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We don't know when ancient humans started to contemplate the night sky, but some of

the oldest stories have been passed down by indigenous Australians for thousands, maybe

even tens of thousands of years.

They have, in Australia, both light and dark constellations.

This is Moya McTira, an astrophysicist and folklorist, and she explains that while some

cultures create constellations by drawing lines between stars like a giant game of

connect the dots, other cultures also focus on distinct patches of darkness and the

otherwise crowded, starry sky.

They look like dark blobs because they're actually fields and clouds of gas that block

light in the Milky Way, but they would assign shape and meaning to those.

And one of the big dark constellations to the indigenous Australians was the Emu constellation.

It looks like an Emu with wings that's flying through space, so the wings and the feet

are all streaming behind her.

But the cool thing about the Emu constellation is that she appeared in the sky right

around the same time that Emu's on Earth were laying their eggs, and that was an important

source of nutrition for a lot of indigenous Australians.

So we can see instances of this practical connection between astronomy and everyday human life

all over the world, not just in Australia, although there are many indigenous Australians

who claim that they are some of the world's first astronomers.

Why is he as astronomy and folklore as two sides of the same coin?

Is a relationship she explores in her recent book, The Milky Way, an autobiography of our

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