The Universal Story of the Seven Pleiades Sisters

The Pleiades is the most obvious cluster to the naked eye in the night sky. This Greek name, according to the Oxford dictionary, probably derives from plein ("to sail") because of the cluster's importance in delimiting the sailing season in the Mediterranean Sea: "the season of navigation began with their heliacal rising". The earliest-known depiction of the Pleiades is the Nebra sky disk, a Northern German Bronze Age artifact of 1600 BC.

According to Greek mythology the Pleiades were seven sisters, whose father was the Titan Atlas. Those were Maia (mother of Hermes), Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope and Merope, the youngest of the Pleiades who faded away because she was becoming mortal as a result of having married Sisyphus.

In my book I discussed how these seven daughters of Atlas "gave birth to prominent sons, others of which became founders of nations and others founders of cities", as Diodorus Siculus put it. I also noted the suspicious coincidence that the Pleiades were described as seven sisters by Australia Aborigines, just like the ancient Greeks described them. So, now is the time to dig a little further into this coincidence.

Strangely enough, the core of the Pleiades story is common through most ancient cultures, found in every single continent. We find it in Europe, Asia, Middle East, North & Sub-Saharan Africa, North & South America, and Oceania. The list of cultures is really long, that is why I only name the continents, but it is really worth taking a look at the Wikipedia page and check out the cultures one by one.

What I refer to as "core of the story" are the following elements, that are found in most cases:

• The Pleiades stars are considered to be siblings, usually young girls.
• They were turned to stars, usually after being hunted by some male antagonist.
• There are seven of them, despite the fact that only six stars can be seen through the naked eye, and the story explains why the seventh can no longer be seen.

The last point is the most bizarre. As noted by scholar Stith Thompson, the constellation was "nearly always imagined" as a group of seven sisters, and their myths explain why there are only six (as mentioned earlier regarding the Greek version of the story). Some scientists suggest that these may come from observations back when Pleione was further from Atlas and more visible as a separate star as far back as 100.000 BC. It is estimated that after 70.000 BC Pleione had moved so close to Atlas that it could not have been distinguished as a separate star. If this is true, it means that the story is really old...

Finally, I would like to comment of the fact that the Pleiades seem to be connected to the water element (sea, ice, rain, etc). This comes as no surprise, as, after all, they are the daughters of Atlas. I already hinted at the role Atlas - through Pleiades and their offspring - played in establishing civilization (founding nations & cities) and it is hard not to make the connection between Atlas and the legendary Atlantis (the advanced sea-faring civilization). This water connection combined with the fact that the Pleiades constellation was so important for ancient cultures and sea-travel (as we saw earlier for the Greeks) really gets you thinking.

Sounds to me like the skeptic's nightmare: either the Pleiades story has a common origin that started at least 70.000 years ago or some prehistoric civilization (Greek or, even worse, Atlantean) spread the Pleiades story in every corner of the globe sometime during prehistory **. I am honestly not sure which explanation is more impressive...

** In case you are thinking there is a third option, that someone could have seen the seventh sister using a primitive lens-like instrument (like a telescope), then congrats but sadly no prize. First of all, scientists would not be happy with the suggestion of a prehistoric telescope. But even if someone had a way to see the seventh star he would have also been able to see even more stars of the Pleiades complex, because there are simply more that cannot be seen by the human eye. Galileo, in the 17th century (results published in 1610 AC), identified 36 stars in total using his basic telescope.