[Publius6961]

to a boy with a hammer... everything he sees is a nail

My feeling is that if you simply throw a random pattern of 18 dots on anything and, allowing for primitive "artistic license" in positioning the resulting pattern, someone will find an astronomical significance... every time.

[RJL]

to a boy with a hammer... everything he sees is a nail

LOL... When my son was young, everything he could grip was a hammer too.

[ngc6656]

My feeling is that if you simply throw a random pattern of 18 dots on anything and, allowing for primitive "artistic license" in positioning the resulting pattern, someone will find an astronomical significance... every time.

Your are probably correct. I think "artistic license" was used by Liu Baoshan if he thinks there is any arrangement of seven holes on the side shown of that piece of stone that resembles the Big Dipper.