To get an idea how precession might appear to the naked eye, imagine that some time -traveler had undertaken to photograph the stars rising in the east just before sun rise on spring equinox in Jerusalem, each year from the birth of Christ to the present. Perhaps the most important contribution of Hamlet's Mill is its explication of the conventions of the technical language whereby myth transmits information concerning precessional motion. There are three simple rules. First, animals are stars. Second, gods are planets.
Prehistory means pre-writing.
This definition dismisses the possibility of any means other than writing for transmitting important information from the past, and thereby creates the impression that such transmission was not a priority for our forebears. I simply had to know if these ideas were true. From the Preface . Over many years I have searched for the point where myth and science join. It was clear to me for a long time that the origins of science had their deep roots in a particular myth, that of invariance.