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‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
- dash2 6y agoHere is another story about myths being extremely persistent: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/02/27/an-australian-legend-may-be-the-worlds-oldest-datable-story https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/02/27/... Amazing if true. I got the impression, when I studied (a little) anthropology in the 1990s, that myths were related to the present structure of a society more than to its past, and that you couldn't expect reliable transmission of messages over such long time periods. Edit: here is a cool article about geomythology - https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/MayorGeomythology.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/MayorGeomythology.pdf
- sibeliuss 6y agoJung, amongst others, believed that myths are archetypal constructs that underpin the architecture of the mind, and are shared by all, which explains much about the uncanny cultural similarities across time and space.
- dash2 6y agoRight, but that would not explain why they are also similar to the actual facts. As an example, from the Stanford article: "... debate raged in the nineteenth century over Native American legends that seemed to contain ancestral memories of mastodons hunted until their extinction in the Ice Age 10,000 years ago. The possibility was supported by twentieth-century archaeological discoveries of mammoth kill sites that matched local tribal lore about elephant-like monsters."
- Garlef 6y agoI don't think we need this kind of hocus pocus to explain this. Frist candidate for an explanation: * Stories get passed on and some are surprisingly stable. Second candidate for an explanation: * The underpinnings of the architecture of the mind cause the same stories to (re?)surface everywhere. Let's use occams razor. (I don't claim this argument disproves the "theory" of archetypes. But we should not jump to conclusions when applying it out of context.).
- nobody9999 6y ago>* Stories get passed on and some are surprisingly stable. That's reasonable. While certainly far from proven, the Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis[0] posits the possibility that the "Great Flood" story, which is part of many ancient traditions (and long predates Abrahamic[1] religions) may be from an oral tradition recounting a flood occurring at the end of the last glaciation in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. While that story certainly isn't anywhere near 100,000 years old, if true, it does add credence to the stability of oral traditions over long periods of time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions Edit: Clarified hypothesized location of the Black Sea Deluge.
- Tistron 6y agoWhat is the difference between your second point and "archetypes"?
- sibeliuss 6y agoPrecisely
- Garlef 6y agoThe point of listing the second point was to paraphrase/summarize archetypes and contrast it to a more plausible explanation (the first point). Here's some hyperbole explaining why the first point offers the simpler explanation. To use the old south park meme: 1. The underpinnings of the architecture of the mind 2. ? 3. Stories resurfacing. vs 1. narrative tradition
- wombatmobile 6y agoYour expectations are a function of what you know and your experiences. In your case, those are dominated by your immersion in literate cultures that rely on written communication formats for information transmission and archiving, not to mention education. But what if all that knowledge and experience of writing technology and writing based culture were to vanish? What would you be then? Helpless? Lost? Isolated? Actually, no. You’d still be capable of advanced communications, education, and data storage, using alternative modalities. It’s like pre-internet humans. They still went out on dates, met up with friends, gossiped and bought things. They just accomplished all that with different tools to what people use today.
- not_knuth 6y agoI can't help but feel that some combination of the Birthday paradox [0] and primates churning out stories [1] is going on here. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
- gostsamo 6y agoWhat accounts for the missing sister though? If the seventh sister was last visible 50000-100000 years ago, how the myths are trying to account for it now without the memory?
- bencollier49 6y agoI think the idea of the 100,000 years of memory is plausible, but I think it's likely to persist because the number seven seems to be universally important to humans. People could potentially have superimposed the number seven on the story, as per the rainbow's seven colours and Newton.
- gostsamo 6y agoSince when is 7 important though? The species didn't have much of a math up until 5000-10000 years ago.
