Did Aboriginal Australians record a simultaneous eclipse and aurora in their oral traditions?
Abstract: We investigate an Australian Aboriginal cultural story that seems to describe an extraordinary series of astronomical events occurring at the same time. We hypothesise that this was a witnessed natural event and explore natural phenomena that could account for the description. We select a...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
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National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand. (NARIT). Ministry of Science and Technology, Thailand.
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/unsworks_48983 https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/bitstreams/f53f0e19-03b6-4f5b-9ac7-5291fef87b89/download |
| Summary: | Abstract: We investigate an Australian Aboriginal cultural story that seems to describe an extraordinary series of astronomical events occurring at the same time. We hypothesise that this was a witnessed natural event and explore natural phenomena that could account for the description. We select a thunderstorm, total solar eclipse, and strong Aurora Australis as the most likely candidates, then conclude a plausible date of 764 CE. We evaluate the different factors that would determine whether all these events could have been visible, include meteorological data, alternative total solar eclipse dates, solar activity cycles, aurorae appearances, and sky brightness during total solar eclipses. We conduct this study as a test-case for rigorously and systematically examining descriptions of rare natural phenomena in oral traditions, highlighting the difficulties and challenges with interpreting this type of hypothesis. |
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