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MINISODE - The World's Oldest Story

This week, Anna has some big questions about the Pleiades, a group of bright, beautiful stars also known as the Seven Sisters. The myth of seven sisters that were turned into stars is remarkably consistent across multiple cultures. Also, it's always seven sisters, even though you can really only make out six with the naked eye. So what's going on? IS IT ALIENS?? No, of course not. It's much more interesting than that. Tune in to learn just how long humans have been telling each other stories under the stars.

Resources for this episode:

The Founding of the Seven Sisters (Vassar Encyclopedia)

Pleiades (Wikipedia)

How Many Pleiades Can YOU See? (Sky & Telescope)

Marra Wonga: Archaeological and contemporary First Nations interpretations of one of central Queensland’s largest rock art sites (Australian Archaeology)

Why are there Seven Sisters? (Advancing Cultural Astronomy)

The world's oldest story? Astronomers say global myths about 'seven sisters' stars may reach back 100,000 years (The Conversation)

Story Of The "Seven Sisters" Unfolds Across Enormous Ancient Australian Rock Art Site (IFLScience)

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The Dirt Podcast
Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.