- josefx 6y agoThat is an interesting claim, the wikipedia articles about the history of math claim that the earliest written examples are from 3000 BCE. Finding a written record older is rather unlikely since that corresponds roughly to the oldest written texts in general. We do however have evidence of tally marks that date back to 35000 BCE[1] with one use possibly being a lunar calendar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_marks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_marks
- chmod775 6y agoI'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that humans have been able to count since before you'd consider them human. Lots of animals are able to count and it's ridiculous to assume that any individual with even a rudimentary language wouldn't be able to. With which I mean to say that you don't need a formal understanding of 'mathematics' to count. Further there's nothing mathematically super special about the number 7. You might say "it's a prime, and also X, Y, Z", but there's pretty much an infinite number of properties you could find for any number you choose.
- reedf1 6y agoTitle seems to have no correlation with the article. Edit: My bad - I clicked through to another link on the page accidentally
- bencollier49 6y agoDid you read all the way down?
- timkam 6y agoI must say the Singularity Hub web presence looks snake-oily to me. Why do they call it a "university"? Why do they call some of the members "faculty"? Why do they claim Ray Kurzweil has "a thirty-year track record of accurate predictions"? (https://singularityhub.com/experts/ https://singularityhub.com/experts/) Any idea why they brand it like this? Who is supposed to take this seriously? I'm EU-based and here you're not allowed to claim that your organization is a university if it is not recognized by the state as such (roughly speaking).
- gcatalfamo 6y agoIt might have started in good faith, but now there are local chapters at least in EU, where people basically advertise themselves. So yeah it is snake oil now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- skrebbel 6y agoI don't disagree, but you have to understand that because "university" isn't a protected name in the US, it also doesn't carry the same status and thus calling the Singularity organization a university is less preposterous. Eg you learn to run a team of hamburger flippers at the McDonald's University. Many SaaS startups have a tutorials page named $BRAND University. In that context, a bunch of atheistic reli-nuts calling their clubhouse a university isn't that far off.
- timkam 6y agoThank you for clarifying, then the main issue comes with global scale (a point that one of the other comments here makes).
- garmaine 6y agoYou can pay them money to attend classes they hold (which you can find example Youtube videos of--basically 50min TED talks), and at the end of it you get a certificate. It was modeled after the International Space University, which in France, and shares a co-founder. I may be swayed that this is more of a "summer workshop" and not as academically rigorous as I'd like, but otherwise I'm not sure why you claim it doesn't deserve the title "University."
- reducesuffering 6y agoI'm surprised the article didn't mention one of the most popular names for the "Seven Sisters," Subaru, the Japanese name and vehicle manufacturer whose logo contains six of the stars.
- progre 6y agoSubaru does not translate to "seven sisters" (or even six sisters) so bringing up Subaru would undermine the claim of the article
- reducesuffering 6y agoNot directly. Translation would be "to govern" or "gather together", but Subaru is one of the constellation's names in Japan, like it would also be called Pleiades in the West, deriving from "plein", meaning "to sail."[0] [0]https://web.archive.org/web/20100411083646/http://www.subaru-global.com/origin_name.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100411083646/http://www.subaru...
- fireattack 6y agoI think his point is while Subaru does mean Pleiades in Japanese (actually came from Chinese), it (the name) has nothing to do with "seven sisters".
- sgt 6y agoNever heard of the seven sisters story, or if I did I might have forgotten about it. Do kids learn about this in school nowadays? Seems like it should be taught considering the potential age of the story.
- yreg 6y agoWe had a very kid-friendly book of ancient Greek myths[0] as part of mandatory reading (actually one of the first books I've read) and it includes this story. It's a great way of learning — basically a fairy tale compilation, but the fairy tales are worthy of learning about. Also, the reader learns much about the historical setting. Would be amazing to write/popularize similar books on other cultures as well. Perhaps the Judge Di series[1] about an 18th century Chinese detective comes close to that. [0] Staré grécke báje a povesti https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16057997-star-gr-cke-b-je-a-povesti https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16057997-star-gr-cke-b-j... [1] Judge Dee https://www.goodreads.com/series/50669-judge-dee-chronological-order https://www.goodreads.com/series/50669-judge-dee-chronologic...
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> Perhaps the Judge Di series[1] about an 18th century Chinese detective No, the series is from the 18th century. Di Renjie lived in the 7th century.
