remembrance, celebrating and planning, Māori astronomer says
Indigenous studies and Māori cultural astronomy academic Professor Rangi Mātāmua (Ngāi Tūhoe) told First Up Matariki is the earliest and best recorded history of a group of stars in humanity.
"There's a cave painting that's 17,000 years old in France that marks the Pleiades and right across the globe cultures used its rising and setting to mark change of season or harvest or planting or celebration."
The Pacific and Polynesia used Matariki as a marker of change of season, he said.
"When our ancestors arrived in Aotearoa they noticed that this far south, it disappears just as summer's coming on in the west with the sun and it reappears just before the sun in the east around the shortest day of the year.
"So they thought well, we can use that as a marker of New Year and that's how it's applied here."
The appearance of Pleiades is celebrated and acknowledged across the globe including in South and North America, Asia and Africa.
Link to recording and article: Matariki's key elements remembrance, celebrating and planning, Māori astronomer says | RNZ News
