The Ancients - The First Astronomers

Episode Date: November 7, 2021

For thousands of years indigenous Australians, the longest living culture on Earth, have been fascinated by the stars. In this episode, Gamilaraay man and ANU astrophysics graduate Peter Swanton shines a light on Australian Indigenous Astronomy and the great depth of knowledge surrounding it: from the multi-layered story about the Southern Cross to the unique study of the 'Dark Emu' constellation to how Torres Strait islanders used the phases of the Moon for weather predictions and seasons.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's episode, well, I am super excited to share this podcast with you. We are going to Australia to talk all about Indigenous Australian astronomy. We're going to be talking about several different

constellations. We're going to be talking about several different constellations, we're going to be looking at stories associated with these constellations and we're also going to be looking at how indigenous Australians used astronomy to learn more about the world around them, for instance in regards to seasons and in regards to weather. Now joining me to talk through all of this and more I was delighted to get on the podcast Peter Swanton from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Pete is an absolute joy to talk to and I hope you enjoy. Peter, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. No worries. Thanks for having me, Tristan.

Peter, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. No worries. Thanks for having me, Tristan. You're very welcome indeed. I mean, Indigenous Australian astronomy, this is something which stretches back thousands of years. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, people have been looking at the stars like human beings do, and it's just a fascination that we've had. And being the longest living culture here on Earth,

it's something that has a real depth of knowledge to it. And it's absolutely fascinating for me to be able to explore that and to even come here and share that with you today. Well, really looking forward to sharing that today. I mean, the world's first astronomers. And Peter, before we start, I do appreciate we need to do an acknowledgement of country. I mean, first of all, what is this? And then go ahead. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. So an acknowledgement of country is actually deeply ingrained within our tradition, and it's closely tied to a welcome to country. And so we can think of that as so

traditionally when someone would go on to another person's country. So now Australia is, you know, it's one big continent, one country, but that's not the real Australia. So traditionally, we had hundreds of countries on this landmass. And if you wanted to visit someone else, well, the traditional custodians of that land would welcome you to their country by performing a welcome to country ceremony. And this would be to protect you spiritually while they would look after you physically as you walked across the lands. And in return, those travelers would thank the traditional custodians and they would look after you physically as you walked across the lands. And in return, those travelers would thank the traditional custodians and they would acknowledge them in return. And so

this acknowledgement of country then is something that stems from that. And so now I'll just, I'll give a quick acknowledgement of country, firstly in my language, which is Gamilaroi, and then I'll give the English translation afterwards. I'm standing here today on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. I acknowledge their elders, I acknowledge their ancestors, and I acknowledge the people of this land. Thanks very much for that Peter and you mentioned their Gamilaroi background so talk to us a bit more about your Indigenous Australian background. Yeah sure so my name's Peter Swanton I'm a Gamilaroi man so for those of you that are familiar with the Australian country so Gamilaroi country would be north-west of New South Wales so it goes through areas like

Gaduga and sort of way out into the west. And then it just goes up just across the Queensland border, a little place called Hebel. It comes back down in a place called Gundawindi. Then it goes down through areas like Tamworth, Morey. So if you pull up a map, you can sort of see where that is. And it's actually quite a large chunk of that northwest New South Wales country there. I mean, absolutely, Peter. That is a huge area. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the biggest ones, one of the biggest countries there is. So it borders Waradjuri, which is another big country. And then you got a few of the big ones in the central desert there as well. But

it's definitely up there in terms of size, for sure. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for that background and acknowledgement to country. Welcome to country. But now if we go to astronomy and indigenous Australian astronomy, first off, our sources for this topic, what sources do we have when looking at indigenous Australian astronomy and how it stretches back thousands of years? Yeah, so when we're looking at this, you know, all of this information comes from the elders, first and foremost. A lot of the stuff that the public has access to now has all been done by sort of non-Indigenous, you know, anthropologists, archaeologists, linguists over the years. They've gone out, they've recorded conversations and stories and stuff like that. But the real

source of it now and the stuff that I'm looking to do in my work over the next few years and probably my lifetime at this point will really come from the elders and the communities and those sort of sources of their oral tradition and continuing those oral traditions. So this is oral traditions, these stories related to astronomy, they've been passed down through generation after generation after generation among these various communities. Yeah, so this was the main way in which information was passed from one generation to the next. And so within these stories, it's actually just a way of encoding information so that the next generation has access to that information, because it has a lot of things that are very important for the culture to survive. And like

we've said, you know, this is a culture that's gone on for 65,000 years plus. And so you've got to find a way to pass that important information on from one generation to the next. And that's why we do it through these oral traditions. And Peter, as we will go on to during this podcast interview, the stories relating to astronomy, the Aboriginal stories, they're brilliant stories, but they're also easy to understand. Was that meant to be? Yeah, so a lot of the stuff, like I said, that's out there

