Interesting article about the Southern Hemisphere night sky, and Australia first astronomers, the Aborigines. Astronomy didnt start with the Greeks. Thousands of years earlier Aboriginal people scanned the night sky, using its secrets to survive the Australian landscape. During the Dreaming, a blind man lived with his wife in the bush. Every day he told his wife to go out and hunt for emu eggs for him to eat. Even though his wife tried hard to please her husband, he was always angry with her, telling her that the eggs were too small. One day while she was out hunting, she came across some very large emu tracks. She thought of her husband and how angry he got, and followed the tracks all the way to the nest. She found a huge emu there and threw stones at it to get at the eggs, but it stood up and ran towards her and killed her. The blind man became hungry and worried about his wife. He felt around the camp until he came across a bush with some berries on it and ate some of them. Suddenly he could see. He made some spears and a woomera and set off to find his wife. He followed her tracks and finally saw the huge emu and the body of his wife. He speared the emu and banished its spirit to the Milky Way, where it can still be seen today. — a story from Papunya, Northern Territory If you look up into the sky tonight, you can still spot the Emu in the Sky. Youve almost certainly been looking at it all your life, but youve probably never seen it. The Emu is stretched across one of the most familiar objects in the night sky, the Milky Way. Look closely at the the Southern Cross and youll see its head as a dark smudge tucked near the bottom left hand corner of the constellation. Its neck passes between the two pointer stars, and its dark body stretches the length of our luminous galaxy. The Emu in the Sky has featured in Aboriginal storytelling for thousands of years. Many different language groups have their own interpretation of the Emus heavenly fate, along with a rich and diverse range of stories about mallee fowl, parrots, fish, stingrays, hunters, men, women, girls and boys. Once you hear these stories, the night sky will never look the same again. And its not just stories youll find — Aboriginal astronomy contains a map to understanding, surviving and living in harmony with this great southern land. Dark patches in the sky Unlike Greek celestial tradition, which focuses almost exclusively on stars, Aboriginal astronomy focuses on the Milky Way and often incorporates the dark patches between stars. The Emu in the Sky, a story common to many Aboriginal groups, is an example of this — its body is made up of the dark patches in the Milky Way. The Boorong people saw the same dark patches as the smoke from the fires of Nurrumbunguttias, the old spirits. The Kaurna people saw the Milky Way — called Wodliparri or hut river — as a large river where a Yura (monster) lives in the dark patches. To the Ngarrindjeri people, the dark shape formed by the Southern Cross is the stingray Nunganari and the pointers are Ngarakani, or sharks. Aboriginal people have been described as the worlds first astronomers. The Yolngu people in Arnhem Land, for example, have dreaming stories that explain tides, eclipses, the rising and setting sun and moon and the changing positions of rising stars and planets throughout the year. In one of their stories, Walu the sun is a woman who lights her fire every morning and scatters red ochre across the clouds, creating dawn. She then carries her torch across the sky, creating daylight. At the end of the day, she descends, puts out her fire, and travels underground through the night back to her morning camp. CSIRO astrophysicist Ray Norris has been gathering and listening to Aboriginal stories about the night sky across the country. One of his favourites is the Yolngu story of the three brothers in a canoe in the Djulpan constellation (known in Greek mythology as Orion the Hunter). The three stars in Orions belt are the brothers sitting side by side, with the stars Betelgeuse and Rigel marking the front and back of the canoe. The stars in Orions nebula represent a fish, and the stars of Orions sword mark out a fishing line trailing behind the canoe. I love it because it actually looks like a canoe when you see it, says Norris. There are many stories about the Orion constellation right across Australia, and they are nearly always about a group of men hunting or fishing, says Norris. Often they are following a group of young women, represented by the stars in the Pleiades cluster in the constellation Taurus. Surprisingly, these stories are very similar to Greek mythology, in which Orion pursues the Pleiades sisters across the sky. Orions nemesis, Scorpius, is also depicted as a scorpion in some Aboriginal stories. For example, one Yolgnu story tells of Bundungu the scorpion, who is gathered with his people along the banks of the Milnguya (Milky Way) with their relatives the Baripari (quoll) and Wahk (crow). Its that sort of thing that fascinates me, the way that different cultures arrive at the same conclusions, says