Another Angry WomanDec 27, 2022

Something that pure fucks me up is that so many cultures around the world, from Europe to Indigenous Australians describe the Pleiades as a variant on seven sisters/maidens. Only six stars in the cluster are visible to the naked eye. There are stories from these diffuse cultures as to how one "sister" died or was hidden, usually from Orion the hunter.

About 100,000 years ago, a seventh star would have been visible but it moved so naked eye can't see its individual point of light any more.

Show threadAnother Angry WomanDec 27, 2022
It is also kind of wild that Orion is seen as a hunter in so many cultures that hadn't contacted each other for tens of thousands of years, but the shape of the constellation is interpreted so differently, for example Greek myths see it as a hunter standing, wearing a belt, while some Indigenous Australians see three brothers in a canoe.
Show threadProf Stephen Serjeant
@stavvers The first time I saw Orion from the Australian outback I realised it had a bow! Not a modern one, but a two-humped one like in ancient Greece. #LightPollution meant I’d never seen it from the UK
Dec 27, 2022 at 9:51amWeb
Show threadMatt McIrvinDec 27, 2022
@stephenserjeant @stavvers Sometimes that bit is represented as a lion skin that he's holding in one arm, with his other one raising a club.