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WE'RE BACK! OOOPS... I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE THIS! |
HANG ON A MINUTE.... |
NOW THAT'S BETTER..... |
We learned so much about the Aborigines |
Did you know that Aboriginal Australians have not just one culture, but about 400 different cultures across Australia, each with its own language, laws, traditions, and stories! |
For many Aboriginal cultures, the night sky is a central repository of stories and law. Songlines can be traced through the sky as well as through the land, and the stories and songs associated with the sky underpin many cultural tenets. |
This cultural astronomy is said to predate the origins of European or Asian astronomy, so that Indigenous Australians have been called the world's first astronomers! |
Most Aboriginal cultures are centred on the idea that the world was created in the "Dreaming" by ancestral spirits who have left their symbols all around us. |
If one can understand these symbols, then one has a complete understanding of the world, of the meaning of life, and of the rules by which one must live - a sort of user manual for existence. |
BUTTERBYE.....WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THESE SERVED AS RULES BY WHICH TO LIVE? |
HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES FOR YOU.... |
Some Aboriginal Australians use the sky as a calendar to tell them when it's time to move to a new place and a new food supply. |
The Boorong people in Victoria knew that when the Mallee-fowl constellation Lyra disappears in October, to "sit with the Sun", it's time to start gathering her eggs on Earth. |
Other groups knew that when Orion first appears in the sky, the Dingo puppies are about to be born. |
Naturally, the night sky is an important chapter of this manual. Specific examples of common threads across Aboriginal cultures include: |
The "Emu in the Sky" |
which consists of dark clouds in the Milky Way, stretching from Scorpius to the Southern Cross, and which features in many Aboriginal cultures right across Australia. |
There are also said to be "Song-Lines" |
They consist of one song, telling one story, that stretchs across Australia, following the sacred paths of Dreaming-spirits, and encompassing many different Aboriginal language groups and cultures. |
Each language group tells its own part of the story in its own way, and yet collectively they assemble to make a coherent whole, which could only be understood in its entirety by an individual who spoke all the languages along its length. |
The Pleiades |
also figures in the Dreamings of several language groups. |
For example, in the central desert region, they are said to be seven sisters fleeing from the unwelcome attentions of a man represented by some of the stars in Orion. |
The close resemblance of this to Greek mythology is believed to be coincidental, and there is no evidence of any cultural connection. |
An interesting question to ponder is to what extent Aboriginal people were interested in the precise motion of the Sun, Moon, planets or stars. |
No one has an answer yet, but it has been suggested that some of the stone arrangements in Victoria may have been used to track the equinoxes and/or solstices. |
Indigenous Australia's oral tradition and religious values are based upon reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime. |
We have much to learn from the Aborigines |
REMEMBER: "The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to look beyond into the impossible!" |
THE NEXT TIME YOU LOOK AT THE STARS,.... TAKE A GOOD LOOK..... ARE THEY TELLING YOU SOMETHING? |
AS MUCH AS I WANT TO CONTINUE... BECAUSE THERE'S SO MUCH MORE! I'VE GOT TO COLLECT THE CREW! |
BUTTERBYE AND ZYTON SIGNING OFF FOR NOW ! |
This article uses material excerpted from WikipediaŽ. Article and photos are distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License |
Music from the Album Signs by Adam Certamen Bownik distributed under the Creative Sampling Plus 1.0 |
