http://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/AboriginalAstronomy/Examples/emu.htm

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23603/

The Mystery of Australia’s Stonehenge

Aboriginal Australians have been observing the skies for 50,000 years, but only now are their astronomical achievements coming to light.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Aboriginal Australians have lived in Oz for the best part of 50,000 years, making them the world’s oldest culture by quite some margin. It also makes them the world’s first astronomers. However, years of prejudice have prevented the astronomical achievements of Aboriginal Australians from being fully appreciated–something that Ray Norris and Duane Hamacher at Macquarie University, in Sydney, want to change.

They’ve put together an impressive account of the astronomical achievements of Aboriginal Australians. It is fairly well known, at least in Australia, that these people had their own mythology associated with the night skies, centered on the idea that the world was created in “the Dreaming” by ancestral spirits whose presence can still be seen, both on the land and in the sky, say Norris and Hamacher.

But it turns out that Aboriginal Australians also had a sophisticated understanding of astronomical events, such as solar and lunar eclipses. That’s all the more amazing given that total solar eclipses are rare, occurring over any one piece of land only every three or four generations, and that any information about them must have been passed from generation to generation in the form of songs, stories, and cave paintings that can still be seen today.

But the most eye-opening revelation, for me at least, is the existence of an “Australian Stonehenge” called Wurdi Youang, in Victoria, whose age is unknown but obviously predates European settlement.

Wurdi Youang is an egg-shaped ring of stones about 50 meters across. Some of the stones have significant astronomical alignments. For example, some stones seem to indicate the position of the setting sun at the equinoxes and solstices, although there is some disagreement over this idea. Like Stonehenge in the U.K., no records of its use survive, and consequently, nobody knows what it was used for.

Norris and Hamacher say that they know of other stone arrangements with various alignments but have not been able to study these to the same degree. Meanwhile, the search goes on for “lost” stone formations–no mean feat, given the size of Australia.

A fascinating project to document the world’s first astronomers and their legacy.

Ref: http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.0155: The Astronomy of Aboriginal Australia

The blog essay you linked points something very obvious (as obvious as the sex of the lead elephants): in both Homeric epics, women are the repositories of authority. Men become kings by marrying queens. Hence the rush to get Helen back, the thronging of suitors around Penelope, and the unquestioned changing of spouses by Clytemnestra.

If you go to the links on the right side of the blog, you will see one labeled Minoan Crete. It leads to an interesting portal.

I have a novel in progress that moves back and forth in time, and part of it takes place in Minoan Crete, with all the social customs implied in the findings (extrapolated, of course, and adapted for fiction). Now all I need to do is clone myself so that I can finish it! (*laughs*)

I can see one other reason besides the obvious why you and anyone else with a rational mind object to the way women are treated in many cultures – because you come from one where the women right up to their goddess kicked butt!

See here:

http://sciphijoshbrian.blogspot.com/2009/03/odyssey-part-ii-bronze-age-themes-and.html

A very interesting blog, BTW.