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‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

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171–180 of 216 posts

Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

#171

Seven is a common story-telling number. Seven days in a week, sailing the seven seas, the seven wonders of the world, the seven continents, seven deadly sins, etc.

Seven colors. There is a whole spectrum of color, but there are only a handful of colors that most humans distinguish and talk about. It has always seemed odd to me that we elevate Indigo into the spectrum of named colors. However, Newton was fond of the occult, and numerology, and the number seven. He wrote papers about appearances of the number seven in the Bible. I think that Newton made Indigo an official color j…

The seven colors are a consequence of us having 3 distinct photosensitive pigments in our eyes which aren't evenly spaced in terms of the wavelengths to which they are sensitive. If they were perfectly spaced we'd have 6 colors: Red, Anti-dark-blue=Yellow), Green, Anti-red=Cyan, Dark-blue, and Anti-green=Magenta. However because of the shift, what we consider to be true blue is somewhere between dark-blue and cyan, so we have Indigo which is halfway between True-blue and Red, Orange which is Anti-true-blue, magenta is blue-shifted into violet, and we forego cyan as one of the major colors.

Note that different cultures do not actually agree on 7 colors in the spectrum or which colors they are. For example some languages consider green to be a shade of blue or vice versa, or green to be a shade of yellow. Some only distinguish between hot (red-yellow) and cold (green-blue) colors. There are also some non-spectrum basic colors, for example english considers light-red (pink) and dark-orange (brown) to be basic colors, whereas a dark green is just a shade of green; and this also varies by culture.

Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

#172
post #65

I'm surprised the article didn't mention one of the most popular names for the "Seven Sisters," Subaru, the Japanese name and vehicle manufacturer whose logo contains six of the stars.

This has made the brand very popular with lesbians. Subaru has capitalized on it well. https://medium.com/th-ink/how-subarus-became-the-car-for-les...

That is a decent writeup of how Subaru marketed to lesbians, and covers broadly the same grounds as others I've encountered over the years.

Nowhere, of course, does it reference Subaru meaning the Pleiades being one of those reasons, because it isn't.

Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

#173
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What accounts for the missing sister though? If the seventh sister was last visible 50000-100000 years ago, how the myths are trying to account for it now without the memory?

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.

7 is an important number across many cultures which pops up again and again. So is 8 (Eightfold path, 8 days of Hanukka, 8 Beatitudes, 8 Gates of Heaven). So is 6 (6-pointed Star of David, 6 Days of creation, 6 Articles of Belief, 6 Ministries, 666). So is 5. So is 9... There are many more things to be counted than there are numbers to count them with. Saying everyone decided on 7 stars because they just all liked the number 7 doesn't pass the sniff test.

Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

#174
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tigosmIryU Prof. Martin Sweatman says that the paintings in Göbekli Tepe depicts the fall of a meteorite that caused the younger dryas cooling/ice age. now this calamity occured much earlier than the construction of Göbekli Tepe - but he infers that the paintings refer to the constellation of the stars at the time when the meteorite came down. Another example of palaeoastronomy in action. fascinating...

Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

#175
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has made the brand very popular with lesbians. Subaru has capitalized on it well. https://medium.com/th-ink/how-subarus-became-the-car-for-les...

That is a decent writeup of how Subaru marketed to lesbians, and covers broadly the same grounds as others I've encountered over the years. Nowhere, of course, does it reference Subaru meaning the Pleiades being one of those reasons, because it isn't.

It actually is, the Subaru logo is the 7 sisters. It created the affinity for the brand. Market research identified it, and it has of course grown with marketing. It was something I looked into back in the 90’s when I noticed such a high correlation between the two.

I find it very difficult to believe that any car company in the 90’s targeted the market before they realized they were already winning it.

Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indigenous Australians also have incredibly good eyesight, and are probably the people group best preserved in our deeper evolutionary past. See, for example, this article on their special military unit https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-08/prince-harry-may-stru....

Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

#178

I find it highly doubtful multiple coherent narratives could survive over a hundred thousand year span of oral storytelling.

But there exists a nightly reminder and guide for the two relevant story points. The count and that count changed.

Two similar stories for a distinct group of stars seems like reaching, though. Hundreds of different human civilizations and they found two with the same story for the same constellation. That could be sheer coincidence.

Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

#179
post #53

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 might not be quite as outlandish as it sounds, because we now have plenty of evidence that early humans were living alongside and interacting with other archaic homo species. I have a pet (similarly highly speculative) theory that the Nephilim[1] of the Bible might be a earlier oral history of Neanderthals. But I'll just leave it at that, speculation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim

I was raised Christian and I recall this theory being used in a Christian young adult “historical fiction” novel that I once read

Re: ‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given that the Pleiades are, I believe, the only cluster in the sky large enough to act as a constellation, it's certainly not irrational to treat them as both. A cluster could be treated as a constellation, but not vice versa.

This is exactly what the comment you are replying to said.
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