(29-08-2016, 08:54 PM)Sam G wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It seems to me that the most precise matches are coming from these old mosaics, despite the fact that there are vastly more surviving medieval manuscripts than mosaics, and of course we are only looking at mosaics in the first place because there are basically no surviving ancient books (which is where the best comparisons would almost certainly be found). So I think that's a strong indication that these similarities are not coincidental. Based purely on numbers, we would expect all the best matches to be in medieval manuscripts.
I couldn't agree more. Several of the images I posted all came from the same historical site, just because there is not much else left! Compare that to the thousands of medieval manuscripts that have been scrutinized, and you might perhaps understand why we find this relevant.
We know that books and scrolls existed, thousands upon thousands of them, which have now been lost completely. Much of the Greek works we still know today, we only know through the Romans and Arabs. Otherwise, their tradition would have been lost. The idea of an "only survivor" of its kind is not that exotic - it happens all the time, though in most other cases we can read the text, which makes it a lot easier
And still, those relatively few windows we have into that world... they sometimes reveal so much more than hundreds of medieval Zodiacs could.