A Most Remarkable Story

#05—Is this the world's oldest story?

Welcome to Mind Flexing, your fortnightly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.

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It must have been frustrating for Pleione and her daughters to be pursued by the hulk of a hunter Orion for seven long years. As handsome as he was, they just weren’t interested. I could only imagine the seven captivatingly beautiful mountain nymphs—Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Asterope, and Merope—had had it up to here with men’s advances. Everyone knew their father, the Titan Atlas, had his hands full (quite literally, he had been forced by Zeus to hold up the heavens for eternity) and that the young women were left vulnerable. The eldest daughter, Maia, had been raped by the king of the gods, Zeus (well, they like to say ‘seduced’, but she was asleep and hiding from him in a cave, so I’ll go with the former), impregnating her with a son, Hermes. And the remaining sisters fared no better, except for Merope, who was the only pleiad to have escaped the clutches of the gods, marrying a mortal.

Now, Orion was out hunting one day and chanced upon Pleione with her daughters and fell in love with them—all of them. At least, ‘love’ is how the stories describe his desire; lust would be more accurate. The women didn’t want a bar of it. It just so happened that the seven sisters were ‘virgin’ attendants to the goddess Artemis, and she was becoming increasingly frustrated with men targeting her help. So, after seven years Artemis appealed to Zeus (yes, that Zeus) to help the sisters escape the ravenous clutches of Orion. Zeus agreed and turned them into stars. Unfortunately, that didn’t help them for long because when Orion was killed by a scorpion, Zeus turned him (and the scorpion) into constellations, which was very convenient for Orion who wasted no time in tracking down the Pleiades. To this day, you can see those poor Seven Sisters still running across the sky with Orion in hot pursuit, night after night after night.

The Pleiades, also known as The Seven Sisters. Image by NASA.

A fine story, Alia. But it’s a well-known myth and not that remarkable, and you promised us remarkable.

Bear with me; I don’t like to break promises. Let’s dig a little deeper.

A story spreads

There are various versions of this Greek myth, but the crux is the same: a man pursues seven sisters, who ascended into the heavens to escape him. These stories, written roughly around 800 to 700 BCE and which likely have a much older oral tradition, have similarities with myths from around the world, particularly throughout Europe and North America: one academic suggests there are more than 90 similar motifs.

That’s not surprising. The Pleiades, a frosted cloud cluster of stars that twinkle more beautifully than the mountain-nymphs themselves, is easily identifiable in the night sky (although, less so for city dwellers with their yellow washed-out heavens).

But it’s the myth’s similarities to stories told among the First Nation’s peoples of Australia—the oldest continuing cultures on earth—that has raised eyebrows.

The star cluster at the centre of all these stories has shone bright through the night for 100 million years, which is relatively young as far as stars go. To think, many of the famous dinosaurs of the Triassic and Jurassic Period had long vanished before the Pleiades burst brightly into existence.

But for humans, these diamonds of the night sky have always been there, twinkling bewitchingly above the early homo sapiens who first evolved some 300,000 years ago. Those early humans would have looked at the lights of the night with wonder, and over time, they would have noticed things. They would have noticed patterns, repetitions, synchronisations, and we know that at some point, they learnt to read them. Celestial movements were our reference of time, our calendar, our clock; they told us when to sow our seeds, when to reap the harvest, when to hunt the beast, and importantly, when not to. They were our satnav, showing us the way across the seas and over continents. They were our nighttime Netflix, our library, our ancestors, our religion, our gods, and our heaven. Our lives and our understanding of our world were intwined with the heavens. Everything was connected. Everything is connected, we’ve just forgotten.

The oldest story in existence?

And so the theory goes that when homo sapiens began to migrate out of Africa 100,000 years ago, they took their star stories with them. As they tread for centuries across the earth, the stories evolved with them, but one in particular remained identifiable—the story of the Seven Sisters. This remarkable theory was published in The Conversation in 2020 by Professor Ray Norris, a British/Australian astronomer in the School of Science at Western Sydney University, and with CSIRO Astronomy & Space Science, and his idea has become quite popular on the internet.

The Seven Sisters, watercolour by Alia Parker.

Because worlds apart from ancient Greece across space and time in Australia, survive some strikingly similar and much older stories of the Seven Sisters. The Seven Sisters is an incredibly important Dreaming story for Australia’s First Nations cultures for it depicts a major songline that stretches across the continent. The songline, in its simplest description, acts as a verbal map—a navigational tool that describes a pathway across an entire landmass, including information needed to survive. As extraordinary as that is, the Seven Sisters story is much more encompassing than a map alone. It recounts the story of ancestral beings, tying in elements of family and spirituality; it describes the creation of Country and its sacred sites, it contains cultural lessons; lessons about the troubles that arise when law is broken, and lessons on how to cluster together to overcome adversity.

A saga for the ages

The importance of this saga is exquisitely explained by Miles Franklin-winning author Alexis Wright, a member of the Waanyi Nation from the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. In an essay published in Emergence Magazine, she said:

“The Seven Sisters sacred songline, the depth of which is known only by the traditional land owners, is a mighty story, linked with the night sky, that has lived forever and can be read in its sacred places over thousands of kilometers. It travels over a vast and wondrous ancient landscape, an ever-changing arid garden of rich flora and fauna; over the important sacred sites of the traveling creation story, in rock holes, sand hills, sand plains, creeks, soaks, gullies, caves, anthills, grasslands, spinifex landscapes; and in the desert winds of this ancient country that is forever changing and is always alive and powerful. But this creation story is much vaster, reaching into infinite space, time, and shapes, and can never be understood in a generalized way. Different parts of the story are associated with creation sites in various parts of the country—places where this story belongs, where its deep meanings have been passed down through the ages to its custodians to keep the land sacred.”

