The Pleiades and Their Ancient Importance to Cultures Across the Globe
The Pleiades and Their Ancient Importance to Cultures Across the Globe
The Pleiades are a cluster of stars of which at least six or seven are easily visible to the naked eye. They are located in the northwest portion of the constellation of Taurus and are also called the seven sisters or Messier 45. Many cultures around the world have myths and stories involving the Pleiades and some of them are surprisingly similar as well as quite ancient.
I have always been interested in ancient cultures, especially their architecture and mythologies. I enjoy learning about them and finding similarities between them. Many cultures worldwide give significance to the stars, they build structures to align with them at precise times or use them as a calendar to identify the season. The Pleiades are a group of stars that are important to many cultures, several of whom have very similar myths about the Pleiades.
The Pleiades myths of the Greeks and Aborigines are the most similar even though they are on completely separate continents. They both describe the Pleiades as seven sisters who were being pursued by a hunter represented by the constellation of Orion. Norris and Norris look into this in their paper Why are there Seven Sisters? They theorized that the myths of the Greeks and the Aborigines as well many other cultures shared a common origin. In many of the myths, the Pleiades are described as the seven sisters, even though only six are visible to the naked eye. Norris and Norris show evidence that 100,000 years ago there were actually seven stars visible, over time two of them have moved closer together from Earth’s perspective to look like one. This is backed up by many of the myths which include an explanation as to why one of the seven sisters disappeared.
If the myth of the Pleiades actually is 100,000 years old it would be one if not the oldest story that humanity still carries. It would mean that early humans have held on to this story since they began migrating to all the different corners of the world. I find this absolutely fascinating that a story could survive this long. There is also the possibility that the myth could have popped up in different places at once since the sky is visible to everyone and they would have seen the same events slowly occur in the sky. I personally think it is probably a combination of both. Do you think it was carried around the world from a single origin point or do you think that it had several? And do you know of any other stories that might be as old as this one?
Norris, R. P., & Norris, B. R. (2021). Why are there Seven Sisters? Historical & Cultural Astronomy, 223-235. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-64606-6_11
Alexander, what an interesting topic, culture in astronomy! I would have liked to learn more about the seven sisters within different myths. For instance, in Greek mythology, were they goddesses? You left me with a sparked interest :)
ReplyDeleteHi Alexander, first off I wanted to say your blog looks very cool!! Love the colors you went with and the galaxy background. This was a very interesting topic to choose from and you have taught me more on the subject! Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteHey Alexander, fantastic blog post! It was incredibly interesting learning about the Pleiades and you summarized it incredibly well. The full seven Pleiades most definitely would have been visible to our ancestors 100,000 years ago however the single origin point would have had to have been in Africa when humans first started migrating to Europe and Southeast Asia and using the stars to map their way. It's without a doubt the oldest myth we've come across thus far as humans considering the oldest written one we've found so far was that of the Sumerians from 1600 BCE.
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