Look at the night sky in December, and you will see a cluster of beautiful stars – the Pleiades or the “seven sisters”. Look a little closer, and you will probably count six stars. So, where’s the missing sister?
Click start to play today’s Crossword, where “Maori” is the answer to one of the clues. New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people are one of the cultures around the world that share the story of the seven sisters.
Some believe the stories around the sisters date back 100,000 years, to a time where the constellation looked quite different from what it looks like today.
In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of the Titan named Atlas. Forced to hold the sky up for eternity, he was unable to tend to or protect his many daughters. So, the thunder deity Zeus found a solution to saving them from the hunter Orion (you can see the constellation of Orion, right next to Pleiades, in close pursuit of the seven sisters).
Zeus transformed the sisters into stars. But one of the seven sisters went on to fall in love with a mortal, and went into hiding – hence the reason why there are only six stars visible today.
From Greece, all the way to Australia, there is a similar story that exists. According to Aboriginal culture, the Pleiades were a group of young girls, and they are often associated with women’s ceremonies in Australia. And Orion is considered to be a villain, a “hunter of women”.
Similar stories can be found in European, African, Asian, Indonesian and Native American cultures. But how did they spread?
Anthropologists used to think Europeans brought the Greek story to Australia, where it was adapted by the indigenous people to suit their own myths and motifs. But the Aboriginal stories, it was later found, were much older than their European counterparts. There was little contact between Australian Aboriginal people and the rest of the world for at least 50,000 years – so how do they all share the same stories?
Now, according to a December 2020 report in Australia-based nonprofit publishing website The Conversation, anthropologists think the story of the seven sisters could be about 100,000 years old. Since all of humanity originated in the continent of Africa, the stories of the seven sisters could have originated from there, long before migrations took people to far corners of the globe. Could they have carried the story of the seven sisters with them, as they travelled across the world?
It's looking more and more likely.
What do you think? Play today’s Crossword and tell us at games@gulfnews.com.
