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‘Seven Sisters’ Myths May Reach Back 100k Years

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

#201

Post by Keysh »

chmod775 wrote: post #63
gostsamo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is 7 important though? The species didn't have much of a math up until 5000-10000 years ago.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that humans have been able to count since before you'd consider them human. Lots of animals are able to count and it's ridiculous to assume that any individual with even a rudimentary language wouldn't be able to. With which I mean to say that you don't need a formal understanding of 'mathematics' to count. Further there's nothing mathematically super special about the num…

There are, even today, languages that lack words for numbers higher than 2, 3, or 4 -- including a number of Australian languages. This tends to be more true for languages of contemporary hunter-gatherer. (See, e.g., Caleb Everett's Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Culture and references therein, or this article: https://theconversation.com/anumeric-people-what-happens-whe...). Studies of people who are native speakers of such languages actually do have difficulties keeping precise track of different numbers of items, at least at the level of five or more.

(There are Australian languages with more extensive number words, which is probably where the examples of "Pleiades = 7 women" stories come from.)

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

#202

Post by goto11 »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #183
goto11 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

The speech portions of the brain were smaller in Neanderthals, which would have made them appear dimwitted to humans, which is how trolls are often depicted in folklore. They are known to have lived in smaller social groups than humans, and trolls are depicted as living in small groups as well. Neanderthals were larger than humans, and trolls are similarly depicted as large.

You are just picking the characteristics which confirm your hypothesis.

Trolls in Scandinavian folklore can be very different depending on local traditions. They can be small people living underground, human size, or giants living in the the mountains. They can be solitary or living in human-like societies.

Literal quote from the Wikipedia article you link: "Trolls may be described as small, human-like beings or as tall as men depending on the region of origin of the story."

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

#203

Post by posterboy »

lolinder wrote: post #107
nsilvestri wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being technically visible to the naked eye does not mean they are easily discernable. It's like how the Galilean moons are technically visible to the naked eye, but Jupiter's overwhelming brightness makes them nigh on impossible to see except in specific circumstances.

Right, but that they are ever visible to anyone means that the story could just as easily be inspired by the rarely-seen 7th sister, rather than the last-seen-100k-years-ago 7th sister.

A nother comment mentions indigenous Australians.

Who, if I remember correctly, are estimated to have settled about 50kya. There are later intrusions into the peninsula, as it were back then. Oceania was settled even later by boat. The language divide in Australia is overwhelmingly that of earlier indians (if you'll excuse the pun, the land bridge was connected to the Indian subcontinent), with other language families mostly limited to the north end

This I think might strengthen the argument significantly.

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

#204

Post by posterboy »

dd_roger wrote: post #197
lolinder wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but that they are ever visible to anyone means that the story could just as easily be inspired by the rarely-seen 7th sister, rather than the last-seen-100k-years-ago 7th sister.

This is a much more likely explanation but in all non-scientific accademic fields it's usually more important to come up with a narrative that's appealing to the general public or the political class than with an accurate narrative. Hence the explanation that makes the most sense but is less "Wow"-inducing will be swept under the rug. There are plenty of fields where we entertain "mysteries" that have perfectly ratio…

one would like to think the most accurate story was awesome-most precisely because of its accuracy. IMHO you are merely complaining that it isn't precise enough to convince you, though it couldn't be improved much without written accounts?

And then it a sense of incredulity is showing, it's unimaginable, 100,000 kya is unimaginable, as if the world was fashioned in the mesolithic.

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

#205

Post by posterboy »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #164
sradman wrote: post #58

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…

Pleiades myth of the sisters come from Babylonian star catalogues: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_star_catalogues [..] 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 constella…

this MUL ("three stars each") is surely the same as LU.GAL (King), DINGIR (God King), ANU (God of the Sky), AN (Sky), may be "sun" (IIDRC), etc.

It is one of the simpler, more obvious signs to draw. I wouldn't read much into it, although one might argue 6ix was a perfect fit if they could only see six (all most of the time).

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

#206

Post by Keysh »

posterboy wrote: post #203
lolinder wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but that they are ever visible to anyone means that the story could just as easily be inspired by the rarely-seen 7th sister, rather than the last-seen-100k-years-ago 7th sister.

A nother comment mentions indigenous Australians. Who, if I remember correctly, are estimated to have settled about 50kya. There are later intrusions into the peninsula, as it were back then. Oceania was settled even later by boat. The language divide in Australia is overwhelmingly that of earlier indians (if you'll excuse the pun, the land bridge was connected to the Indian subcontinent), with other language familie…

The land bridge connected Australia to New Guinea and the eastern parts of Indonesia, not to India. No one has any idea what the precise relation of Australian languages to any other set of human languages is.