was done by non-Indigenous academics, essentially. Whereas within our culture, there's very much a sort of a structural hierarchy to it, because no one person could possibly know all of the information. And so your role and your sort of position within the society, within the culture, within your group and your family in that, sort of dictated the knowledge that you can know. And so as a non-Indigenous person going into the community, you've essentially got the base level of what you can know. So a lot of the stories that aimed at children, those that haven't been initiated and those sort of things, so they seem really easy to approach and very easily understandable. And that's because it's essentially

pitched at a children's level, at an uninitiated level. And would we have different stories related to astronomy depending upon which community we visited? Yeah, absolutely. So you'll find that a lot of them, they refer to things that are here on Earth. And a big part of astronomy, right, is that connection between what we see in the sky and that connection being reflected here on Earth. And so obviously what's reflected here on earth and what you can sort of relate those stories to depends on where you are so later on we'll talk about stories of the emu and some other animals and perhaps trees and stuff like that whereas in other parts of the country those animals and those trees they don't appear so it wouldn't make sense for them to

include those animals and those trees in their stories whereas they would have their stories which related to the animals and trees that were native to their area. Well, as you say, we'll definitely get into that as we go on. And just one more question before we go into the first of these main constellations, which we're going to talk about, is I guess an archaeological approach for myself in looking at the archaeological record. For looking at the stars, for looking at these constellations for these ancient indigenous Australians, do we know whether they used any types of equipment or was it just with the naked eye? Yeah, now this was all naked eye astronomy. So all of the stuff that we'll talk about in here, you can go out on a clear night if you're lucky. And depending on where you are in

the world, you may or may not be able to see them because obviously there's a difference, slight differences between the Southern and northern hemisphere so um things like the southern cross and that are sort of unique to the southern hemisphere much like the fact that we can't see the north star here and that sort of stuff so yeah but you did mention orion and the pleiades so i'm looking forward to having a look at that one after this podcast interview yeah so there are definitely some commonalities and that's really cool because then we can explore the similarities across cultures and really look at that connection to the sky yeah that's what we want to hear that connection now let's delve into these four main constellations and you mentioned

it right there let's kick off with the southern cross what's this what's the story behind this yeah so this is my favorite constellation to start talking about this, particularly because a lot of my audiences are based here in Australia. And it's obviously quite iconic. If you know the Australian flag, the Southern Cross is on the Australian flag. So most of the audiences that I talk to immediately know what I'm talking about when I refer to the Southern Cross. And it's also a really important one because it really goes to show the connection of the information that I was talking about that are contained within these stories. So like I said, I'll first I'll tell the story and then we'll sort of try and break it down after that. And the story of the Southern Cross is actually

the story of the first man to die on earth. And so in the beginning, there were two men and a woman and they were taught how to live off the earth. So they were shown the plants that would provide them with the food, the watering holes where they could get water and everything that they needed to survive. But then as the years went on, the earth began to change. And the watering holes began to dry up. The trees stopped providing the food. And it got to the point where one of the men and the woman,

they were so desperate that they seen this wallaby hopping by. And they were like, oh, I want to kill and eat that wallaby. Like, I'm so desperate for food. And the third man, he goes, you can't do that. The wallaby hopping by and they were like oh i want to kill and eat that wallaby like i'm so desperate for food and the third man he goes you can't do that the wallaby is our totem we don't kill and eat our totems but the first man and the woman they were so desperate they killed this wallaby and they ate it and this caused a lot of distress for the third man and so he ran and he ran and he ran until he couldn't run anymore and he fell at the base of the red gum tree which is yaran it's The Gamilaroi word for red gum tree is Yaran. And that's our name for the Southern Cross constellation. And the man that lived within the Yaran, the red gum tree, there was a spirit living within the tree. And he seen that the man had done the right thing,

that he hadn't eaten his totem. And so he opened up the trunk of the tree and he took the man's body into the tree trunk and he took the tree up into the sky. And then as the tree sort of faded into the background, all that were left were the eyes of the spirit and the eyes of the man. And they make up the four main stars of the Southern Cross constellation. So break down this story.

What does this all mean? It is quite a story. Yeah, well, there's another part to it. Because if you know the Southern Cross constellation, you might know that there's two other quite prominent stars that are related to the Southern Cross constellation. And those are called the pointer stars, one of which is Alpha Centauri, which is actually the closest star to our sun. And they're two bright stars, because the Uran was actually home to two white cockatoos. And seeing their home being taken up into the sky, they chased it up there as well.

