Australia's first astronomers
Submitted by coldrum on Friday, 18 September 2009 Page Views: 8511
Other ArchaeologyCountry: Australia Thousands of years earlier Aboriginal people scanned the night sky, using its secrets to survive the Australian landscape.During the Dreaming, a blind man lived with his wife in the bush. Every day he told his wife to go out and hunt for emu eggs for him to eat. Even though his wife tried hard to please her husband, he was always angry with her, telling her that the eggs were too small.
One day while she was out hunting, she came across some very large emu tracks. She thought of her husband and how angry he got, and followed the tracks all the way to the nest. She found a huge emu there and threw stones at it to get at the eggs, but it stood up and ran towards her and killed her.
The blind man became hungry and worried about his wife. He felt around the camp until he came across a bush with some berries on it and ate some of them. Suddenly he could see. He made some spears and a woomera and set off to find his wife. He followed her tracks and finally saw the huge emu and the body of his wife. He speared the emu and banished its spirit to the Milky Way, where it can still be seen today.
— a story from Papunya, Northern Territory
If you look up into the sky tonight, you can still spot the Emu in the Sky. You've almost certainly been looking at it all your life, but you've probably never seen it.
The Emu is stretched across one of the most familiar objects in the night sky, the Milky Way. Look closely at the the Southern Cross and you'll see its head as a dark smudge tucked near the bottom left hand corner of the constellation. Its neck passes between the two pointer stars, and its dark body stretches the length of our luminous galaxy.
The Emu in the Sky has featured in Aboriginal storytelling for thousands of years.
Read more at ABC
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