Aboriginal Astronomy

Westerners likely see the Australian Aborigines as a people and culture still in the Stone Age when Europeans first encountered them in the late eighteenth century. Yet, according to a new study, those supposedly simple folk may have been the world's first astronomers.

By noting how the Aborigines used the appearances of certain stars to tell them when to plant, and when to hunt, the study says, an understanding of astronomy is clear. The study also argues that Aboriginal culture, mythology, and legends reveal a deep understanding of astronomy, and that that understanding could go back as far as 20,000 years-- thousands of years before the building of Stonehenge in Britain, for example, which reveals the astronomical knowledge of its builders.