And if you actually look at the Southern Cross and these two pointer stars throughout the year, as the sky sort of rotates, the two pointer stars sort of follow the Southern Cross constellation across the sky, as if these two white cockatoos are forever chasing their home across the night sky. So break down this story then for us, Peter, of the Southern Cross, the main thing, and these two cockatoo stars nearby. Yeah, absolutely. So we can look at this in terms of some levels, so we can sort of break it down. And the first level of this story, it explains the physical existence of things. So it explains the existence of the Southern Cross constellation in the sky and how that

came to be in the sky. It also explains why like when you strike a red gum tree that it bleeds red, representing the blood of the first man to die. And why when you stand beneath the red gum tree and the wind passes through the tree, you hear that howling of the spirit that lives within the tree. And then we can look at the second level of this. So the second level, it explains sort of important law and ceremonial aspects of our society. So it explains some things around burial law and the importance of the red gum tree and the way in which your sort of spirit is taken on into the afterlife as you sort of actually move through the trunk of the Iran as you go up into the sky. And then there's the third level of this then explains the relationship between us as people

and the greater environment. And so that explains the importance of totems and why we don't eat the totems and the way in which we sort of interact with our environment and we treat our environment with respect and moving on to the next constellation after the southern cross you mentioned the southern cross is one of your favorites well this definitely has become one of my new favourites, the dark emu constellation. Peter, take it away. What is this? Yeah, so I like to start again, like I said, with the Southern Cross because it's familiar, but it's familiar in more ways than one. Because when we think of a constellation, right, we think of sort of connecting the dots between the stars, right, using the stars and we make a picture out of the connections and we draw lines between them. But an important sort of aspect of Aboriginal astronomy and Indigenous astronomy here is this idea of dark constellations. So instead of using the stars, we actually use

those dark patches between the stars to make the constellations. And the emu, the dark emu story, is a real powerful example of this. And so it's actually contained within the Milky Way. So here in the Southern Hemisphere in the winter, you see the full stretch of the Milky Way across the night sky. It's a wonderful sight if you're lucky enough to live in a dark enough spot where you can really get those dark features. So you can sort of picture the emu. So it starts with its head is what's called the Coalsack Nebula, which is actually near the Southern Cross constellation itself. And then it sort of runs right down the middle of the Milky Way. And then it's sort of like the main bulge of the Milky Way in the middle, sort of the body of the emu,

and then it tails off down the end. And the appearance of this emu actually tells us what's happening here on Earth. So this is going back to that sort of initial belief that what's in the sky is reflected here on Earth. So we can use what we see in the sky to tell us what's happening here on Earth. And the dark emu is a good example of that because we use this one as a bit of a calendar. And so how do you use it as a calendar? Yeah, so the Milky Way and the emu itself sort of appears at first early in the year. So sort of around April or May, that's when you start to get that emu sort of stretched right across the sky and if you actually see it it almost looks like

an emu in full sprint as if it's sort of running and so what this signifies to us is that if the female emu chasing the male emu so that's how we knew it was breeding season and that meant that there were emu eggs out there and so we could go out and we could hunt the emu eggs as a source of food. And as time went on how did this shape in the sky how did it change and how this influenced ancient indigenous Australian people? So then sort of again the sky sort of rotates sort of like the constellation with the southern cross one and again the sky sort of moves and so does the emu and then eventually instead of being sort of full stretch across the sky now it's sort of got its head pointed down towards the earth. It's sort of going vertically down now and you can no longer see the legs.

So all you've got now is sort of the head and the body. And this signified to us the male emu sitting on the nest. And so this was the point where it's getting to the middle of the year now. So this is June, July, August sort of time. And then that means that the eggs are beginning to hatch. And so that means that the eggs are beginning to hatch. And so that means we need to, at some point very soon, stop hunting those eggs so that the emu population lives on and we've got a sustainable food source to get us through to next year. And this really clever use of this dark emu constellation, of dark constellations as a whole, this sounds very unique to Indigenous Australian astronomy compared to, let's say, ancient Greek astronomy or astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere.

Yeah, so it comes back to the cultural need for astronomy. So for us, it was very much about using that memory technique, right? That idea of connecting what you need to know to something that you can see and something that you can point out and something that can visually remind you of what's important and what's going on here. Because if you forgot some of these things, then that wouldn't be very good. And it might end up leading to problems, not having enough food and not knowing where to go and when to go to do things. I've also got the name Gwargay in my notes. What's the story behind this, Peter? I've also got the name Gwargay in my notes. What's the story behind this, Peter? Yeah, so Gwargay is the Gamilaroi word for the dark emu in the sky.

