If you live in the northern hemisphere in an area with relatively little light pollution, and you look up at the sky on a clear night sometime between November and February, you will see three prominent constellations overhead. The easiest to find is Orion (traditionally imagined as a hunter wielding a bow), a large constellation which contains two of the brightest stars in the sky, Rigel and Betelgeuse, as well as the line of three bright stars known as “Orion’s belt.” If you follow the line of Orion’s belt, you’ll find Taurus (traditionally imagined as a bull’s head), which includes a cluster of stars shaped like the letter V; these are the Hyades, and at the tip of the left side of this cluster is the very bright red star Aldebaran.
If you follow the path of Orion’s belt even further, past Taurus, you’ll find the Pleiades, a very tight cluster of stars, which form the shape of a tiny dipper. In many cultures around the world, the Pleiades are said to be seven in number and are known as the “Seven Sisters,” but most people with clear eyesight can only make out six of them using the naked eye. Various cultures, including the ancient Greeks and some Indigenous peoples of Australia and the Americas, have told stories to explain why, even though the Pleiades are said to be seven, only six are visible. (With telescopes, astronomers can tell that this cluster actually includes thousands of stars.)
Humans in various cultures around the world have been telling stories about these three constellations (Orion, Taurus, and the Pleiades) for a very, very long time, and myths often associate them together. The question is: How old are the stories that we tell about them? Recently, a pair of researchers has claimed that the myth of the “lost Pleiad” may date as far back as 100,000 years ago, which would make it humanity’s oldest known story. Popular science platforms such as the Museum of Science in Boston and the YouTube channel SciShow have promoted this claim to a mass audience. In this post, I will explain what evidence the claim relies on and why it is almost certainly incorrect.
Continue reading “Is Humanity’s “Oldest Myth” Really 100,000 Years Old?”