Aboriginal Astronomy
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The Australian Aborigines were arguably the world's first astronomers. Their complex systems of knowledge and beliefs about the heavenly bodies have evolved as an integral part of a culture that has been handed down through song, dance and ritual for some 40,000 years, predating by many millennia those of the Babylonians, the ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the Indians and the Incas.
For the Aborigines, the stars not only evoked wonder; they also predicted and explained natural occurrences and provided celestial parallels with tribal experiences and behavioural codes.
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The Aborigines' knowledge of the crowded southern sky was probably the most comprehensive possible for people dependent on the naked eye. They made accurate observations, not only of first and second order stars, but even of more inconspicuous fourth-magnitude stars, and in so doing devised a complex seasonal calendar based on the position of the constellations in the sky. Pattern was apparently more important than brightness for the Aborigines , who often identified a small cluster of relatively obscure stars while ignoring more conspicuous single stars.
Colour was also an important factor in the designation of stars. The Aranda tribes of Central Australia distinguished red stars from white, blue, and yellow stars.
The Aborigines also differentiated between the nightly movement of the stars from east to west and the more gradual annual shift of the constellations. From the latter displacement they devised a complex seasonal calendar based on the location of constellations in the sky, particularly at sunrise or sunset. Aboriginal tribes also knew that certain stars lying to the south, namely Iritjinga and the Pointer of the Cross-are visible throughout the year, although their position in the sky varies. This amounts to a discovery that stars within a certain distance of the South Celestial Pole never fall below the horizon.
As hunter-gatherers, dependent for their survival on a knowledge of environmental changes, the Aborigines noted, in particular, the correlation between the movements and patterns of stars and changes in the weather or other events related to the seasonal supply of food. As might be expected, the significance attributed to these sidereal occurrences varies with the diet and lifestyle of different tribes.
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Aboriginal astronomy and its associated legends also had a purpose beyond the environment and collection of food. No less important to the preservation of the tribe as a cultural entity. This cultural entity was the organic relationship believed to exist between natural phenomena and social behaviour, and since many of the legends formulated to emphasise this connection involved the constellations, the night sky served as a periodic reminder of the moral lessons enshrined in the myths. Like the stained glass windows of medieval cathedrals, they provided in effect an illustrated textbook of morality and culture during the thousands of years when the only means of relaying the accumulated wisdom of the tribe was oral tradition.
In common with most thought systems, including western science, the legends which were sung, danced and mimed be the Australian Aborigines represented attempts to understand, predict and hence to obtain some control over the natural world.
Although observation of the stars is accessible to all, the meaning, which the tribe attributed to these observations, was strictly conceptual rather than perceptual. It could not be understood by personal experience or by the intellect, but only through initiation into the tribal lore which stressed the intimate, causal association between physical events and the human dramas of good and evil. Lessons about compassion, brotherhood and respect for land as Mother, the prohibition of incest and adultery and taboos on killing or eating totem animals were nightly reinforced by being enacted in the sky world and thereby established the universal validity of the ethical laws governing the tribe's morality.
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