Star maps point to Aboriginal songlines

Specific stars and constellations are used by some Aboriginal language groups to help them remember key waypoints along a route, detailed oral histories reveal.

The research, reported in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, documents how people from two language groups in north-central New South Wales and south-central Queensland use the night sky.

Professor Ray Norris of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science and colleagues from Macquarie University collected stories from Euahlayi and Kamilaroi people.

"A while ago I was contacted by a Kamilaroi man who had seen some of our work and wanted to tell us some traditional stories.

"They're working with us to rebuild their language and we're collecting the astronomy.

"During this process we discovered that there's this fantastic store of knowledge about how people navigated."

The two language groups have a long history of using the position of features in the sky such as the Milky Way to predict when resources such as emu eggs are available.


more: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/07/11/4043550.htm