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

#207

Post by pradn »

iamsb wrote: post #97
sundarurfriend wrote: post #44

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.

The Vedas do not mention monkey people (vanaras), but the Mahabharata and the Ramayana do. The Vedas were composed 800-1000 years before these two epics. So the invention of the vanaras probably happened later, perhaps due to influence from indigenous religious ideas or perhaps a new set of myths. Interestingly, the Ramayana only gives vanaras monkey-like features but doesn't identify them as such, so there is some ambiguity about how they are to be represented.

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

#208

Post by wl »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #134
generalizations wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 translat…

> how it even does reenforce that idea. It reinforces “Christ as the son of God” because, if the phrase is translated as “sons of God”, that sets a precedent in the Old Testament that God has sons. The Jews do not believe God has sons. Christians do. So it is in the best interest of Christian translators to translate that phrase as “sons of God”. > but the claim that the translation "sons of god" is specifically wron…

> You’ll never see it translated as “sons of God” in a book translated by Jews.

I just checked a few Jewish translations of Genesis 6:4.

Jewish translations that use "sons of God":

* The Septuagint 3rd century BCE

* JPS Tanakh 1917

* The Living Torah, Aryeh Kaplan 1981

* Richard Elliott Friedman 2001

* Robert Alter 2004

Translations that translate it otherwise:

* A. J. Rosenberg (Judaica Press) 1969

* Everett Fox 1983

* JPS Tanakh 1985

* Stone Edition of the Tanach 1996

* Chaim Miller 2011

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

#209

Post by jelliclesfarm »

posterboy wrote: post #205
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pleiades myth of the sisters come from Babylonian star catalogues: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_star_catalogues [..] 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 constella…

this MUL ("three stars each") is surely the same as LU.GAL (King), DINGIR (God King), ANU (God of the Sky), AN (Sky), may be "sun" (IIDRC), etc. It is one of the simpler, more obvious signs to draw. I wouldn't read much into it, although one might argue 6ix was a perfect fit if they could only see six (all most of the time).

It is explained further down in the wiki link :

[..] The first formal compendia of star lists are the Three Stars Each texts appearing from about the twelfth century BC. They represent a tripartite division of the heavens: the northern hemisphere belonged to Enlil, the equator belonged to Anu, and the southern hemisphere belonged to Enki. The boundaries were at 17 degrees North and South, so that the Sun spent exactly three consecutive months in each third. The enumeration of stars in the Three Stars Each catalogues includes 36 stars, three for each month. The determiner glyph for "constellation" or "star" in these lists is MUL (𒀯), originally a pictograph of three stars, as it were a triplet of AN signs; e. g. the Pleiades are referred to as a "star cluster" or "star of stars" in the lists, written as MUL.MUL, or MULMUL (𒀯𒀯).[..]

Further clarification: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUL.APIN

Also: sun is Ut or Utu in the epic of Gilgamesh in early Mesopotamian pantheon and later became Shamash in Sumerian/Babylonian

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

#210

Post by jelliclesfarm »

mssundaram wrote: post #188
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Muruga archetype along with the Krittika/Pleiades mythology helps me remember how to decode the nakshatra in a birth chart. for example, i will always look for themes like fostering/IVF/sperm donation/adoption/caesarian etc if there is a prominent or strong krittika ..especially in the first pada of 13 degrees 20' of aries. also in taurus but it would be slightly different as taurus is venus ruled rather than mar…

Very interesting regarding a strong krittika. Do you offer readings?

There is an evolution of the soul ashwini to Bharani to krittika.

The soul is untethered and wandering in ashwini...in Bharani it’s bound in the womb, hanging upside down and dependent on the mother for everything. It is undecided and while everyone awaits the arrival...the birth..the fetus chooses when to make its appearance.

In krittika tho’ ..it’s the nakshatra of individuality..the soul is born and possesses independence. It is demanding and curious. The symbol is the knife. It’s the knife that cuts the umbilical cord of the baby to step from a metaphysical existence to a physical existence.

For Krittika prominent charts, the best remedy is to give unselfishly to others. Without calculating. Like agni who was the deliverer of the sacrificial offerings to the gods and humans..his duty being that he has to give equally and fairly to everyone their rightful share. Krittikas will overcome challenges by sharing and being fair.

Another one of my favorite stories to read is the story of Nachiketa and Yama from Katha Upanishad. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachiketa It is the archetype of Krittika and Bharani. (Nachiketa and Yama respectively)

Something beautiful happens in the stories. I started reading all the Puranas and Upanishads with a different perspective after I started studying astrology.

I think ..with enough time..I can map all the stories to make sense of a kind of progression of action and karma. It’s all there...only thing tho’.. it’s coded.

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