The first use for Constellations was probably religious. Ancient peoples believed that the Gods lived in the heavens, created the stars and lived amongst them. They started to recognize patterns in the sky, give them names, and weave stories about them. We inherited the names of our constellations from the Greeks who named them after their mythological heroes and legends. Over time, various cultures developed their own set of unique tales for each of the star patterns.
The Zodiac Constellations are a specific set of 12 constellations that lie along the “plane of the ecliptic” - or the “apparent path of the sun”- which is defined by the circular path of the Sun across the sky, as seen from Earth. In other words, the Sun appears to pass through these constellations over the year. The passage of the Sun through the zodiac is a cycle that was used by ancient cultures to determine the time of year.