers tend to use an equatorial coordinate systems since Early Modern times. One can see the use of the sidereal coordinate system as late as 1,000 AD from Hermannus Contractus in his de mensura astrolabii liber who gives the locations of stars in stereographic projection for the construction of an astrolabe, There he gives the zodiac coordinate of Antares as 14. Scorpius, equalling a J2000.0 ecliptic longitude of 224° (the 14th degree from the beginning of Scorpius at 210°).

The zodiacal symbols are Early Modern simplifications of conventional pictorial representations of the signs, attested since Hellenistic times. The symbols are encoded in Unicode at positions U+2648 to U+2653.

Answer 5

ther based on ancient greek and roman designs most of the astronomers that found these constilations were greek or roman so they decided to picture them as animals or gods from there religeons or mytholigy

Answer 6

Some people think that they are eternal and no one came up with them. but being stoned is another answer.