Star Trek

In 1972, they found 5,000 pieces of oracle bones in An-yang, China, from the Shang Dynasty, describing celestial events. Zhang Peiyu, a Chinese astronomical historian, matched 6 of these to solar eclipses seen in Henan area, in the twelfth century B.C.--500 years before similar events were recorded in Babylonia or Egypt. Other Shang bones yielded inscriptions of lunar eclipses.

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/lost_discoveries3.asp#excerpt

The Shang Dynasty ruled sometime between 1766 BC and 1046 BC, depending upon various sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_Dynasty

So, the Babylonian astronomer/astrologers may have learned their skills from Shang Dynasty scholars.

If so, we might now know how some cultures seem to be advanced without any known developmental stages.  Perhaps knowledge, like the sunrise, as moved from east to west!

sorry... the Sumerians (who lived in Mesopotamia, the "home of Babalon) were doing astrology/astronomy a couple thousand years before China. any knowledge the Babalonians knew would have came from them. but then again... maybe the Chinease learned their knowledge from the Sumers 

Of course, the earliest known astronomical observations were made by the Aurignacians, c. 32,000 BC

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/oldest-lunar-calendar/15204

And the amazing stone circles of Gobekli Tepe were built before 9000 BC

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html

When taking Gobekli Tepe and the Aurignacian culture into account, 1766 BC is positively recent history. In fact, 1766 BC doesn't even predate the most conservative estimates of the age of the pyramids. I'm also not sure what you mean when you suggest that evidence of astronomy (one of man's oldest activities) explains the sudden rise of certain civilisations, without any developemental stages. I agree that it is inexplicable that civilisations such as the egyptions seem to spring forth fully formed, without prior stages of developement. Perhaps we are missing great big pieces of our history that we are unable to find or unwilling to look for.