Norris. A celestial serpent Aboriginal dreaming stories may help locate astronomical events — in time and in space — says Duane Hamacher, a PhD student from Macquarie University. Hamacher is gathering Aboriginal stories of comets and meteors — often described as the glowing eye of a celestial serpent flying across the sky — and seeing whether he can use them in conjunction with Google maps to locate the site of previously undiscovered impact craters, like the one at Wolf Creek in Western Australia. He has found a story about a star falling from the sky and causing fire, death and destruction from a place about 100 kilometres outside of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory which seems to correspond with a large, circular structure he has found on Google maps. Ive got my fingers crossed. When we look at it, its heavily eroded, which suggests its millions of years old, but still, if we were able to find an impact crater based on a dreaming story, then thats quite significant The sky as a calendar Aboriginal people would have had a very practical reason for their interest in astronomy: the sky is a calendar that indicates when the seasons are shifting and when certain foods are available, says Roslynn Haynes, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales and author of Explorers of the Southern Sky, a history of Australian astronomy. Constellations appearing in the sky, usually at sunrise or sunset, were very important. They helped [Aboriginal people] predict what was happening in the world around them, says Haynes. For example, at different times of the year the Emu in the Sky is oriented so it appears to be either running or sitting down. Depending upon its position people in the western desert knew it was time to hunt for emus or collect their eggs. When Scorpius was visible in the evening sky towards the end of April people of Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria knew the wet season was over and the dry south-easterly wind marimariga would soon begin to blow. The Boorong people in north western Victoria looked to the mallee fowl constellation, Neilloan (Lyra), to tell them when they should harvest the birds eggs. When Neilloan appeared in the north-west sky around April, they knew the birds would be preparing their mound-like nests. The disappearance of Neilloan in late September or early October meant it was time to start gathering. All of these things were very important as food sources, says Haynes. While the night sky had a very practical use for Aboriginal people, it was also valuable spiritually, as a means of reinforcing culture and community, says Haynes. [Objects in the sky] had stories attached to them to do with the values and morality of the community. So when constellations appeared, the stories were told and those lessons would be ingrained in the younger people. They were interested in the holistic view that it gave them of the world, that the heavens were as close to them as the surrounding earthly environment. Keeping the Aboriginal night sky alive Much of the richness of the Aboriginal night sky has already disappeared, says Norris. Some cultures have been so badly destroyed that its impossible to see whats left, and you just have fragments. Even the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land, who still perform initiation ceremonies to pass the knowledge on, are finding that Aboriginal astronomy doesnt fit easily into the 21st century world. Its disappearing very quickly, says Norris. You have people who dont actually want to go to all the initiations, theyd rather go to uni. Norris says the Yolngu people are addressing this problem, actively discussing within the community about how to keep their culture alive while still giving their children the opportunities they deserve. Meanwhile, researchers are turning to journals and papers of early white Australians, such as explorers, missionaries and early anthropologists, as well as archaeological sites, to unearth long-forgotten records of Aboriginal astronomy. For example, Norris and Hamacher are recording information from a rock site near Geelong in Victoria that seems to line up with the summer and winter solstices — a sort of Australian Stonehenge. Its important to preserve these stories and artefacts as evidence of the interest the worlds first astronomers had in the night sky, says Norris. Were all used to Aboriginal art, didgeridoo and dancing, and often people dont appreciate the depth and complexity and intellect that goes into [Aboriginal stories]. Haynes agrees Aboriginal astronomy can help all Australians think differently about the world — in particular, to consider the intricate connections between living things and the environment. Ecology is a very important way of thinking about the world. In a way, thats what Aboriginal astronomy does, although it draws in the sky as well as the earth, so you have an interconnected universe. Maryke Steffens ABC Science
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 03:58:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015