Milky Way is one of the most fascinating miracles that people can observe from telescope and admire it. One of the largest galaxies in our universe is a home for at least two hundred billions stars, and thousands of millions light years away from the Sun has been a reason to talk about since ancient times.
In the dawn of myths when people obeyed the Gods and believed in all mythological stories the Milky Way(Via Lactea) had its unique story told. Over the centuries many assumptions had been made where did the galaxy came from. Many of the ancient peoples created their own stores and reserved them through the years.
Despite how fictional they sound the stories give some knowledge about ancient times and unbelievably interesting stories where how the Milky Way was found.
Starting with the Greek myth of Hera and how her milk flowed through the space it is time to go back centuries ago BC. Hera, the Goddess of all Goddesses, when realizing she had been giving milk to Hermes(Heracles) her milk flowed and according to some this is how the Milky Way was formed. But it is also said that the Milky Way commemorates the milk of Hera with which she was to feed Dionysus and heal his madness. Typically the story was not just told over the decades but also depicted on numerous vases and walls so it could remain for the generations to come.
The Milky Way has also been mentioned in some Asian countries and has its different versions told in Vietnam and Japan but it originates in China. The Vietnamese story says that there were two lovers- two stars( The Buffalo Boy and The Weaver Fairy )- who were so in love that soon they forgot about their duties and were separated, supposingly by the Milky Way.
In another story the Milky Way Galaxy is the inspiration for the symbol of the Ouroboros. The myth refers to a serpent of light residing in the heavens. The Milky Way is this serpent that eats its own tail. The galaxy keeps a great time cycle that ends in a catastrophic change. The sigh of the Suntelia Aion is the sun rising out of the mouth of the ouroboros, which will occur on the solstice December 21, 2012, which of course is linked with the Mayan Calendar as a symbolic date depicting the end of the world. The Greeks called this time End of the Age of Suntelia Aion. Ancient historians, specially Plato referred to it as the End of the Age. The Aion was symbolized by the Ouroboros.
In the American ancient mythology the Milky Way was called ‘Straw Thief’s Way’. According to legend the god Vahagn stole a straw from the Assyrian king Barsham and brought it to America during a cold winter. When he fled across the heavens, he spilled some of the straw along the way.
The Khoisan people of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa say that long ago there were no stars and the night was pitch black. A girl, who was lonely and wanted to visit other people, threw the embers from a fire into the sky and created the Milky Way.
A Cherokee folktale tells of a dog who stole some cornmeal and was chased away. He ran away to the north, spilling the cornmeal along the way. The Milky Way is thus called Gili Ulisvsdanvyi ‘The Way the Dog Ran Away’.
In Egyptian mythology, the Milky Way was considered a pool of cow’s milk. It was deified as a fertility cow-goddesses by the name Bat(later on syncretised with the goddesses Hathor).
Among the Finns, Estonians and related peoples, the Milky Way was called ‘The Pathway of the Birds’. The Finns observed that the migratory birds used the galaxy as a guideline to travel south, where they believed Lintukoto(bird home) resided. In Estonian folklore it is believed that the birds are led by a white bird with the head of a maiden who chases birds of prey away. Only later did scientists indeed confirm this observation; the migratory birds use the Milky Way as a guide to travel to warmer, southern lands during the winter. The name in the Indo-European Baltic language has the same menaing.
Roman mythology: A story told by the Roman Hynginus in the Poeticon astronomicon (ultimately based on Greek myth) says the milk came from the goddess Ops(Greek Rhea), the wife of Saturn(Greek Cronus). Saturn swallowed his children to ensure his position as head of the Pantheon and sky god, and so Ops conceived a plan to save her newborn son Jupiter(Greek Zeus). She wrapped a stone in infant’s clothes and gave it to Saturn to swallow it. Saturn asked her to nurse the child once more before he swallowed it, and the milk that spurted when she pressed the nipple against the rock eventually became the Milky Way.
In the Hindu collection of stories called Bhagavata Purana, all the visible stars and planets moving through space are linked to a dolphin that swims through the water, and the heavens is called sisumara cakra, the dolphin disc. The Milky Way forms the abdomen of the dolphin and is called Aksaganga which means ‘ The Ganges River of the Sky’.
In Hungarian mythology, Csaba, the mythical son of Attila the Hun and the ancestor of the Hungarians is supposed to ride down the Milky Way when the Szekelys(ethnic Hungarians living in Romania) are threatened. Thus the Milky Way is called ‘The Road of the Warriors’.
To the Maori the Milky Way is the waka(canoe) of Tama-rereti. The front and back of the canoe are Orion and Scorpius, while the Southern Cross and the Pointers are the anchor and rope. According to legend, when Tama-rereti took his canoe out onto a lake, he found himself far from home as night was falling. There were no stars at this time and in the darkness the Taniwha would attack and eat people. So Tama-rereti sailed his canoe along the river that emptied into the heavens(to cause rain) and scattered shiny pebblles from the lakeshore into the sky. The sky god, Ranginui, was pleased by his action and placed the canoe into the sky as well as a reminder of how the stars were made. The slight bulge of the Milky Way around Scorpius is also sometimes pictured as a whale.
The Kaurna Aboriginal People of the Adelaide Plains in South Australia see the band of the Milky Way as a river in the skyworld. They called it Wodliparri(wodli=hut, parri-river) and believe that positioned along the river are a number of dwellings. In addition, the dark patches are where a dangerous creature known as a yura lives; the Kaurna call these patches Yurakauwe, which literary means ‘monster water’. Moreover, Aboriginal Groups from the Cape York region of Queensland see the band of light as termites that had been blown into the sky by the ancestral hero Burbuk Boon. Further south the band of stars that comprise the Milky Way are seen as thousands of flying foxes carrying away a dancer known as Purupriggie.
In addition, the Aranda who come from central Australia see the band of the Milky Way as a river of creek in the skyworld. This stellar river separates the two great comps of the Aranda and Luritja People. The stars to the east of this river represent the camps of the Aranda and the stars to the west represent Luritja encampments and some stars closer to the band representing a mixture of both.
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