- yreg 6y agoYou are right of course, thanks. I got a call as I was finishing my comment and didn't pay enough attention to what I'm typing.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y agoMost of the series is from the 20th-c., based on the 18th century novel (about 7th-century detective).
- mellosouls 6y agoIt's a nice theory but sometimes simpler, less glamorous solutions might hold the truth. There are more than 6 "sisters" visible with the naked eye, but most people normally can't see them. It's more believable to me that the "missing" 7th sister is just the brightest of the less visible ones. Those less visible would certainly have been used as a test of prowess for determining the keenest-eyed, especially among early societies where such skills were important. "Ah, but can you find the hiding sister?"
- ramraj07 6y agoIf true then at least one of the stories should sound in that vein right? Let's consider your rule itself, though first modifying it to the real occams razor which says the simplest answer is probably the real one. Simple is probably more measurable than glamor anyway! So what's the simpler of the two explanations? A complex variation of the story as we now know independently arose in multiple cultures and then everyone forgot the same detail (find the seventh star it's still there), or we've been carrying this story with us since the beginning of humanity? Honestly the later sounds simpler to me. It's breathtaking but sounds entirely plausible so why not?
- mellosouls 6y agoI don't agree obviously - the seventh sister is there, and not every story has her missing. And a common early eye-test seems far simpler and more believable than a common myth that possibly predates by tens of thousands of years the start of contemporary cognitive parity within our species.
- tsimionescu 6y agoActually the second version seems to make more novel assumptions. We have no (other?) proof of any cultural phenomenon older than maybe 50k years ago even existing, never mind being passed on. To imagine such a specific story surviving for such a huge amount of time while being disconnected from reality seems MUCH more unlikely than having similar stories arise independently about a hard to see but still visible star. Also, Occam's razor says nothing about which explanation is more likely to be correct. It is simply a sensible rule about which explanation is more useful to go with when you have two that explain the same facts equally well. It's a pretty clear rule in physics when you have actual mathematical models to chose between, it's much too hand-wavy in the soft sciences like anthropology.
- copperwater69 6y agoI've been reading 'Worlds in Collision' by Immanuel Velikovsky - interesting book if you're drawn to comparative mythology.
- yowlingcat 6y agoWhat do you make of it? I've been meaning to read it in part to make sense of mythological treatments of Saturn.
- 74d-fe6-2c6 6y agofascinating - but I can't make out those three stars in a row (the guys sitting in the boat) from the constellation depicted below. Neither for 2020 nor 100'000 BCE. Also not from Stellarium. Weird.
- jeofken 6y agoWould you maybe share a screenshot from Stellarium?
- scatters 6y agoOrion's Belt? It's one of the most recognizable constellations (or parts thereof).
- 74d-fe6-2c6 6y agotrue - the canoe is interpreted into orion - my mistake
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- heikkilevanto 6y agoSeven is a common story-telling number. Seven days in a week, sailing the seven seas, the seven wonders of the world, the seven continents, seven deadly sins, etc.
- tiborsaas 6y agoWhy did you stop at 6 examples?
- tome 6y agoSeven is a common story-telling number 1. Seven days in a week 2. sailing the seven seas 3. the seven wonders of the world 4. the seven continents 5. seven deadly sins 6. seven sisters 7. the seven canonical examples
- Anthony-G 6y agoThe old tropes are the best and continue to reincarnate in new forms, e.g, Hary Potter: Why 7 https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/106582/harry-potter-why-7 https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/106582/harry-potte...
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agoIt would be pretty odd to add one they couldn’t see though, right?
- lolinder 6y agoYes, but as has been noted multiple times in this thread, there are more than 6 visible stars in the cluster. They're just not visible at all times of year, and certainly impossible to see for most of us who live in/near cities.
- dotancohen 6y agoThis is not true. The Pleiades cluster looks the same all year round. Depending on how one defines the limit of what can be seen, there are either 0 stars, or 6 stars, or 9 stars, or hundreds. But only someone with very, very exceptional eyesight under very, very exceptional conditions can actually see seven stars but not nine. Source: I've been observing the cluster, and the sky as a whole, for decades. I'll draw the locations of the six notable stars just as easily as some will draw the big dipper. And I've never, in decades of observing under many different conditions from different latitudes, ever seen seven stars.
