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Because it's the same seven sisters legend as found in many other places around the world. Seven sisters chased into the sky by a hunter, and the seventh siste
by calamari4065 3y ago
Because it's the same seven sisters legend as found in many other places around the world.
Seven sisters chased into the sky by a hunter, and the seventh sister left the sky to marry the hunter.
The aboriginals were isolated from the rest of the world for tens of thousands of years. That their legend is nearly exactly the same as European legends is incredibly unlikely to be coincidence. More likely the legend of the seven sisters is a story that was first told before humans left Africa. All of the Pleiades legends must stem from that original story.
The interesting part isn't that they have a story about the Pleiades, but that it's the exact same story as everyone else. And they've been telling it for tens of thousands of years before ever encountering the Europeans.
- Amezarak 3y agoI am the last person to promote historical criticism over oral and written traditions, but the case is much weaker than what people who repeat this suggest. 1. There's a lot of stars, and they were very important to most every ancient culture on Earth. 2. Our pattern-matching brains are inclined to see vaguely similar things, even across different times and cultures. 3. Even so, there is very little overlap between Aboriginal constellations and other cultures' constellations. 4. The aboriginal Australians do not in fact all recognize the Pleiades. Some don't see it as a group at all. Other aboriginal groups actually note differing numbers of sisters (5-7) and have different stories about them, although the motif of fleeing from different men represented by different astronomical objects is a more common one than not. The case for this is nice to imagine but very weak. It is not the case that "they" have the "exact same story" at all.
- a_gnostic 3y agoCan confirm: My neighbour said "Pleiades" is a word I made up, and insists the only constellation is the "Big Dipper"
- strken 3y agoI don't think the number 7 is a smoking gun: https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/25611/explaining-mathematically-why-most-people-chose-7-when-asked-to-chose-a-number-b https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/25611/explain... It's unremarkable that there are so many legends with 7 whatevers if humans choose it 45% of the time they're asked to guess a random number between 1 and 10. People just really like the number 7.
- Kerb_ 3y agoIsn't it just as likely that people have a social bias towards 7 in part because of the amount of legends with 7 whatevers?
- gitaarik 3y agoBut the stories are about either 6 or 7 stars, or 7 where and then 1 star disappeared after some time. So it's not only the number 7. And the legends are about the Pleiades specifically. So I see more correlation than coincidence.
- Amezarak 3y agoBut there are actually many more stories, which are not about sixes or sevens, and some which don't see them as a group at all. People are selecting only the stories that match.
- basch 3y agoHumans, given the same input (seeing stars), may have a null hypothesis of the same output (story) moreso than expecting the same story to be unlikely random chance or coincidence. The less special and more similar we are, the more I expect isolated cultures to converge on identical stories.