Father Sky

I’ll begin my musings on where I think it really all began, star patterns that proved to be early man’s most reliable timepiece.

In order to survive, humanoids had to be very aware of their environment. Recognizing patterns, whether it be the migrating habits of fish or mammal, or trees losing their leaves shortly before winter comes or even the return of familiar star groups just as the rainy season or dry season was about to arrive. All of that and more was essential to make it through the sparse food times while providing a calendar of sorts for when they could expect fresh food supplies to return.

Just as humans today are likely to utilize multiple data sources to tell time; a wall calendar, a wrist watch, the newspaper as well as their favorite on-line news source, our ancestors also used multiple “news” sources to keep themselves informed. The rutting of deer, the spawning of Salmon and the evening rise of the Pleiades, all foretold the coming of winter. The key was to be observant and not overlook even the simplest of signs. But unlike their terrestrial counterparts, the stars are predictable, precisely so. Salmon may be early or late depending on water temperatures, deer herds may be driven off by wolves, but Taurus (which is where the Pleiades resides) is always preceded by Aries and rises on the same day year after year, generation after generation. All that is required is to be observant and to log those observations (mentally or otherwise) to predict the coming season.

Now the next step is purely conjecture but since humans have the propensity to make familiar objects out of random shapes and angles, (that cloud looks like a rabbit, that boulder looks like a turtle… even the ability to read a phrase like, “jmup ni teh laek”), how hard is it to imagine that a certain pattern of stars looks like a bear? Even better to imagine the shape as something related to the season it foretells, (something related to water with the coming of the rainy season, some crop item for the harvest season, etc). Whether they thought they were honoring the gods by acknowledging the seasonal icons or truly thought the gods made themselves known so they could direct the humans how to live, (or just using the figures as memory triggers), either way… it works.

Perhaps I’ll leave it at that for now. Obviously there is more to say about how these star patterns were perceived by cultures around the world but I wanted to establish why the recognition of the star groupings was vital to early human success.

Check back soon!