- sundarurfriend 6y agoThis reminded me of a theory came up with as a teenager, that the Vaanaraas of Ramayana (a group to which the famous "monkey god" Hanuman belongs) may actually be an early hominid that had ape-like features, that lived in parallel with humans in different territory. They were intelligent enough to help the human princes in their quest, which got them a place in their story - a story which went on to become an oral tradition, and got embellished with time to become the Ramayana. If, as proposed here, stories can be orally passed down for tens of thousands of years, that makes it slightly more likely that this outlandish theory actually has some merit to it.
- tikwidd 6y agoThis might not be quite as outlandish as it sounds, because we now have plenty of evidence that early humans were living alongside and interacting with other archaic homo species. I have a pet (similarly highly speculative) theory that the Nephilim[1] of the Bible might be a earlier oral history of Neanderthals. But I'll just leave it at that, speculation. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim
- EdwardDiego 6y agoHuh, I have that same pet theory.
- generalizations 6y agoAnd same. I believe there's also a theory that the neanderthals were smarter than our ancestors of the time. That would also fit the story. I can imagine the homo sapiens of the time interacting with the far stronger and smarter neanderthals and describing them as 'sons of god'. I wonder if that's also where the old Greek myths of Hercules (etc) came from.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago“Sons of god” is a translation of the Hebrew by non-Jews and is just plain incorrect. It gets passed around as legit probably because it enforces the idea that Christ is a son of God. But If you ask Jews, who wrote that section of the Bible, benei elokim translates as something like “those who are free”: “Who or what exactly are the benei elokim? Who are the nephilim? How are they related to each other? And what does it all mean? One thing benei elokim does not mean is “sons of G‑d.” In fact, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai would “curse” anyone who translated the term benei elokim as the “sons of G‑d.”1 The word elokim in Scripture, while generally referring to G‑d, is in essence merely an expression of authority.2 Similarly, the term benei does not necessarily mean “sons,” but is often just a title. Benei chorin, for example, means those who are free—not “sons of freedom.” https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1987422/jewish/Nephilim-Fallen-Angels-Giants-or-Men.htm https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1987422/jewis...
- sradman 6y agoThe Pleiades[1], also known as the Seven Sisters: > It is among the star clusters nearest to Earth... and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. Only six stars in the cluster are visible to the naked eye yet mythology from several ancient cultures share the idea that one of the seven “sisters" is hidden. The article The world’s oldest story?, originally published in TheConversation [2], states: > The star Pleione... was a bit further away from Atlas in 100,000 BC, making it much easier to see. These two stars now appear as one to the naked eye which the author proposes is the source of the hidden sister. This dates the story to 100 kya. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades [2] https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronomers-say-global-myths-about-seven-sisters-stars-may-reach-back-100-000-years-151568 https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronom...
- credit_guy 6y agoWait a second, this doesn't sound right. According to your wikipedia link, the "Seven Sisters" constellation actually has 9 stars (named after the 7 sisters + parents). They are all visible with the naked eye.
- tiagod 6y agoThe pleiades are a cluster, not a constellation.
- SkittyDog 6y agoFrom the WP article, under "Folklore and Mythology": "Some Greek astronomers considered them to be a distinct constellation, and they are mentioned by Hesiod's Works and Day..." (emphasis mine) So it would appear that they are both. FWIW, I have no idea if there is some astronomical technical jargon distinction between "constellation" and "cluster" that inspires your comment. But to this layman, your correction comes across as pedantix and unnecessary. The term "constellation" is clearly valid, here, as common everyday English is spoken.
- 6y ago
- gandalfian 6y agoSeems to fit with Seveneves novel quite well. Seven woman escaping into space. Wonder if deliberate?
