Aries Design: Truly Aries, or actually based on Capricorn?

[eggyk]

Capricorn is a sea-goat that is sometimes more like an ibex. It's the horns.
The greater similarity is between the goat of Aries and the ibex of Capricorn.

Artists may repeat certain themes in their illustrations, but each representation is different.

Based on the manuscripts i've come across so far, capricorn was more commonly depicted as a mountain goat than as a sea-goat. When I was testing this a couple of days ago, it was around a 65%-35% split. Although that is the data from across europe at large; I have not measured those ratios per region. 

As we talked about, I think this is definitely worth doing, and the results well be interesting. But we currently don't know yet what those results will be, so it's important to keep in mind that all outcomes are equally relevant: more like Aries, more like Capricorn, or a strange mix of both.

Of course, even if the end result of testing this is "Capricorns do not really match the VMS", I would be happy to accept that. I don't think that will be the case, but even clarifying that will be worth doing. 

The really interesting aspect of this for me personally isn't really the specifics of the animal design, but rather the depiction of said animal: eating a tree on a rocky slope. It's exceedingly rare for aries depictions - with the only known example being itself a strange mix of aries and capricorn - yet it is common for a capricorn goat to be depicted that way.