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Sir Nedwood ned@noauthority.social

TIL the Pleiades star cluster is known as the "seven sisters" in basically every ancient traditional story around the world. From Greece, to Australia, to India, North America, etc. And yet in all these stories it is recognized as only having 6 stars. If these stories have a common origin, the current estimate for the latest it could have originated is 50,000 years ago.

Sir HarvHat ☕♫ harvhat@noauthority.social

@ned

But that makes no sense. Why would it be called "seven sisters" in basically every ancient traditional story if it only had six stars? Would it not have been called "six sisters"?

Sir Nedwood ned@noauthority.social

@harvhat "Some scientists suggest that these may come from observations back when Pleione was farther from Atlas and more visible as a separate star as far back as 100,000 BC."

Dude 1% one_percent@noauthority.social

@ned @harvhat Well, ackshually...

immobile immobile@poa.st

@ned @harvhat The technique used to time some megalith structures as they are bit off of some star clusters or sun position during solstice. Most interesting.

Sir Nedwood ned@noauthority.social

@immobile @harvhat Using precession to date the Giza complex back to 10,500 BC is one thing. But a consistent myth that has been passed down 100,000 years is absolutely wild. 50 years ago we didn't even think there were anatomically modern humans that old.

sj_zero sj_zero
This is my go-to example for why we should not assume old stories are stupid and have nothing to teach us. Not every old myth is literally true, but we've learned over the past 100 years that there's a shocking amount of accuracy in them, to the point that major anthropological dig sites were found by just going to where the stories told us to look, such as one dig site where we think we found the ancient city of Troy, and another where we found a previously forgotten civilization on Crete which we named the Minoans after the greek myth which suggested its existence.
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immobile immobile@poa.st

@sj_zero @ned @harvhat Hear, hear! And the stories may be allegories, telling some physical event, like fight on the ground, while it has been some celestial occurrence between planets.

Flick 🇬🇧 Flick@spinster.xyz

@sj_zero @ned @harvhat @immobile Isn’t there a Chumash myth that geologists have (with fairly high probability) tied into tectonic activity something like 50,000 years ago?

sj_zero sj_zero
The worst thing the spaniards ever did was burn all the books. I bet there's a lot of interesting stuff we'll never know...

immobile immobile@poa.st

@sj_zero @Flick @harvhat @ned That has been the theme over the history, burn or destroy the libraries of ancient knowledge. Latest been like Iraq and "weapons of mass destruction", which never existed, but lot of historical artifacts were destroyed and stolen, like destroyed Nergal Gate in Iraq (just because).

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-fighters-destruction-of-nineveh-gates-captured-in-before-and-after-photos-a6994886.html