- otabdeveloper4 6y ago> ... May Reach Back 100k Years Or may not. One important fact: people get accolades and sometimes even direct monetary incentives for finding something that is supposedly "oldest of". Nobody gets famous or rich by revising "oldest of" dates to a more recent timeline.
- idlewords 6y agoThis is a profound insight and finally explains why history keeps getting longer.
- ncmncm 6y agoYou miss the point. They could as easily have been seven geese, seven pebbles, seven lakes, seven boats, seven eyes, seven villages, seven brothers... But they are almost everywhere, instead, seven sisters, across ten thousand miles and fifty millennia. If the story is not that old, how did they so frequently turn out sisters? Morphic resonance? Without, you are left with nothing but a mystery. Citing a common tradition draws on the least far-fetched explanation, as science demands. The same applies to stenciled handprints on cave walls from Spain to Sulawesi, and as many millennia.
- akiselev 6y agoThey're anthropomorphising the stars as gods, people, and animals that are familiar to them. Families with seven sisters in a tribe of 150 was probably a relatively common occurrence, far more familiar than animals traveling in groups of seven (none that I can think of that do so globally) or gods in a group of seven who they'd have to have previously imagined or imagine anew upon identifying the constellation. Convergent evolution is very common in biology, which has many more degrees of freedom. Why not in culture too?
- ncmncm 6y agoNotions of "convergent evolution" and "degrees of freedom" fatally undermine your argument. Culture has overwhelmingly more degrees of freedom than biology, which is constrained by needs to survive and also reproduce. Culture can sustain things like Scientology, Anime, and Froot Loops, in some places even simultaneously. Similarly, convergent evolution occurs only where environmental forces, such as a precise ecological niche, drive development into a very narrow range of possibilities with radically limited degrees of freedom. In the total absence of any such constraints, the only viable explanation for detailed similarity across vast distances and dizzying time spans is common heritage.
- hyperpallium2 6y agoTFA is speculative fiction - just enjoy! 100,000 year old stories would predate behavioural modernity, thought to have emerged 80,000 years ago. Maybe eyesight was better 80,000 years ago, so the seven were discernable to the naked eye - combined with zero light and air pollution. OTOH maybe we'll find further evidence to push back behavioural modernity.
- dash2 6y agoPossibly, but the author has gathered quite a bit of evidence for it. Here's his 2017 academic paper on the topic, along with much else: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/6485EEA891C19A2FC6F0C94DBC24DB75/S1323358016000254a.pdf/dawes-review-5-australian-aboriginal-astronomy-and-navigation.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...
- andrewflnr 6y agoBased on an academic article by the same author linked down-thread, the 100k year number is derived from when he thinks humans migrated from Africa. If you think that happened closer to 80kya (wiki estimate is around 60kya), I don't think that changes the fundamentals much.
- dwighttk 6y agoSure Pleione and Atlas used to be a little farther apart, but Maia and Taygeta are were also closer together according to their chart. Why could they tell the latter apart when we can’t tell the former?
- idlewords 6y agoI am sorry to say you might have to go read the linked paper, where this is discussed. The upshot is, visually distinguishing two stars is a function of both their proximity and relative brightness. https://www.dropbox.com/s/np0n4v72bdl37gr/sevensisters.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/np0n4v72bdl37gr/sevensisters.pdf?d...
- nabla9 6y agoI am sorry to say that after reading the paper, I found no discussion of this matter.
- idlewords 6y ago"A second factor, called “glare function" by physiologists, is what prevents you from seeing details next to car headlights pointing at you. The glare function depends on the dynamic range and psf of the human eye. Imperfections in the human eye give it a psf which has a broad base a few arcmin wide (Ginis et al., 2012), which in turn limits the dynamic range. As a result, faint stars cannot be seen within a few arcmin of bright stars... Pleione is five arcmin from the star Atlas, which is about four times brighter than Pleione, and the resulting glare from Atlas prevents most people from seeing Pleione."
