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In the northern sky in December there is a beautiful star cluster known as the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, also known in Maori as Matariki.
Look closely and it will probably count six stars. So why do we say there are seven?
Many cultures around the world refer to the Pleiades as “seven sisters” and also tell quite similar stories about them. After studying the motion of the stars very closely, we believe that these stories can go back 100,000 years to a time when the constellation looked quite different.
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The sisters and the hunter
In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas. He was forced to hold the sky for eternity, and therefore was unable to protect his daughters.
To save the sisters from being raped by the hunter Orion, Zeus transformed them into stars. But the story says that a sister fell in love with a mortal and went into hiding, so we only see six stars.
A similar story is found among Aboriginal groups in Australia. In many Australian Aboriginal cultures, the Pleiades are a group of girls and are often associated with ceremonies and sacred stories of women.
The Pleiades are also important as an element of Aboriginal calendars and astronomy, and for several groups their first sunrise at dawn marks the beginning of winter.
HISTORY OF NZ
All modern humans are descended from people who lived in Africa about 100,000 years ago.
Near the Seven Sisters in the sky is the constellation Orion, which is often called “the saucepan” in Australia. In Greek mythology, Orion is a hunter. This constellation is also usually a hunter in aboriginal cultures, or a group of lustful young men.
Writer and anthropologist Daisy Bates reported that the people of central Australia viewed Orion as a “hunter of women”, and specifically of the women of the Pleiades.
Many Aboriginal stories say that the children, or the man, in Orion are chasing the seven sisters, and one of the sisters has died, is in hiding, is too young, or has been kidnapped, so again only six are visible.
The lost sister
Similar stories of “lost Pleiades” are found in European, African, Asian, Indonesian, Native American, and Australian Aboriginal cultures. Many cultures consider the cluster to have seven stars, but recognize that normally only six are visible, and then they have a story to explain why the seventh is invisible.
Esther Ashby-Coventry
Careful measurements show that the stars of the Pleiades move slowly across the sky.
Why are the stories of the Australian aborigines so similar to the Greek ones?
Anthropologists used to think that Europeans could have brought Greek history to Australia, where the Aborigines adapted it for their own purposes.
But aboriginal stories seem to be much, much older than European contact. And there was little contact between most Australian Aboriginal cultures and the rest of the world for at least 50,000 years. So why do they share the same stories?
Barnaby Norris and I suggested an answer in an article Springer will publish early next year in a book titled Promotion of cultural astronomy, a prepress for which is available here.
All modern humans are descended from people who lived in Africa before they began their long migrations to the farthest corners of the world around 100,000 years ago.
Could these stories of the seven sisters be that old? Did all humans carry these stories with them while traveling to Australia, Europe, and Asia?
SUPPLIED
Matariki is the Maori name for the star cluster also known as the Pleiades, which rises in mid-winter.
Moving stars
Careful measurements with the Gaia space telescope and others show that the stars of the Pleiades move slowly in the sky. One star, Pleione, is now so close to the star Atlas that they appear to be a single star to the naked eye.
But if we take what we know about the motion of the stars and go back 100,000 years, Pleione was farther from Atlas and would have been easily visible to the naked eye. So 100,000 years ago, most people would have seen seven stars in the cluster.
We believe this movement of the stars can help explain two puzzles: the similarity of the Greek and Aboriginal stories about these stars, and the fact that so many cultures call the cluster “seven sisters” even though we only see six stars today.
Is it possible that the stories of the Seven Sisters and Orion are so old that our ancestors told these stories to each other around campfires in Africa, 100,000 years ago? Could this be the oldest story in the world?
Recognition
We acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional owners and elders, both past and present, of all the indigenous groups mentioned in this document. All indigenous material has been found in the public domain.
Ray Norris is a professor at the Western Sydney University School of Science.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
