Many of the most familiar constellations were handed down from the ancient Babylonians, who lived in what is now Iraq, the Greeks and Romans. No doubt some of these star groups go back even further. Nowadays we speak of Orion, the zodiac constellations, the Dippers and bright stars like Sirius and Vega thanks to storytelling and later through writing. More recently, all this wisdom has been converted into strings of ones and zeros and packaged for mobile phones and iPads.
Other civilizations and human tribes recognized their own sets of constellations. Some are similar to ours, others completely different. The Chinese had their Firebird and Crooked Running Water while the Australian aboriginal peoples recognized a great Emu among the starless patches dotting the length of the Milky Way.
Several weeks ago, my friend Eric, a fellow member of the Arrowhead Astronomical Society, presented a short program on star charts. One of the pictures showed a wonderful American Indian star chart with clearly recognizable constellation patterns.
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