Sky & Telescope - November 2024 - 39

LEAH TISCIONE / S&T
Star magnitudes
as punishment for being on the wrong
side of a war. Thus occupied, Atlas
could no longer protect his daughters,
so Zeus transformed them into stars to
protect them from Orion the Hunter,
who was chasing them.
In the sky, the constellation of
Orion lies just to the east of the Pleiades.
When we look at them, Earth's
rotation makes it appear that Orion
continues to chase the Pleiades. But
in the Southern Hemisphere, Orion is
upside-down, making it look less like a
hunter. This may be why many people
in Australia and New Zealand call
Orion the Saucepan.
Nevertheless, in many of the 100 or so surviving Aborigi2
3
4
5
6
7
nal
language groups across Australia, Orion is a hunter, or a
lustful young man, or a group of young men.
Just as in the Greek stories, most Aboriginal cultures say
that the Pleiades are a group of (usually seven) young girls.
They are associated with sacred women's ceremonies and
stories, and they are important as an element of Aboriginal
calendars and astronomy. For example, many groups interpret
the first rising at dawn of the Pleiades as the start of winter.
Some of these stories also connect the Pleiades with Orion.
The An−angu people in the center of Australia call Orion Nyiru
and say that he is pursuing the Seven Sisters (Kunkarunkara).
Specifics change from teller to teller, but the story is that
Nyiru chased the sisters from the north and down past Uluru
(Ayers Rock), until they hid in Walinynga Cave. Various lurid
details follow, in which Nyiru captures and rapes the youngest
sister. Eventually the sisters escape from the back of the cave
and flee up into the sky, rescuing the seventh sister as they go.
This rescued sister is the " missing " star. In other Aboriginal
stories, the seventh girl is in hiding or is ashamed.
One extra twist found in some parts of Australia is that
the bright red star Aldebaran, between Orion and the Pleiades,
is interpreted as a dingo dog belonging to the girls that
barks at Orion to try to protect them.
So in both ancient Greece and in Aboriginal Australia,
people say there are seven stars, but then have another story
to explain why most people see six. In both cases, they say the
Pleiades are female and Orion is male. In both cases, they say
the man/men of Orion are chasing the Seven Sisters.
Why Are the Stories So Similar?
So how come the Australian Aboriginal stories are so similar
to those of the Greeks? Could it be coincidence? After all, we
are dealing with only a subset of the world's Pleiades legends
- other tales portray the Pleiades as a hen with chicks, for
example, or a single woman, or a star broken into six pieces
(see page 45 for more examples). But the most common tale
seems to be that of a group of girls, appearing in more cultures'
lore than the other versions do.
+25°
Maia
Pleione
Alcyone
Atlas
Merope
Could it be that these tales have a
common origin?
It's possible. We now know from
+23°
3h 52m 3h 50m 3h 48m 3h 46m 3h 44m 3h 42m
DNA evidence that all modern
humans are descended from people
who lived in Africa about 100,000
years ago. Over the following millennia,
these groups began their long migrations to the far corners
of the globe. In the case of Aboriginal Australians, they
left Africa at the same time that the ancestors of Europeans,
Asians, and everyone else did and arrived in Australia at
least 50,000 years ago. After that time, there were no further
waves of migration into Australia, leaving the Aboriginal
people almost untouched by other cultures until the arrival
of the British in 1788.
We also know the Aboriginal Seven Sisters stories are very
old, both from their distribution across Australia, including
regional variations, and from rock art at Walinynga and
elsewhere that is thousands of years old.
Given that the stories are old and that there was little to
no contact with other parts of the world, it may be that the
Aboriginal people brought these stories with them. Since the
tales are similar to the stories from the Greeks (and other
peoples around the world), it seems possible that these stories
came from where we all did - Africa. If that is true, then
roughly 100,000 years ago, our ancestors were sitting around
their campfires in Africa, telling one another stories of Orion
and the Seven Sisters - stories that are still with us today.
At that time, the Pleiades really did have seven easily
visible stars. This explains why these different cultures
called them the Seven Sisters: that's how they appeared in
100,000 BC. But when the seventh star gradually disappeared,
each culture had to invent a story to explain why we
only see six of them now.
The Oldest Story?
After I published an article describing these ideas, I learned
of work by French researcher Julien d'Huy (Laboratory of
Social Anthropology, France) who, unknown to me, had been
studying the world's Pleiades stories from a completely different
angle. He uses a technique called phylogenetic analysis,
which evolutionary biologists employ to track the extent of
genetic relationship between species. For several decades,
anthropologists have also applied this technique to different
versions of myths from around the world, constructing family
trees that trace the transmission of stories or their motifs
from culture to culture.
sk yand tele scope .o r g * NOVEMBER 2024 39
Asterope
Taygeta
Celaeno
Electra
+24°
PLEIADES TODAY At the limits of human
vision (magnitude 7), the Pleiades include
more than seven stars. But observers often
report seeing only six: Pleione/Atlas (merged
into one), Alcyone, Merope, Electra, Maia, and
Taygeta. The surrounding nebulosity (green
outlines) is an independent cloud that's drifting
through the cluster, not the dusty wisps of the
stars' natal cocoon.
http://skyandtelescope.org
Sky & Telescope - November 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - November 2024