- dwighttk 6y agogotcha
- nabla9 6y agoThe distances are very similar but Pleione is much dimmer than either Maia or Taygeta. Apparent magnitudes: Pleione 4.77 - 5.50 Taygeta 4.30 Maia 3.87 (Apparent magnitude is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth, it's inverse logarithmic so smaller number is brighter)
- johndoe42377 6y agoBullshit. We know nothing and have literally no way to know (only speculate) about anything 10k years ago. Besides, every text is being altered at each rewrite (before printing technology) and even no story is told two times exactly the same. Any decent scholar of ancient texts will tell you that. Indian ancient literature is the canonical case study.
- yowlingcat 6y ago> Bullshit. We know nothing and have literally no way to know (only speculate) about anything 10k years ago. I think you're missing the mark here. Advances in archaeogenetics and newly found well preserved specimens have added an enormous amount of detail and color into the origins of anatomically modern humans, even in the past decade or two. I mean, the stone age itself began 2.6 million years ago, and we found that out through archaeological evidence.
- Causality1 6y agoI find it highly doubtful multiple coherent narratives could survive over a hundred thousand year span of oral storytelling.
- njharman 6y agoBut there exists a nightly reminder and guide for the two relevant story points. The count and that count changed.
- Causality1 6y agoTwo similar stories for a distinct group of stars seems like reaching, though. Hundreds of different human civilizations and they found two with the same story for the same constellation. That could be sheer coincidence.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoIn Indian astrology, the lunar mansion of Krittika is the same as Pleiades. In Vedic astrology, there are 12 houses and 27 lunar mansions or nakshatras. They are the daughters of Daksha, one of the progenitors of humans. He was also responsible for the procreation of the universe, stars, gods, demons and all things living. The world is born and destroyed again and again. One day of the creator is one epoch. When he closes his eyes to sleep and rest, a great flood engulfs all the worlds he has created and erases it all. He dreams up the next world and when he wakes up, he assigns a progenitor to recreate that world. Daksha was one such progenitor. He gave his 27 daughters in marriage to Chandra, the moon god. Each one of them is a lunar mansion..or part of what we see as a constellation of star in the night sky. The moon visits each one of them every night. That’s why the lunar calender month is 27. There is also a 28th sister who disappeared. The third daughter is Krittika whose mythology is tied to pleiades. The story goes that Agni, the fire god was the representative of all the gods in heaven. When anyone made a sacrifice, it had to be made to agni who will take it to the heavens and distribute it to all the other gods. All sacrifices to gods were shared amongst them all and the blessings from the gods will be divided equally amongst those who made the sacrifices. They were consigned to the flames of agni and agni ate up the sacrifices. Agni was beautiful and resplendent. He was also single and because of his nature coveted everything and ate everything. Every epoch has Seven Sages. They were the ones who represented humans and made sacrifices on their behalf. The Seven Sages each had a wife. And Agni coveted them all. His flames of desire leapt higher and higher at the sacrifices as he wanted the seven wives for himself. There is also a verse in the vedas that says Agni is the fire with seven tongues. seven flames. Unbeknownst to Agni, one other daughter of Daksha was infatuated with him. She watched him with unblinking eyes as his flames danced for the seven pious wives of the sages. The desire he could never reach. Just like her...because he didn’t even notice her. Her name was Swaha. Being a celestial herself, she had the power to shape shift. So one day, she changed her form to resemble the first of the wives. Agni was delighted. They snuck to a celestial magical grove and had a jolly good time. The next day, Swaha took the form of the second wife and went back to their love nest. And again and again. She has taken the form of all six of wives. But try as she might..she couldn’t transform into the seventh one. Anusuya..the wife was Sage Atri was so chaste that even by sleight of hand and in someone’s imagination, she couldn’t be seen as the illicit lover of a man who wasn’t her husband. So now the secret was out. Swaha was reprimanded and Agni is now smitten with Swaha. But the lovers are together now. The alter egos Swaha created were left behind in the celestial grove but because they can’t wander in a world where the real wives existed, they were prisoners inside the glorious celestial grove. Swaha didn’t trust Agni still and insisted that she will be present too at all sacrifices made to agni henceforth so he wasn’t making side eyes at the sages wives. She becomes the gaping mouth of agni who will swallow all the sacrifices. That’s why..even today..all sacrificial fires are fed with incantations that end with ‘swaha’. It is not a sacrifice if Swaha isn’t present. Meanwhile the six shadow wives live in the grove called Saravana.