Archaeologists studying a group of five unique stone tablets dating to the first millennium in Babylonia and Assyria have announced that they reveal a hitherto unknown level of astronomical understanding.

Events and appearances in the night sky have been recorded for thousands of years. Following the solar and lunar cycles allowed people to predict seasonal change which enhanced outdoor survival. But in Ancient Mesopotamia, however, new evidence proves that sky watching was taken to a whole new level of complexity. It has been found that both observational astronomy and interpretive astrology were central practices not only in time keeping, but also in religious practices and the structure of ritual and ceremonial calendars.

This collection of tablets is providing scientists with what is being called “the earliest prose descriptions of the celestial constellations .” According to a report in Yale News, all of these tablets are currently being studied in the Yale University Babylonian Collection. “Three of them [tablets] were discovered in the sacred city of Uruk in southern Iraq and four of the tablets are newly discovered” and all were written in cuneiform script and in the Babylonian language.