Stars and constellations are linked to thousands of legends and myths, but now researchers suggest that one of these stories may be older than expected.
The legend is linked to Pleiadesa set of stars that many cultures call “Seven Sisters” — but only six can be seen with the naked eye.
According to , there are seven stars, but two of them are too close to be distinguished. However, there are 100 thousand yearswould have been visible as distinct stars.
Thus, a group of researchers now believe that the name “Seven Sisters” and the legends are at least that old.
Despite the belief that stars are fixed points, researchers believe that they are “fly through space” at different speeds. This situation is called own movement.
To understand the situation, scientists looked at how the stars lay in the sky and traced their path to see where they would have been in the past.
Two stars (Atlas and Pleione), which are close today, were separated by a greater angular distance 100 thousand years ago. Over time, the two stars converged visually, until it is no longer possible to distinguish them reliably with the naked eye.
In tradition after tradition, the Pleiades are linked to different myths. In Greek mythologyare the daughters of Atlas pursued by a hunter or group of men associated with Orion. Hindu tradition associates them with the wives of the Seven Sages.
They also appear in Talmudnos arabic mythsalready Celtic mythology and even in Australian aboriginal traditionswhere the myth is similar to the Greek.
In almost every story, there are seven sisters. The theory that all of these have a common origin dating back around 100,000 years would explain everything. It is also known that there was little contact between most Australian Aboriginal cultures and the rest of the world for at least 50 thousand years.
Some skeptics argue against making too much of such coincidences. In the end, there is no direct evidence that support this hypothesis, and studies of ancient human culture are rarely clear. There is also the possibility that different cultures acquired it from their neighbors.
There are different ways in which cultures could preserve such stories despite the passage of time. Many indigenous cultures today use rhythm and song as a kind of error correction mechanism.
If you change a word in a poem, the rhythm stops working. It’s not enough to tell a story, you have to tell it correctly, or it won’t work. Furthermore, in many cultures, storytelling is linked to higher status, and learning stories the “correct” way may have been an important rite of passage.
Researchers presented this hypothesis in a book, however, still there is no definitive proof. Therefore, it is possible that we will never know if this belief is really true.
