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Love your work here, Glen. The historical context is something that should be remembered.
Though I would argue with who discovered M33. I would put it in the same category as the Magellanic Clouds & M31 as it too is a naked eye object so would have been known to the ancients as a constant ghostly "twin" of the full Moon.
M31 is often said to be the farthest thing we can see with the naked eye - not true. M33 is. What makes it more difficult to see is it requires a really transparent sky. I've managed to see it under a Bortel 4 sky, but this site has tremendous transparency. No way that the ancients would not have seen it or some culture included it in their folklore/mythology. When other naked eye objects are so included in such mythologies I cannot see how M33 could not, particularly with its size rivalling the Moon & its location so close to the maximum northerly path the Moon can reach, it is highly unlikely that it was unknown to some ancient culture. Our knowledge of most ancient Asian cultures astronomical literacy is, well, crap, and there is no doubting some of these cultures were as advanced as any Euro-Middle Eastern culture. Our own knowledge of indigenous Australian astronomy is really crap, and much/most of it has been lost. Especially when they were the first to recognise a variable star in the night sky, it is unlikely the M33 was unknown to them, being such a significant AND lone smudge in the northern sky. Everything had a reason for its placement in the night sky regardless of culture, recorded in stone or not.
I wonder just how many people even consider M33 in their research. Very few I would be willing to venture with how little it comes to people's mind today as a naked eye object. Most amateur astronomers also cannot recognise what excellent transparency looks like vs everything else.
Something to ponder.
Alex.
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