Under a shared sky – the culture of constellations

If Orion were to lift his gaze and peer through the gap at the base of Taurus’ horns, his eyes would meet a small cluster of stars known to most as the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters. But in Africa, this cluster is known by different names.

To the Swahili people of East Africa, it’s Kilimia and to the Nyabungu of Rwanda, Kelemera. In Southern Africa, the Sotho and Tswana call it Selemela, the Tsonga, Shirimela, and the Venda, Tshilimela. To the Xhosa and Zulu peoples, it’s isiLimela, to the Khoikhoi, one of the oldest pastoralist groups on Earth, !Khunuseti, or the ‘Stars of Spring’. These names represent far more than linguistic similarities. They hold stories and offer insight into a more ancient way of life that some still follow.

Mythologies around the Pleiades – Ancient Greek to Aboriginal, Indigenous North African to Indigenous North American, and even Khoikhoi – list them as seven daughters, sisters, or sons. Yet today, even with perfect eyesight and a clear sky, most people can only see six. At least without the help of a telescope.

The allure of the stars has shaped human curiosity from the beginning. The earliest star systems and records can be traced back to Babylon in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, and date back over 4,000 years. Over the following millennia, the influences of Egyptian, Arab, Greek, and Roman cultures converged. This birthed astronomy, the scientific study of the universe, and astrology, which attempts to interpret how the universe affects our lives, largely through horoscopes and zodiac signs, leaving many ancient stories out.

Around 50-60,000 years ago, it’s believed, modern humans migrated en masse out of Africa, carrying the seeds of stories to the furthest reaches of the globe. Even then, the night sky looked very different. Over time, two of the Sisters have drifted closer together and are now indistinguishable to the human eye, so they look like one. Research now suggests that the last time we were able to see all seven clearly was much longer ago.

And yet, from the Sahara to the Southernmost tip of the continent, and across the globe, stories of the Seven Sisters persist, passed down in myths, legends, and folktales, revealing with almost certainty that our African ancestors created some form of astrology long before any other civilisation, as far back as around 100,000 BC.

Across Southern and East Africa, this ancient astrology isn’t reflected in monuments and mementos, like in Egypt or Mali, but is rooted in cultural practices and historical ways of living. Here, the stars embody wisdom; serving as practical tools for record-keeping, navigation, and agriculture, and informing seasonal and ceremonial practices.

To many pastoralists across sub-Saharan Africa, the first sighting of the Sisters – or whichever name you call them by – in the June twilight announces the beginning of a new agricultural year, that it’s time to prepare the fields. This is why they’re also known as the “digging stars”. Toward the end of the harvest, they move from the morning sky to the evening, then disappear behind the sun again for a few months.

In Xhosa society, they symbolise new life and signal the start of the journey from boyhood to manhood, when an initiation ceremony is performed. Men also count their years of manhood in terms of Isilimelas, rather than years.

If you want to travel due west, say the Sotho and Tswana, keep the Southern Cross on your left and Selemela on your right. And “if the digging stars set in sunny weather, they rise in rain” and “if they set in rain, they rise in sunny weather,” say the Swahili.

The Gana Bushmen, who have inhabited the Kgalagadi region of Southwest Africa for thousands of years, believe the Sisters are the wives of Canopus and Sirius. The Khoikhoi of Namaqualand, even further west from there, believe they’re the daughters of Tsui-Goab, the creator of all things. To the Ibibio of Nigeria, they’re the chicks of a great cosmic fowl. But these stars aren’t just shared mythologies; they’re tools for survival, shaped by nature’s rhythms.

The night sky is vast, littered with almost as many stories as stars. The Seven Sisters is just one of many we’ll explore in Under a Shared Sky, a series tracing how people across Africa have drawn meaning from the heavens.

Like the stars themselves, they vary in shape, age, and origin – some still burning bright, others long since faded, but not forgotten. And as with any story, the beauty is that what we tell ourselves becomes true, at least for a moment, in imagination