(sara = thicket of reeds. vana = grove/forest. it was a forest with lakes and a lot of water bodies with thickets of reeds) Shiva and Parvati start visiting it for their love making. Their lovemaking created a spark so bright and hot that it couldn’t be contained in any of the worlds. It was dropped in the cooling waters of Sara Vana. There the krittikas each picked a piece of it and raised them as six babies. When the children were old enough, they merged as one. With six heads and twelve arms to become the warrior god, Muruga aka Kartikeya. The one who came from the krittikas. The sisters feel that they have nothing else to do and ask that they become stars in the heavens. So muruga flings them into the skies and they become the pleiades cluster. They become one. They are now known as Krittika. Many snapshot predictions are possible when krittika star is present in astrological chart. The mythology helps me remember them. Without going into details, Elon musk..for example..has a prominent Krittika. And the snapshot techniques archetype fits perfectly. There are many examples. Tesla, for example..has a moderately similar chart to Elon Musk(and so it was a neat coincidence his star company is called Tesla..they share the same Birth date too altho diff years.)..but it shifts by one nakshatra pada which took his life in an entirely different direction even though they shared ascendents. I like to think that we are all living in a simulation. And I would very much like astrology to be the code that hacks it. But who knows? I am just reading and learning for now. I don’t know exactly what astrology is but I am certainly not dismissive of it anymore. Anyways..that’s the Krittika/Pleiades myth in Indian mythology.
- odyssey7 6y agoAnd the story's key theme of a missing sister, presented as a missing star in the sky, is apparently as salient as ever. Even today in the year 2021, countless people have come together (in their contemporary medium) to wonder and speculate.
- jsrjenkins 6y agoFool The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason. KING LEAR Because they are not eight? Fool Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool. (Shakespeare, /King Lear/, I, v)
- ssr2020 6y agoI found this text from religios text(Islamic) Although the star of Süreyya(pleiades) is many stars, Arabs call Süreyya as a star. It is a community of seven stars. Six of them are visible and one is hidden. People test their eyesight by seeing or not seeing it. And Islamic history is 1400 years old.
- dotancohen 6y agoFrom which text is this? If you are well versed in Arabic star lore, then I would be interested to discuss with you.
- kyawzazaw 6y agoSimilar Myth in my culture too. Burmese.
- bamboozled 6y agoWho actually gets to see stars anymore? 30 years ago seeing stars was a common occurrence for me, now, due to light pollution ?Seems like a rarity.
- MichaelMoser123 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tigosmIryU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tigosmIryU Prof. Martin Sweatman says that the paintings in Göbekli Tepe depicts the fall of a meteorite that caused the younger dryas cooling/ice age. now this calamity occured much earlier than the construction of Göbekli Tepe - but he infers that the paintings refer to the constellation of the stars at the time when the meteorite came down. Another example of palaeoastronomy in action. fascinating...
- MichaelMoser123 6y agoi was thinking: maybe the story of Lot in the Bible (Genesis 18-19) is referring to the same story - a great city destroyed by heavenly fire for its sins would be quite similar to the story that resulted in the religion of Göbekli Tepe.
- smudgy 6y agoBrits pronouncing Merope "muh-rope" and insisting they're right is the most british ever.
- permille42 6y agoRecorded history only goes back to 2600 BC. TLDR summary of article: Plain observation only shows 6 stars not 7 because the 7th is quite dim and close to one of the other stars. 100k years ago it would have been further away from the others. Therefore the story must have originated 100k years ago. Bollocks and bullshit.
