| There are no Sumerian astronomical records. The written astronomical records that are known appeared a few hundred years after the Sumerians no longer existed, in the 2nd millenium BC. The Sumerian language is sometimes used by the Akkadian scribes in all kinds of documents, including in astronomical records, but it was already a dead language. Thanks for the linked paper, it is interesting. It shows that there are cases when the identity of the planets may be discovered using only detailed oral traditions. However, that is a quite unlikely event and it happened very seldom in other cultures. Even if the stories of the Australian aborigines have been interpreted correctly, there is no way of knowing if they had already recognized some planets 10 thousand years ago or only 500 years ago, for the first time. In order to recognize even the more obvious planets, i.e. Mars and Jupiter, based on oral stories, there must be a habit to recall things that happened long ago, during the last few years, while always mentioning that when that happened, the reddish bright star Mars was in a certain constellation or Jupiter was in some another constellation. When telling such old stories, you can notice that now a similar star, which might be the same, is in another position. This is possible, but even in prehistoric cultures it was seldom thought interesting to mention which was the exact star pattern on the sky when something happened. The normal story pattern was to be more vague about such things of low interest and say just that some event took place e.g when a certain constellation became visible soon after sunset, instead of also describing how many stars were visible in the constellation and which were their individual characteristics. Such special interest in precise star description might have characterized the Australian aborigines and maybe also the Polynesians and other people who depended on astronomical navigation, but it was unusual at most other people. In any case the identification of the brighter planets based on oral memories is much more likely to happen in a dry climate, where you might notice the planet every night and recognize it even if it has moved slightly and after seeing it during many months you may realize that it actually is no longer in the same place. In climates with more frequent clouded skies, it is less likely to recognize when you see again a planet that it is the same as that seen some time ago, because by the time when its position has changed enough its brightness might have also changed, so there is no apparent reason to believe that a new star of different position and brightness is the same as the one previously seen, unless you have seen all the intermediate steps of position and brightness. This might explain why some planets might have been discovered by Australians based on only oral memories, while no such cases have been seen in Europe or Asia. |
https://www.elsaelsa.com/astrology/how-long-do-planets-stay-...
Which is to say, these are noticeable differences for individuals, especially any who are using the fully-evolved intelligence of a human brain staring regularly at the sky instead of a smart-phone.