I've been reading 'Worlds in Collision' by Immanuel Velikovsky - interesting book if you're drawn to comparative mythology.
What do you make of it? I've been meaning to read it in part to make sense of mythological treatments of Saturn.
‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
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Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
#112Bullshit. We know nothing and have literally no way to know (only speculate) about anything 10k years ago. Besides, every text is being altered at each rewrite (before printing technology) and even no story is told two times exactly the same. Any decent scholar of ancient texts will tell you that. Indian ancient literature is the canonical case study.
> Bullshit. We know nothing and have literally no way to know (only speculate) about anything 10k years ago.
I think you're missing the mark here. Advances in archaeogenetics and newly found well preserved specimens have added an enormous amount of detail and color into the origins of anatomically modern humans, even in the past decade or two. I mean, the stone age itself began 2.6 million years ago, and we found that out through archaeological evidence.
Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't follow. The logo literally has six stars, which is the subject of what we are discussing here.
They’ve identified the same stars, but do the Han or Korean or Japanese have a story about 7 sisters?
Chinese have a story called 天仙配, where a fairy maiden married to a mortal. That girl is called seventh fairy, as she’s the last of 7 sisters.
So it is very similar to the lost Pleiad, but the seventh fairy is taken back by her god father.
Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait a second, this doesn't sound right. According to your wikipedia link, the "Seven Sisters" constellation actually has 9 stars (named after the 7 sisters + parents). They are all visible with the naked eye.
The pleiades are a cluster, not a constellation.
What is the difference?
Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh, I have that same pet theory.
And same. I believe there's also a theory that the neanderthals were smarter than our ancestors of the time. That would also fit the story. I can imagine the homo sapiens of the time interacting with the far stronger and smarter neanderthals and describing them as 'sons of god'. I wonder if that's also where the old Greek myths of Hercules (etc) came from.
“Sons of god” is a translation of the Hebrew by non-Jews and is just plain incorrect. It gets passed around as legit probably because it enforces the idea that Christ is a son of God.
But If you ask Jews, who wrote that section of the Bible, benei elokim translates as something like “those who are free”:
“Who or what exactly are the benei elokim? Who are the nephilim? How are they related to each other? And what does it all mean?
One thing benei elokim does not mean is “sons of G‑d.” In fact, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai would “curse” anyone who translated the term benei elokim as the “sons of G‑d.”1 The word elokim in Scripture, while generally referring to G‑d, is in essence merely an expression of authority.2 Similarly, the term benei does not necessarily mean “sons,” but is often just a title. Benei chorin, for example, means those who are free—not “sons of freedom.”
https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1987422/jewis...
Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
#116This reminded me of a theory came up with as a teenager, that the Vaanaraas of Ramayana (a group to which the famous "monkey god" Hanuman belongs) may actually be an early hominid that had ape-like features, that lived in parallel with humans in different territory. They were intelligent enough to help the human princes in their quest, which got them a place in their story - a story which went on to become an oral tr…
Interesting but I doubt it. Vaanaras do not appear prominently in any of epics/puranas following Ramayana. Only Hanuman is present in Mahabharata and he is clearly living a solitary life when he meets Bheem. By no means expert, so happy to be proven wrong.
That's an interesting point (no idea why you've been downvoted for it). I have a few theories why that might be:
1. Groups like these were more likely to survive if they were isolated and not occupying territory that the (presumably) more sophisticated Homo Sapiens coveted, so maybe they just didn't get interacted with otherwise. Rama had a Vanavasa (forest-living) and a generally weird out-of-pattern life for the time, so had a slightly higher chance of encountering them.
2. If people in later stories did come in contact with them, they were probably trying to expand their territories or otherwise conquer the land. In that case, the stories are going to mythologize them as savage Asuraas, to give further justification to the conquests.
3. We only have a few stories, of unknown time origin, remaining out of hundreds of thousands of stories told by different groups in different places over the millenia. So even if a significant portion of the stories featured Vaanaraas, it's plausible they might all have been lost before they could reach us.
4. In particular, given that such groups were declining in numbers over time, and the fact that more recent stories are more likely to survive, it makes sense that stories featuring them are more likely to have been forgotten and lost to time.
Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the idea of the 100,000 years of memory is plausible, but I think it's likely to persist because the number seven seems to be universally important to humans. People could potentially have superimposed the number seven on the story, as per the rainbow's seven colours and Newton.
Since when is 7 important though? The species didn't have much of a math up until 5000-10000 years ago.
>Since when is 7 important though?
Since one moon phase takes that long.
Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
#118This reminded me of a theory came up with as a teenager, that the Vaanaraas of Ramayana (a group to which the famous "monkey god" Hanuman belongs) may actually be an early hominid that had ape-like features, that lived in parallel with humans in different territory. They were intelligent enough to help the human princes in their quest, which got them a place in their story - a story which went on to become an oral tr…
Some people think the same about the Basajaun [1], a big, hairy hominid from the Basque mythology. The myth says he taught humans to use (some) tools (or humans stole tools from him). Keep in mind the Basque language is so old and rare [2] it's not connected to any Indo-European language.
Of course many also think the same of Yeti, Bigfoot, etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basajaun
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Basque_language
Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
And same. I believe there's also a theory that the neanderthals were smarter than our ancestors of the time. That would also fit the story. I can imagine the homo sapiens of the time interacting with the far stronger and smarter neanderthals and describing them as 'sons of god'. I wonder if that's also where the old Greek myths of Hercules (etc) came from.
“Sons of god” is a translation of the Hebrew by non-Jews and is just plain incorrect. It gets passed around as legit probably because it enforces the idea that Christ is a son of God. But If you ask Jews, who wrote that section of the Bible, benei elokim translates as something like “those who are free”: “Who or what exactly are the benei elokim? Who are the nephilim? How are they related to each other? And what does…
That was an interesting read. Thanks. I'm not sure how the linked article expresses more than an alternate translation, though. It says that benei doesn't "necessarily" translate to sons, which doesn't rule out the translation but merely suggests an alternative. The word elokim also refers generally to God, as it says, but can be translated differently. It's an interesting alternative, but the claim that the translation "sons of god" is specifically wrong only seems to be based on the declaration of a single earlier source.
> It gets passed around as legit probably because it enforces the idea that Christ is a son of God.
I've never heard of that before. Not sure where you would have, or how it even does reenforce that idea.
Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pleiades are a cluster, not a constellation.
From the WP article, under "Folklore and Mythology": "Some Greek astronomers considered them to be a distinct constellation , and they are mentioned by Hesiod's Works and Day..." (emphasis mine) So it would appear that they are both. FWIW, I have no idea if there is some astronomical technical jargon distinction between "constellation" and "cluster" that inspires your comment. But to this layman, your correction come…
There is a difference: a constellation is an area of the sky where some stars appear to belong together to form an image. Their actual distance may be vast.
A cluster on the other hand actually is a group of stars that formed from the same material and are thus very close to each other.
So there is a difference, but it's only a problem to interchange the terms the other way round.