- credit_guy 6y agoThe actual preprint article is [1]. It's quite a fun read. I personally find the argument quite weak, but just like a Jules Verne novel, where the science foundation is a bit shaky, at least the argument is good food for thought, food that in this case I find to be quite delicious. First here's a summary of the argument: the Pleiades are a constellation of stars that are part of various myths in various parts of the world. The authors claim that all these myths talk about seven sisters, but since nowadays only 6 stars are visible, and 100k years ago 7 stars were visible, ergo the myths can trace back to a common origin story. Second: what are the Pleiades? They are a cluster (a group of gravitationally bound stars) of about 800 stars, about 450 light years away from us. The vast majority of these starts can only be seen with a telescope. Now let's see what parts of the author's argument are shaky. 1. How many stars are actually visible? According to [2] (which is listed in the preprint's bibliography): "modern observers [..] can typically discern only six stars in the cluster. But that's simply a consequence of a light-filled night sky. With sharp eyes and a clear, dark sky, it's possible to spot up to 12 stars in the Pleiades group." 2. Which 2 of the stars are currently seen as 1? It's Atlas and Pleione. However, in the Greek myth of 7 sisters, these two stars are actually the father and the mother, they are not part of the 7 sisters per se. What the Greeks called the Pleiades actually had 9 stars, the 7 sisters and the parents. Assuming the parents are seen as a single star, a simple way to reconcile the commonality of the 7 number in different myths is that other people saw these 2 stars as 1 too, but simply did not count the faintest of the remaining 7. That faintest of the remaining 7 is a binary star Asterope that is on the boundary of the constellation (and likely to be below the horizon as seen in Australia for most of the year), so its inclusion in the constellation is kind of arbitrary 3. Why are the 2 stars not visible as distinct? The angular separation between them is about 5 minutes of arc. Humans can resolve up to 1 arcminute. Here's a little experiment: "e". Take a look at that e. There are roughly 2 holes in it separated by one horizontal lines. Look at that "e" from a distance, and see how far you can resolve the 2 holes in it. On my computer the horizontal line appears to be about 0.5 mm thick, and I can resolve the letter at about 1 meter distance. At that distance 1 minute of arc subtends about 0.3 mm in length (2pi = 6.28 meters divided by 36060). There you have it, the experiment that shows you can resolve about 1 minute of arc. But if the arcdistance between Pleione and Atlas is 5 arcminutes, why can't we resolve them? The preprint explains that: the faint star (Pleione) is next to the brighter star (Atlas) and we can't distinguish it because of Atlas's glare. It then goes on to say that in such conditions, the minimum distance for people to be able to see Pleione is 3 or 4 minutes. It somehow concludes that because Pleione is at 5 minutes distance, most people can't distinguish it. 4. How about the past? Pleione is a variable star, its magnitude (brighness) changes. Wikipedia lists a magnitude range of 4.8 to 5.5 (currently at 5.05). Is it possible that it was much brighter during the Ancient Greek period? Well, of course it is possible. The preprint states as such: "we cannot discount the possibility that one of the faint stars was much brighter in the past." And then they proceed to just discount that possibility. Instead they go for the hypothesis that 100k years ago the arcdistance between Pleione and Atlas was higher by 3.4 arcminutes. Now, a very solid principle of numerical calculation is to always be skeptical of extrapolations. Interpolations are fine, but when you see an extrapolation, pay extra attention. Here, the authors extrapolate from the astronomical observations made during the last 50 years to 100k years in the past. 3.4 minutes in 100k years correspond to 0.01 arcseconds in 50 years. Do we have this type of precision? Wikipedia [3] claims we can reach an angular resolution of 0.001 arcseconds using telescope arrays, and it's possible we can do even better now (remember the "imaging" of the black hole about 1 year ago?). But did we have this capability 50 years ago? I'm not so sure. [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/np0n4v72bdl37gr/sevensisters.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/np0n4v72bdl37gr/sevensisters.pdf?d... [2] https://www.space.com/pleiades.html https://www.space.com/pleiades.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution#Telescope_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution#Telescope_a...