4,073 research outputs found
Comet and Meteorite Traditions of Aboriginal Australians
Of the hundreds of distinct Aboriginal cultures of Australia, many have oral
traditions rich in descriptions and explanations of comets, meteors,
meteorites, airbursts, impact events, and impact craters. These views generally
attribute these phenomena to spirits, death, and bad omens. There are also many
traditions that describe the formation of meteorite craters as well as impact
events that are not known to Western science.Comment: Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in
Non-Western Cultures, 2014. Edited by Helaine Selin. Springer Netherland
"Bridging the Gap" through Australian Cultural Astronomy
For more than 50,000 years, Indigenous Australians have incorporated
celestial events into their oral traditions and used the motions of celestial
bodies for navigation, time-keeping, food economics, and social structure. In
this paper, we explore the ways in which Aboriginal people made careful
observations of the sky, measurements of celestial bodies, and incorporated
astronomical events into complex oral traditions by searching for written
records of time-keeping using celestial bodies, the use of rising and setting
stars as indicators of special events, recorded observations of variable stars,
the solar cycle, and lunar phases (including ocean tides and eclipses) in oral
tradition, as well as astronomical measurements of the equinox, solstice, and
cardinal points.Comment: Proceedings of IAU Symposium 278, Oxford IX International Symposium
on Archaeoastronomy, International Society for Archaeoastronomy & Astronomy
in Culture (ISAAC), held in Lima, Peru, 5-9 January 2011. 9 pages, 4 images,
1 table (Accepted
Comets in Australian Aboriginal Astronomy
We present 25 accounts of comets from 40 Australian Aboriginal communities,
citing both supernatural perceptions of comets and historical accounts of
bright comets. Historical and ethnographic descriptions include the Great
Comets of 1843, 1861, 1901, 1910, and 1927. We describe the perceptions of
comets in Aboriginal societies and show that they are typically associated with
fear, death, omens, malevolent spirits, and evil magic, consistent with many
cultures around the world. We also provide a list of words for comets in 16
different Aboriginal languages.Comment: Accepted in the "Journal for Astronomical History & Heritage", 17
Pages, 6 Figures, 1 Tabl
Orientations of linear stone arrangements in New South Wales
We test the hypothesis that Aboriginal linear stone arrangements in New South
Wales (NSW) are oriented to cardinal directions. We accomplish this by
measuring the azimuths of stone arrangements described in site cards from the
NSW Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System. We then survey a subset
of these sites to test the accuracy of information recorded on the site cards.
We find a preference recorded in the site cards for cardinal orientations among
azimuths. The field surveys show that the site cards are reasonably accurate,
but the surveyors probably did not correct for magnetic declinations. Using
Monte Carlo statistics, we show that these preferred orientations did not occur
by chance and that Aboriginal people deliberately aligned these arrangements to
the approximate cardinal directions. We briefly explore possible reasons for
these preferred orientations and highlight the need for future work.Comment: Australian Archaeology, Volume 75 (December 2012), accepte
Wurdi Youang: an Australian Aboriginal stone arrangement with possible solar indications
Wurdi Youang is an egg-shaped Aboriginal stone arrangement in Victoria,
Australia. Here we present a new survey of the site, and show that its major
axis is aligned within a few degrees of east-west. We confirm a previous
hypothesis that it contains alignments to the position on the horizon of the
setting sun at the equinox and the solstices, and show that two independent
sets of indicators are aligned in these directions. We show that these
alignments are unlikely to have arisen by chance, and instead the builders of
this stone arrangement appear to have deliberately aligned the site on
astronomically significant positions.Comment: Accepted by Rock Art Researc
Observations of red-giant variable stars by Aboriginal Australians
Aboriginal Australians carefully observe the properties and positions of
stars, including both overt and subtle changes in their brightness, for
subsistence and social application. These observations are encoded in oral
tradition. I examine two Aboriginal oral traditions from South Australia that
describe the periodic changing brightness in three pulsating, red-giant
variable stars: Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), and
Antares (Alpha Scorpii). The Australian Aboriginal accounts stand as the only
known descriptions of pulsating variable stars in any Indigenous oral tradition
in the world. Researchers examining these oral traditions over the last
century, including anthropologists and astronomers, missed the description of
these stars as being variable in nature as the ethnographic record contained
several misidentifications of stars and celestial objects. Arguably,
ethnographers working on Indigenous Knowledge Systems should have academic
training in both the natural and social sciences.Comment: The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2018
Astronomical Symbolism in Australian Aboriginal Rock Art
Traditional Aboriginal Australian cultures include a significant astronomical
component, perpetuated through oral tradition and ceremony. This knowledge has
practical navigational and calendrical functions, and sometimes extends to a
deep understanding of the motion of objects in the sky. Here we explore whether
this astronomical tradition is reflected in the rock art of Aboriginal
Australians. We find several plausible examples of depictions of astronomical
figures and symbols, and also evidence that astronomical observations were used
to set out stone arrangements. However, we recognise that the case is not yet
strong enough to make an unequivocal statement, and describe our plans for
further research.Comment: Accepted in the journal "Rock Art Research" (2010). 10 pages, 9
Figure
Australian Aboriginal Geomythology: Eyewitness Accounts of Cosmic Impacts?
Descriptions of cosmic impacts and meteorite falls are found throughout
Australian Aboriginal oral traditions. In some cases, these texts describe the
impact event in detail, sometimes citing the location, suggesting that the
events were witnessed. We explore whether cosmic impacts and meteorite falls
may have been witnessed by Aboriginal Australians and incorporated into their
oral traditions. We discuss the complications and bias in recording and
analysing oral texts but suggest that these texts may be used both to locate
new impact structures or meteorites and model observed impact events. We find
that, while detailed Aboriginal descriptions of cosmic impacts are abundant in
the literature, there is currently no physical evidence connecting these
accounts to impact events currently known to Western science.Comment: Submitted to "Archaeoastronomy: The Journal of Astronomy in Culture",
51 pages, 6 Figures, 6 Table
Precise measurement of the gluon fragmentation function and a comparison of the scaling violation in gluon and quark jets
Parametric study of variable renewable energy integration in Europe: Advantages and costs of transmission grid extensions
- …