So that's his name is Gwargay. Yeah, so the word emu in Gamilaroi is Dinohan. So Gwargay is actually a very special one, which just represents that dark emu constellation in the sky. It's absolutely fascinating how that constellation, that appearance of the milky way how it changes for me had been this almost outstretched bird with the legs with the full body and that to that quite nestled over emu right at the bottom of the night sky are those like the two complete ends of the spectrum as it were as the year goes on no so then it sort of continued on from there even more. And so eventually the sky would move even more. And eventually the Milky Way gets very low in the sky. And so at this point, you can't see the head anymore. It's just sort of the back end, the body of the emu sort of just

appearing above the horizon. And so this happens very late in the year. So this is October, November. And so what this actually signified was the emu with its head in the watering hole. So that's how we knew that the watering holes were full, but it was getting into the dry season now. And so we needed to make those preparations before the dry season came in. And eventually the watering holes will dry up very soon. Pete, that's really interesting indeed. Like those three different stages almost of this dark emu constellation. And moving on from that to talk about another constellation,

new constellation and moving on from that to talk about another constellation another area where looking at things in the sky can tell you more about what's happening on earth and these are the moon phases what are these yeah so in a sort of western sense we can think about like moon phases so you've got the new moon that's where you don't see any of the moon at all so that's when the moon is sort of entirely in the earth's shadow because the moon doesn't have any light of its own. It just reflects the sunlight to us. And then your first sort of phase is that sort of crescent moon. And then it gets to like a half moon and then it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger then until you get to the full moon and then it goes back again. And so we had in our different, had different phases of the moon as well. And one of my favorite ones is actually from the Torres Strait Islands, which is the very tip of Australia

here. It's the set of islands between the main continent of Australia and Papua New Guinea. And they've got, obviously, a really rich connection to the sky. They had, you know, used for navigations, for navigating on the oceans between islands and doing all of this stuff. And obviously we know now in Western science that there's this connection between the moon and the tides and the seasons. And there's some really cool artwork for anyone that's interested to look up that I'm going to sort of try and describe a little bit here. It's by Uncle Sigar Passy. So he actually did this artwork and this sort of connecting story of the Torres Strait. And so they have one, so you can sort of imagine, so the seasons are sort of created by the tilt of the earth. So as the earth sort of tilts one way, you get more sun in the northern

hemisphere and less in the southern hemisphere. So it's summer in the north, winter in the south. And then again, it tilts the other way. So you get more sun in the south and less in the north, and then the seasons sort of flip. And so you can imagine that as that earth is tilting, well, things in the sky are also tilting the way that we see them. And so the first picture that Uncle Seeger paints is called Meb Metalog M. And so you can think of the crescent shaped moon as sort of a bowl in the sky. And so at this point, their crescent-shaped moon as sort of a bowl in the sky. And so at this point, their story goes that the moon is sort of like a bowl, and it's actually filling up with rain.

And in the rest of his sort of artwork, you've got these large cumulus clouds and this very rough, choppy water. And so what this actually signified was the start of their dry season. And so that bowl, this crescent-shaped moon filling up with rain was actually not letting any of the rain get here to Earth. And then his second picture is the same sort of style, but instead, because the seasons changed and that Earth's tilted, the moon has actually tilted on its side now. And so we've got these thin cirrus clouds and this very calm, sort of no white tops on this water here anymore and this moon sort of tipped on its side and that's the moon sort of tipping all of that rainwater out now so that meant that the monsoon season was incoming now and then we're going to get those really heavy rains

and it's just a really cool story for me because especially if you can see the artwork right there's this in western societies there's this sort of art versus science idea right where they almost sort of try to oppose each other whereas in our culture they're very much one and the same and so we've got a really cool connection between the sort of art of our culture where we've sort of you know been well established for many years now and these scientific observations sort of in this world because to us there is no separation of the arts and sciences they're one and the same this link between arts and sciences you say which is really really cool and at the same time it sounds it must have been incredibly important for the Torres Strait Islanders

for Aboriginal Australians this looking at what the moon looks like and looking at that to learn more about the weather what's going to happen the seasons this was incredibly important for their way of life yeah absolutely when you're going out onto the ocean you don't want to be going out in the middle of a monsoon season right like that would just be disastrous so being able to make those connections again between what you see in the sky to tell you what's happening here on earth is a really powerful sort of demonstration of the sort of need for these knowledges to be incorporated into these stories. I mean, absolutely. And you look at that area of the world and you look at, let's say, like the ancient Polynesians not too far away and their use of navigation with the stars and everything like that.

