Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals of the Earth by Georges Cuvier

Author:Georges Cuvier [Cuvier, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science
Publisher: Richer Resources Publications
Published: 2009-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

The Zodiac is far from Carrying in Itself a Certain and Excessively Ancient Date

But there are writers who have maintained that the zodiac carries in itself the date of its invention, on the ground that the names and figures given in its constellations are an indication of the position of the colures when it was invented. This date, according to several people, is so evident and so far back that whether the representations which we possess of this circle are more or less ancient is quite irrelevant.

These writers do not pay attention to the fact that this line of argument is complicated by three equally unsure assumptions: the country in which the zodiac is believed to have been invented, the sense which it is believed was given to the constellations which fill it, and the position the colures had in relation to each constellation when this meaning was assigned to it. One must change the date of the zodiac depending upon the alternative allegories people invent or upon the assumptions that these allegories bear a relationship to the constellation in which the sun was in the first degrees, or to the one in which it stands in the middle, or to the one which it was beginning to enter, that is to say, where it was in the final degrees or, finally, to the opposite constellation where evening arises, or whether one puts the invention of these allegories into another climate. The variations possible in this matter can include up to half the revolution of the fixed stars, that is to say, thirteen thousand years and even more.

Thus Pluche, generalizing from some indications of the ancients, thought that Aries announces the sun beginning its ascent and the spring equinox, that Cancer announces the sun’s retrograde at the summer solstice, that Libra, the sign of equality, indicates the autumn equinox,[ccxxxi] and that Capricorn, a climbing animal, indicates the winter solstice, after which the sun comes back to us. In this way, by putting the inventors of the zodiac in a temperate climate, one would have rain under Aquarius, births of lambs and kids under Gemini, violent heat under Leo, harvests under Virgo, the hunt under Sagittarius, and so on, and the emblems would be quite appropriate. Then, by putting the colures at the start of the constellations or at least the equinox in the first stars of Aries, one would initially arrive only at a date of 389 BC, a time evidently too recent, which necessitated going back again by an entire equinoctial period or twenty-six thousand years. But if it is assumed that the equinox passed through the middle of the constellation, one will derive a date of almost 1000 or 1200 years earlier or at 1600 or 1700 BC. Several celebrated men have truly believed that this period was the age of the invention of the zodiac, and they have given the credit for it to Chiron, for other quite superficial reasons.[ccxxxii]

But Dupuis, who required for the origin he

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