As in ancient Greece, the story of the Seven Sisters has many versions in Australia, each attuned to the Country they’re told on.

One of these many, many stories is shared among the Desert Peoples. It commonly recounts the story of the Kungkarangkalpa (Seven Sisters) Tjukurrpa (Dreaming).

When the Kungkarangkalpa, who were ancestral beings and sky people, descended to earth, they became the first women men had ever seen, and men were taken with desire and pursued them. The women beat them off with their digging sticks, but one, an evil spirit man, Wati (man) Nyiru, continued to stalk them. Nyiru had fallen deeply in love with the sisters and wanted to take one as his wife, but the union was forbidden because he was the wrong skin name (which represents bloodlines and indicates who is allowed to marry). But Nyiru continued to chase them, shapeshifting and playing tricks in an attempt to catch them. At one point, the sisters sought refuge in a cave, camping there the night. But Nyiru knew their whereabouts and spied on them. The sisters used their digging sticks to dig a hole at the back of the cave to escape.

The pursuit continued across the deserts of Australia, crossing the lands of the Martu, the Anangu, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra peoples. As the women fled, they created rock holes, sandhills and rocky outcrops throughout the landscape to evade Nyiru. Eventually, they created a rock hole filled with water that went deep underground and resurfaced on the other side of a hill. The women dived into the water and flew out the other side and into the sky. Nyiru followed them into the water, but by the time he resurfaced, he was too late to catch them. Nyiru can still be seen to the south of the Seven Sisters chasing them across the sky, night after night after night. You might know him as Orion.

Connecting the dots

Is this story, which possibly pre-dates the Greek myth of the Plieades by tens of thousands of years, the same story? Is it, as Norris has suggested, the oldest story on earth, dating back 100,000 years to when humans first began to disperse from Africa?

It’s a wonderful theory, and it has all the possibility of being true. But it’s not a flawless theory, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever prove or disprove it. Norris himself calls it “an interesting hypothesis” based on “two bits of circumstantial evidence."

There are thousands of stories about the star cluster in question. For some, it’s a hen with chicks, for others it’s a flock of birds, seven brothers, seven boys, seven puppies, and one of my favourites—six wives who were banished by their husbands for eating too many sweet onions. For those who have read my Infinite monkey theorem post, you would see that it’s only natural that more than one culture would describe them as sisters.

Astronomer and archaeo-historian Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge told Live Science there was too much scope for chance to say that Norris’ hypothesis is likely. He said by chance alone any given constellation will be associated with the masculine or feminine, and "about one-quarter of that time, Orion will be masculine and the Pleiades will be female". 

The Pleiades, painting by Elihu Vedder, 1885.

Putting aside the likeness between the Greek myths and the Dreaming stories of Australia, there is another interesting coincidence that Norris points to as connecting the stories: the star cluster is most frequently referred to as being a cluster of seven, but many myths around the world—be they about sisters or something other—refer to the seventh star being lost, or missing, disappearing, hiding, or dimming.

Norris hypothesises that today, only six stars are visible to the human eye, but that 100,000 years ago, two of the stars, Pleione and Atlas, would have appeared further apart making them easier to discern. Schaefer dismisses this theory and says Norris relied on outdated stellar positioning data to form this model, and that correct data places the two stars much closer, meaning there would be little change in their appearance over the past 100,000 years.

I’m no astronomical expert and can’t provide any insight into which scientist is correct. However, I do see some holes in the claim that only six of the seven stars remain visible to the unaided eye, despite this information being popularly spread across the internet.

The Pleiades cluster is in fact made up of around 1,000 stars and many astronomical websites state that under the right conditions—when the sky is dark, the moon is new, and the atmosphere clear of clouds, pollution, humidity, and heat—that 7, 10 or even up to 14 stars can be seen by those with good eyesight. Given this, it is entirely possible that under dark pre-industrialised skies, the number of stars most commonly visible fluctuated between seven and six. Regardless of the reason, the fact so many myths around the world include an additional story to explain why only six stars are visible, is fascinating.

It’s always been us, and the stars

Is it all coincidental? Or is the story of the Seven Sisters, as Norris suggests, the oldest story on earth, dating back at least 100,000 years?

Science and chance may prevent us from saying yes, but the romantic, creative and writer in me says, absolutely—yes.

Yes, because humans have a remarkable 300,000-year history on this planet. Yes, because while we largely don’t remember those 300,000 years, we were nevertheless thinking, learning, and solving. Yes, because we humans are clever; we have always been clever. Our minds are predominantly the same, having already evolved to their current size 200,000 years ago.

Is it possible that a story from 100,000 years ago could have survived, evolved and moved across continents? Absolutely yes, because our ancestors are far more remarkable than we give them credit for. And when those remarkable early humans looked to the night sky, they saw a dazzling cluster of twinkling stars, probably seven, and they didn’t sit in silence—they told stories about them. And a good story can stand the test of time.

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