It sounds like it's something very similar with the Torres Strait Islanders, too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And absolutely essential to their way of life and sort of having that connection to the ocean and knowing what's happening at any one time to make sure that, again, you can make plans for that, to know that you won't be able to go out and perhaps travel between islands during the monsoon season. So you've got to make sure that you get to where you need to be before that happens and knowing, okay, well, I see this in the sky. I know this is the time of year and it's that long-term observation right which is something that we do in science like science is all about

making observations and recording those observations and making them repeatable right and so this is a powerful example of what we now call in western science the scientific method demonstrated within these oral traditions that have been around for thousands of years absolutely that's absolutely fascinating and mind-blowing how far back these oral traditions that have been around for thousands of years. Absolutely. That's absolutely fascinating and mind-blowing how far back those oral traditions stretch. Hello. If you're enjoying this podcast,

then I know you're going to be fascinated by the new episodes of the history hit Warfare podcast the polionic battles and Cold War confrontations to the Normandy landings and 9-11. We reveal new perspectives on how war has shaped and changed our modern world. I'm your host, James Rogers, and each week, twice a week, I team up with fellow historians, military veterans, journalists and experts from around the world to bring you inspiring leaders. If the crossroads had fallen, then what Napoleon would have achieved is he would have severed the communications between the Allied force and the Prussian force. And there wouldn't have been a Waterloo. It would have been as simple as that. Revolutionary technologies. At the time the weapons were tested, there was this perception of great risk and great fear during the arms race that meant that these countries disregarded these communities' health and well-being

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cross coming to be and everything else in the sky most of them come from here on earth and a lot of stories they start you know with just animals and that being here on earth and so a lot of them have you know animal stories or they have human tied stories to them i swingamillroy the word for moon is gillay and so gillay and Ualiyai. So Ualiyai and Gamilaroi is sort of these two neighboring, they're very sort of closely tied cultures. They had a lot of sort of working together. So in their traditions, it's called Baloo. And Baloo was actually a man that lived here on earth. And so he was actually the person that was in charge of making girl babies. And he was helped by Juan the crow.

And so one day Juan decided that he wanted to use the power of making girl babies to also bring back loved ones from the dead. And Baloo said, no, look, we can't do that. We can't, like, that's not right to do something like that. And so that actually annoyed Juan. And he decided one day that he wanted to play a trick on Baloo to get back at him. And so he asked Baloo to go and pick some fruit up in this tree and Baloo agreed. And as Baloo was in the tree, Juan sort of grew the tree really high and Baloo actually got stuck up in the sky and he actually became the moon at that point. So there's all these sort of, a lot of the stuff, it actually, why it's in the sky actually comes from connections here on earth. earth again repeating that reflection of what's in the sky is reflected here on earth yeah

it's really interesting to think of the moon if the moon was once a grumpy man you know who's just evolved to be the moon it's quite a story peter going on from that then i need to ask the next thing and this seems really cool a really big big one. Peter, the variable stars. What are these? Yeah, this is one of my favorite stories. And it's the one that I like to end on when I do my presentations and stuff like that, because this is when we're really starting to demonstrate the powerful scientific knowledge that's contained within traditional knowledge.

And variable stars so they're stars that can vary on brightness by very large magnitudes on what i'll call astronomically short periods of time because astronomy time is totally different to our time like you know it's something that'll happen soon it could happen in the next 10 000 years so astronomically short time periods these stars can vary on. I mean, that can be, you know, days to weeks to months. So it is very short in a sort of astronomical sense. And it's something that really hasn't been explored in Western science only for the last sort of couple of hundred years. So even going back to, you know, philosophers like

Aristotle and stuff like that, there was nothing within their sort of talkings of astronomy and stuff like that that actually contained anything on variability of stars. So even, you know, 16th, 17th century Western astronomy didn't have this as a concept. And there's actually a story from the Kakatha people here in South Australia, which actually explores this property of variable stars. And it uses the constellation that we spoke about earlier, Orion. And much like his Greek counterpart, this is also the story of a fearsome hunter named Nairuna. Now, Nairuna was a fearsome hunter, but he also wasn't a very good man. He was a bit of a womanizer. He was a bit, you know, sort of full of himself, just not a very good person. And one day

he decides that he wants to take one of the sisters, so the sisters of the Ugarulia, and they're represented by the Pleiades star cluster. So you may have heard of like the seven sisters story. It's quite a common sort of cluster that's associated with these seven sisters. And again, we've got a group of sisters here. And he decides that he wants to take the younger sister to be his wife. And so there's sort of this pursuit across the sky as that he wants to take the younger sister to be his wife. And so there's sort of this pursuit across the sky as he sort of chases the sisters and he's sort of getting word of this, the eldest sister, Kambuguda, she actually won't allow it. So she actually places herself between Nairuna and Kambuguda. And so she's represented by the

