Why are there Seven Sisters? · HackerPapers discussions

Why are there Seven Sisters? — HN submission

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 02:11:18 GMT

Why are there Seven Sisters?

16 points; 8 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Why are there Seven Sisters? — mentioned by antognini

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 18:06:35 GMT

There is an interesting theory about the Pleiades star cluster [1]. The Pleiades are somewhat unique in that they are a prominent feature of the sky and close to the celestial equator. Because of that, they are visible to every population on Earth, and every culture has developed a story around them. Around 2/3 of cultures have a story in which there are seven things (seven sisters, seven boys, seven chickens, and so forth.). The other 1/3 of cultures have a story in which there are six things. And a surprising number of them have a story in which there were originally seven, but one got lost…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Why are there Seven Sisters? — mentioned by 1-more

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 18:01:07 GMT

> but close enough that we could recognize. A fun thing about star movement is that you can only see six stars in the Pleiades, but there are seven there. There are I guess a bunch of myths about there being seven of something and then one of them getting chased away. A fun theory is that right around when modern humans emerged, we made a nice story about that cluster of seven stars. Then as the stars moved so that two of them look like just one together, we independently made up stories of why there were only six left all around the world. https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.09170 This could be one…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Why are there Seven Sisters? — mentioned by antognini

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 05:09:28 GMT

Yeah, that's a great suggestion. I'm guessing I'll try to talk somewhat about preagricultural astronomy when I go over the astronomy of paleolithic peoples. But you're right that there's a lot we don't know, and even just talking about what we don't know would be interesting. The Seven Sisters stories are fascinating. As I recall something like 60 or 70% of cultures enumerate seven members in their story and the other 30-40% enumerate six. (Maybe I have that backwards.) Even more interesting, a small number of cultures have stories about how there once were seven, but one of the sisters died…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.