The fixed constellations seemed immutable, but in the clear atmosphere of Mesopotamia, where the observation was assisted by wide expanses of flat landscape, the movement of those celestial bodies that seemed to traverse regular trajectories was noticed, the planets we call Mercury, Venus, Mars, The Sumerians and Babylonians knew Jupiter and Saturn.
The zodiac belt in which the parts of the planets are mainly found may have been known for millennia, although most modern studies attribute its recognition to Greek science of the 6th and 5th centuries BC. C. The Sumerians identified Venus as the Lady of Heaven, while the Babylonians considered her a goddess of war and carnage in her appearance as the Morning Star, but of love, procreation, fertility, sweetness and luxury when it shone like the evening star.
Reports of terrestrial phenomena resulting from the movements of the heavenly gods were recorded in writings dating back to the beginning of the fourth millennium BC. Records of predictions soon followed, first of events like wars and floods, then horoscopes of the birth of individual kings.
Astrology entered India around the 6th century BC. C. and shortly after in China and Indochina. To the west he traveled to Egypt and Greece. The primitive peoples of Western Europe, independently of Sumer and Babylon, had learned as early as 2000 BC. C. to mark the solstices and other astronomical events by means of megalithic systems. In Mexico, around 300 AD, the Mayans developed an even more precise knowledge of astronomy than the Babylonians, evolving a 365-day calendar and a 13-sign zodiac.
The Chinese were probably the first people to develop astronomy apart from astrology, which they used to forecast events. They divided the sky into five “palaces”, a central region around the pole and four equatorial divisions corresponding to the four seasons.
Meanwhile, the complicated and seemingly scientific system that was to be the ancestor of European astrology was being developed by the Greeks combined with Babylonian and Egyptian elements. Philosophy, medicine and religion, all supported by.
In Rome, the official order probes Astrology when it got there during the 2nd century BC. C., but the town welcomed those who would say their luck for the stars. The Roman emperors did not like astrology, considering it as a possible weapon to be used by the usurpers of their thrones.
Since the stars influence human appetites, which few men can resist, their predictions are mostly correct; but those morally strong enough to resist may deny its predictions.
Astrology / astronomy (as the two were not really separated until the 17th century), reached its zenith during the Renaissance, when new knowledge permeated the masses. Famous scholars wrote astrological treatises, that no man could resist the influence of the stars and planets.