Hyades cluster, which is actually in between Orion and the Pleiades. And she sort of starts to taunt Nairuna and won't let him past. And so this angers Nairuna. And so he raises his club and his club is actually filled with fire magic. This fire magic sort of flares up. And that's interesting because the club of Orion, so Orion is sort of its main star, its most bright star is actually Betelgeuse. And Betelgeuse is one of these giant red variable stars that actually varies in brightness

quite a lot. And so he raises his club, which is filled with this fire magic. But Kamboguta actually has fire magic of her own. And that's represented by the star Aldebaran, which is another one of these giant red variable stars, and that's in her foot. So she raises her foot in magical defense, and so you've got this back-and-forth flaring of this fire magic between Iruna and Kambuguda. And for me, it's just a really powerful demonstration of these observations of variable stars,

something that in Western science is something that's very at the forefront of research that astronomers and astrophysicists are doing today i mean absolutely peter from i was going to ask but i think you explained it there already was that if they were already looking at orion and the pleiades a couple of thousand years ago what's the difference what's the variable stars in that with looking at aboriginal astronomy but i think you summed it up there. It's not all of those stars. It's the other stars which are related to it, this Betelgeuse one and all of that, which is what separates,

shall we say, indigenous Australian astronomy from Western astronomy there. Yeah, absolutely. It's those sort of subtleties that sort of come from continued observations of these things, right? And it's, again, just noticing those changes and then just recording them, which is what we do in science now. And is this where the awesome word supernova comes into play? Yes. So supernova is obviously, it's absolutely fascinating topic. It's one of my favorite ones. I'm at the Australian National University here in Canberra. So our vice chancellor

actually won a Nobel Prize in astrophysics for his work with type 1a supernova. So he actually showed that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. It was this month, actually the 10 year anniversary of his Nobel Prize. He's a good friend of mine as well. He's a huge supporter of what I do. And really, I'm very lucky to have his support and being able to do things like this and share this stuff. So, yes, supernova can come from these sort of stars like Betelgeuse. And in fact, Betelgeuse might very well be our best chance for people living today to actually see a supernova go off with the naked eye. Like there's so many of these things that actually go off that you would expect that in any galaxy, just like the Milky Way, one supernova should go off about every hundred years. Now, we haven't had a supernova go off in the Milky Way since 1604. So technically,

we're about 300 years or so overdue for a supernova. And one of the best candidates is actually Betelgeuse. And it was in the news at the start of 2020. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it actually had one of those dimming events. It actually got down to about half its brightness in the matter of sort of a week or so. And it got everyone really excited because people thought, oh, Betelgeuse is going to go boom. Yeah. So there is evidence of observations of these things like supernova coming up as guest stars so they're sort of these stars that weren't there and then all of a sudden there was a big explosion this new star appeared in the sky peter i find it absolutely fascinating the observations of these types of stars like

beetlejuice has been observed for thousands of years on the australian continent that just for someone like me who is absolutely next to no knowledge on astronomy at all and it's just finding all of this chat so so interesting it blows your mind away yeah it blows my mind as well like I love what I do and and it's because I get to experience all of this and learn all about this and sort of really bring together a lot of different worlds and sort of you know a lot of what I worlds and sort of, you know, a lot of what I want to do is actually just open up that dialogue, right? So just take what we've got within Indigenous sort of sciences and Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous philosophies and sort of

find ways to open those dialogues with Western science and actually the power when you actually combine those two worlds rather than try and think of them as competing or superior or inferior. When you actually combine that knowledge, you're just getting a richer and a more broader understanding of where we are and where we've been and where we're going to go into the future. I mean, absolutely, Peter. I've got a basic question now, but I think it's important and really interesting when it's stated. Is that looking at, let's say, Nairuna in the southern hemisphere in Australia compared to looking at it in the United Kingdom or somewhere in the northern hemisphere, looking at this constellation, it would look very different depending on where you were in the world. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So if you look at like a picture of Orion or Nairuna

taken from Australia and one taken from the UK, they're actually flipped upside down. And like I said, I had the same experience myself when I went to the US for the first time in 2018. And I seen the moon upside down and it threw me off for a whole afternoon. I didn't know my whole, literally my whole world had been flipped upside down. So yeah, it's really sort of fascinating. And to think about, like you said, two different groups of people in two different parts of the world looking at the same part of the sky, seeing two different things and yet coming to such a closely sort of connected story. These two stories of the idea of the hunters and their features and all of that being very closely related, despite the fact that one of them is looking at it upside down, and they're in two different parts of the world. And it's just amazing the sort of the connections that you can then make and open those dialogues. Absolutely. Yeah, that connection between ancient Greek and

Aboriginal astronomy in that case is amazing, really, to talk about. And if we therefore move on to another area that I'd like to talk about which is it's not a constellation but it's an important event in the sky which I'm sure many of us have seen or maybe not seen maybe not this one I don't know if there's much of a difference here this is just my lack of knowledge coming to the fore here which I'll happily admit and that is a solar eclipse what is a solar eclipse and how important an event was this for ancient Indigenous Australians? Yes, so solar eclipses are the rarer of the two eclipses. So you've got the solar eclipse and the lunar eclipse.

