Seven Brothers and the Cosmic Hunt: European sky in the past

Description

Eesti Kirjandusmuuseumi aastaraamat (Ежегодник Эстонского Литературного Музея) 2009. — Tartu: Eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 2012 [опубликовано в 2013]. — P. 31–69.Reconstructing early European ideas about the night sky we should consider interpretations of the sky objects known across all Northern Hemisphere. Along with idiosyncratic cases, there are several concepts known from Africa to North America. The most widespread Eurasian – North American interpretation of Ursa Major is Seven men with Alkor as a dog or as a younger or weaker person (lad, girl, young woman). The cosmic hunt myth and the interpretation of Belt of Orion in its context probably also emerged somewhere in Central Eurasia and were brought from there to North America and to Africa. In Eurasia those areas where main stars of Ursa Major were identified with seven men and where three stars of Orion were identified with three (rare: one) ungulate animals pierced with an arrow largely overlap but in America they are adjacent. Belt of Orion in context of Cosmic hunt is typical for the Southwest while the motif of Seven men is recorded across the Plains and rarely in the Northeast. The interpretation of the Pleiades as a hen with chickens and of Orion as agricultural tools or harvesters, as a yoke and as a scale could not exist before Neolithic.