45. Baseless

Historians have not come up with a convincing explanation of the revolution in astronomical understanding that made a time piece out of the apparent confusion of celestial events. The default explanation is pretty much the same as the one advanced by Ptolemy, i.e. the novice star gazers were more interested in omens than astronomy and thus Babylonian observatons prior to the 8th century had not been preserved.

Still, if Babylonian priests were inclined to read the future from livers rather than stars, what impelled them to alter their traditional ways?