And so a solar eclipse is when the moon sort of passes between the Earth and the sun. That's when the moon sort of blocks out all the light of the sun. You get that cool little solar halo sort of thing if you're lucky enough to see a total solar eclipse and they're actually not as common as you might think so they happen quite frequently but whether or not you're actually able to see one at your point where you are in the world when it's actually happening is actually quite rare i mean for any sort of one point on the earth it would only maybe happen every 400 years or so. So it can actually be quite rare to actually see one. So if you have got to see one, yeah, you can consider yourself quite lucky for sure. But they do appear in Aboriginal astronomy. And actually, there's a

cool story that actually relates to Baloo, who we spoke about before. Because when he was actually up in the sky, he actually caught the eye of the sun. So the sun is a woman and her name's Yai. And so she actually wanted to have a relationship with Baloo. But Baloo wasn't really interested in that. He had no interest in being in a relationship and sort of being rejected by Baloo that actually made Yai very angry. So she decided to chase Baloo across the sky. So they actually come together at this point of this solar eclipse. And that's when Yai actually finally catches up to Baloo and sort of wants to get her revenge on Baloo to say the least. But the spirits that actually hold up the sky, they don't want her to kill Baloo because

obviously he has an important role to play in the sky. And so they forced them apart. And so that's when you actually see the end of the solar eclipse and so they do actually appear within aboriginal astronomy and that's a story from ualiyah country yeah i love that story poor baloo poor baloo indeed i mean it begs the question therefore is there any story linked to a lunar eclipse there's not a lot not a lot in sort of public knowledge and i think that's because a lot of the stuff around the sort of lunar eclipse has some dark connotations to it. So perhaps something that would be, you know, reserved for those that are initiated. Yes, there's a lot of stuff around bad omens and death and disease and those sort of things. So, yeah, there's not a lot of public knowledge on that.

And, you know, I think it's just purely because of the ma 15 plus or something like that so yeah okay fair enough indeed then i mean we've talked about constellations we've talked about the moon we've talked about the sun we haven't really yet talked about other planets but in aboriginal astronomy and let's say for instance i've got the planet Venus. What was the importance of Venus to Indigenous Australians? Yes, so Venus was a really interesting one. And there are stories that connect it to that. And much like now it's referred to as the evening star. And so that's a common theme. And so a lot of, there was a lot of ceremonial stuff around Venus. So there was one ceremony in Gamilaroa Ualai stuff, when it appeared as the evening star

that a fire was lit, and it was lit each night until Venus had reappeared as the morning star. And that's when the ceremonies would begin and the fire could be extinguished. Yeah, and there's a lot, there's sort of connections between the planets. And one of those ones earlier, so there was actually a coming together of two Indigenous groups, the Gamilaraay people, they have opal fields in their country. And so they would actually bring this blue-green opal, which would represent Venus. And then from a group from sort of middle of Queensland, they actually had the red opal, and that would actually represent Mars. And they would actually come together and actually meet and bring one of the opals together. And that was said to be the eyes of Malian and the creator being sort of coming together here on Earth as they are in the sky.

So obviously they had observations of these planets. They realized that the planets don't behave like the other stars in the sky. And so there was a lot of sort of important ceremonial aspects to the planets and their positions in the sky for sure. ceremonial aspects to the planets and their positions in the sky, for sure. I mean, I'm guessing it's no coincidence that you also mentioned Mars there, that the two planets which seem to have this main focus to ancient indigenous Australians' astronomy are the two planets which are closest to Earth, because you can see very clearly with the naked eye. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And obviously Venus is the brightest object besides the sun and the moon in the sky.

So, yeah, it's quite prominent. And Mars obviously stands out because it's that very red color. It looks like a red star and it's sort of very distinguished because of the way that it looks for sure. Do you look at that? I had no idea that Venus was the brightest object in the solar system apart from the sun. That's super cool. I don't suppose there's anything related to Mercury or Jupiter or is that going too far away? No. No.

No. Mercury is really hard to see even with a telescope just because it's so close to the sun. Usually you've got to see it either right at sunrise or right at sunset. And you've really only got a very small window before you're just going to be looking at the sun or it's going to disappear below the horizon. So, yeah, it's a very hard planet to look at even now. And there are stories around Jupiter and Saturn so those are other two prominent ones as well but the other ones sort of out beyond that that you don't see them with the naked eye at all so fair enough the

extent of my knowledge is that I can name the order of the planets but not much more than that that's super interesting to hear especially the prime importance of venus and mars especially now going back to earth i've got to ask quickly about of course we talked about oral tradition and passing down through communities through generation after generation but we also seem to see also perhaps there's art there's rock art which reflects some of these stories which very much talks about astronomy yeah so there's examples of that all around the country and again they're usually at places of cultural significance, so ceremony sites and they're usually there to depict something that may reflect an important time of year, positioning of the stars to know that that's an important time for the ceremony and stuff like

that. So those were there to sort of show the importance of the area and the time of year and sort of what was happening in the sky again to let us know what's here on earth and i haven't actually got the pleasure of experiencing a rock art site firsthand yet but hopefully very soon i'll be able to get to some sites like that and really just be able to take that in would be fascinating yeah hopefully very very soon indeed i'm very jealous of that upcoming opportunity if we start wrapping up all that we've been talking about whether it's the rock art where these constellations and their importance it really does once again doesn't it really emphasizes the important cultural role of astronomy for Indigenous Australians and a role and importance that now stretches back thousands of years. Yeah, absolutely.

