From October to March in the Northern Hemisphere, you can look up and see the Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters. The star cluster is located in the constellation Taurus and consists of more than 1000 stars, but the brightest stars are hot blue shining stars that formed about 100 million years ago.

These stars, like many others, are associated with them in the myths of ancient cultures around the world. What’s interesting is how similar the stories are and why all the stories talk about seven sisters, while six stars are clearly visible to the naked eye.

“In Greek mythology, the Seven Sisters are named after the Pleiades, the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Their father Atlas had to hold down the sky and therefore could not protect his daughters. However, in the chapter of the book, the team investigating the mystery said, “But Zeus saved them from being raped by the hunter Orion “He turned them into stars for us,” he wrote.“The development of cultural astronomy” In 2021.

Indigenous Australian versions of the tale, meanwhile, tell similar tales of a hunter or young man trying to track down a Pleiades female.

“Similarities between the Aboriginal and Greek stories of the Pleiades and Orion include three specific elements: both describe the Pleiades as a group of young maidens, both describe Orion as male, and both describe Orion as having sex with girls on Earth. “He says he works. Ülker.”

The similarities between the two legends are intriguing; because there was virtually no contact between European and Australian Indigenous cultures from the time their common ancestors left Africa around 100,000 BC until 1788, when the British invaded. Similar myths explaining that there were seven sisters but one of them disappeared are also found in African, Asian, Indonesian and Native American cultures.

The team sought an explanation as to why this legend referred to the seventh brightest star visible to the naked eye. After running simulations, they found that 100,000 years ago the seventh star Pleion was visible, but now it is so close to Atlas that it appears as a single star to the naked eye.

“Australians and Europeans were last together around 100,000 years ago. [до нашої ери]The team wrote in their paper that the Pleiades constellation will resemble seven stars. “Given that both cultures refer to them as the Seven Sisters and their stories about them are very similar, the evidence seems to support the hypothesis that the story of the Seven Sisters predates the departure of Australians and Europeans from Africa by 100,000 years. [до нашої ери]”.

There is other evidence of Australian Aboriginal myths that goes back much further. One such legend, handed down by the Gundijmara people of South Australia, concerns a giant who bent down and transformed into a mountain before spewing molten rock from his mouth. Of course, it was believed that this described the eruption of the volcano. In 2020, a team of researchers dated the lava produced by the volcano, which is believed to have inspired it, and found that the eruption occurred 37,000 years ago.

Unfortunately, we will probably never know for sure either legend, but the evidence is still intriguing.

“The stories of the Seven Sisters and Orion are so old that our ancestors could have been telling these stories to each other around campfires in Africa 100,000 years ago?” The team behind the Seven Sisters study reached this conclusion in an article in The Conversation. “Could this be the oldest story in the world?”