161–170 of 216 posts
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idk about you but when i look at it I see 6. been trying to spot #7, no luck so far.
I imagine hunter-gatherers, whose life depended on their eyesight acuity, would be find it easier to spot than most modern humans do.
This 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…
This 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.
Even though he is depicted as part of the monkey army, he was really known to be a bear. A bear like giant creature.
He appears again in Mahabharata as the possessor of the Syamantaka Gem that was stolen and was in his possession. They live in a cave and hidden from the rest of the people. He is defeated by Krishna and he accepts defeat. He also offer Krishna his daughter Jambavati’s hand in marriage.
In the Puranas ..after the Ramayana war, all the monkeys and bears who lost their lives were brought back to life and they returned to their abode. Mahabharata is to have happened in a different yuga.
Hanuman keeps appearing in all puranas because he is Chiranjeevi..one without death. And hence more of an archetype than a character in every yuga.
The Pleiades[1], also known as the Seven Sisters: > It is among the star clusters nearest to Earth... and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. Only six stars in the cluster are visible to the naked eye yet mythology from several ancient cultures share the idea that one of the seven “sisters" is hidden. The article The world’s oldest story? , originally published in TheConversation [2], state…
[..] Babylonian astronomy collated earlier observations and divinations into sets of Babylonian star catalogues, during and after the Kassite rule over Babylonia. These star catalogues, written in cuneiform script, contained lists of constellations, individual stars, and planets. The constellations were probably collected from various other sources. The earliest catalogue, Three Stars Each, mentions stars of Akkad, of Amurru, of Elam and others. Various sources have theorized a Sumerian origin for these Babylonian constellations, but an Elamite origin has also been proposed.[..]
MUL is ‘three stars each’ and Pleiades was a cluster of stars which is ‘star of stars’. MUL.MUL. While star was depicted as three star(looks like three asterisks), Pleiades was represented as twice that.. two MULs or six stars.
This could be the reason why Pleiades was depicted as six stars even though the cluster has more than 6. Everything came to us from Sumerians tho’
On Sumerian constellations and star names:
http://members.westnet.com.au/gary-david-thompson/page11-4.h...
(I am still reading up on this. Haven’t completed..but pinning the link for ref here if anyone is interested)
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You miss the point. They could as easily have been seven geese, seven pebbles, seven lakes, seven boats, seven eyes, seven villages, seven brothers... But they are almost everywhere, instead, seven sisters, across ten thousand miles and fifty millennia. If the story is not that old, how did they so frequently turn out sisters? Morphic resonance? Without, you are left with nothing but a mystery. Citing a common tradit…
They're anthropomorphising the stars as gods, people, and animals that are familiar to them. Families with seven sisters in a tribe of 150 was probably a relatively common occurrence, far more familiar than animals traveling in groups of seven (none that I can think of that do so globally) or gods in a group of seven who they'd have to have previously imagined or imagine anew upon identifying the constellation. Conve…
Culture has overwhelmingly more degrees of freedom than biology, which is constrained by needs to survive and also reproduce. Culture can sustain things like Scientology, Anime, and Froot Loops, in some places even simultaneously. Similarly, convergent evolution occurs only where environmental forces, such as a precise ecological niche, drive development into a very narrow range of possibilities with radically limited degrees of freedom.
In the total absence of any such constraints, the only viable explanation for detailed similarity across vast distances and dizzying time spans is common heritage.
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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.
A cluster could be treated as a constellation, but not vice versa.
30 years ago seeing stars was a common occurrence for me, now, due to light pollution ?Seems like a rarity.
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I imagine hunter-gatherers, whose life depended on their eyesight acuity, would be find it easier to spot than most modern humans do.
Plus light pollution and air pollution. Maybe some other changes in the atmosphere. And very careful looking. You don't need lenses, just looking through a hole in a leaf could be helpful.
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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…
The opposition to reading any of the Hebrew scriptures as referring to "Sons of god" likely arose as a reaction in Rabbinic Judaism to Christianity, both of which (along with Karaite Judaism) arose out of Second Temple Judaism.
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A third possibility is one of the stars used to be much brighter for whatever reason. Ancient drawings would help locate the 7th star. One would think star charts are a natural subject for inscriptions predating written language.
I would think these astronomers would have considered that possibility. One thing to note is that stars were probably less important prior to the advent of agriculture, at which point tracking the seasons became important.
Sedentary people developed the ability to keep durable records, and to build megalithic structures to track stellar phenomena, sure; but that's ability, rather than importance.