And yeah, like I've said, like there is no separation between culture and science for us. They are one in the same. And so while there is the definite cultural implications for this, the astronomy side of it is very much as important as the cultural side and vice versa. So there is no separation for us. And that's a big part of our philosophy. And that is that everything's sort of related, everything's connected. And to understand them all is vital to continuing your culture and continuing your survival. And preserving that, of course, of paramount importance. And also, how can we use indigenous astronomy, let's say bisected alongside Western astronomy today

in the whole field of modern astronomy to move the whole field forwards to learn more? Yeah. And so again, that's opening up those dialogues and sort of finding those areas where we can sort of talk and sort of make those connections. And if we go back to supernova, for example, so supernova 393. So it's called SN393, for those of you that are interested in looking it up and doing a bit of reading about it. But it's named 393 because that was actually the year that it was recordedly observed in sort of Chinese oral traditions. So they found a recording within Chinese oral traditions from the year 393. from the year 393. And then they actually went out with our new telescopes and actually found the remnants of this supernova based on the positioning and all of the information that was contained within this Chinese traditional knowledge, you know, from thousands of years ago.

You know, this is very early century stuff. And there's been all sorts of ones like that potentially recorded within Aboriginal astronomy as well. You know, there's stories from Arnhem Land, which is sort of Northern Territory, so Darwin sort of area of Australia, which looks at stars that are in a very similar location to SN393, and what we know is like Nova Scorpius 1437 as well. So they appeared in Scorpius, so Scorpio, the constellation there, which is actually very close to the center of the Milky Way as well, and where they actually describe the positions of the stars now and the positions of the nebulas now was actually where these nova had gone off in the past. And so

perhaps there's other observations of these guest stars and things within traditional knowledges that now we can actually go out from these stories we can get a position in the sky we can point our telescope in that direction and maybe even find more supernova and stuff that we never know about because that's the thing like as good as our telescopes are we can't actually go back in time and use them when the supernova is going off so now we've got to rely on empirical observations of the sky to actually inform us where to point our powerful telescopes. Oh, Peter, that's brilliant and how important it is to this day. Peter, it's been really fun. I mean, last but certainly not least, talk to me about your whole mission in this field, what you're aiming to bring to the fore with all of this.

Yeah, so I've just started a Master of Philosophy here at the Australian National University on this sort of indigenous astronomy. And it really is looking at sort of two aspects. So the first one is sort of understanding traditional knowledges. So looking at these stories, because like I said, a lot of the work has been done by non-Indigenous anthropologists, archaeologists, which brings a certain lens to what they're doing, right? They have a background to their research, their methodologies, and their background knowledge. Whereas my background is obviously in astronomy itself. So I did my undergrad in physics and astronomy and astrophysics, and also have a background as an indigenous person, as a Camillo man. And so I'm just looking to bring a different lens to this sort of field

and bring that astronomy perspective. And again, look at some of these stories, perhaps that other people have looked at, but also look for new knowledges that haven't been explored yet, and the ways in which we can perhaps understand those with a more scientific lens, and certainly with an Indigenous lens behind it as well. And then the second part is actually safeguarding those knowledges. So that's around the idea of the night sky actually being the dark night sky, being a natural resource that needs to be protected. As our cities get bigger, as our countries get bigger, we're making more light. We're making more light pollution. And as a result, we're actually cutting off our connection

to the night sky. And that's obviously a very important continuing aspect of our culture today. And so as our cities get bigger and as our connection to the sky gets weaker, we're actually losing parts of that culture. So we're actually looking at developing policies and procedures and things around that, that actually safeguard those knowledges in our connection to the sky, but also those on-country assets. So like those important ceremonial areas, which need that connection to the sky to inform us of what is happening at that time here on Earth. And there's so much within this. I've had to narrow my master's thesis down as much as that. And, you know, I could do a full master's, I could do a full PhD, I could do a

full academic career in this space and not explore the absolute depth and volume of knowledge that's actually contained within Indigenous astronomy. But the stuff that we've touched on today I think really sort of paint that picture of cultural and astronomy and sort of the bringing together of those two worlds and then sort of trying to bring that into cohesion with what we now have in western science as well. Well Peter it's an incredible topic and I look forward to hearing how it all goes in the months and years ahead and it only goes for me to say now thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today thanks for having me this was an absolute pleasure Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era,

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