Eurasian-American Ethnoastronomic Parallels in the Context of New Data from India
Eurasian-American Ethnoastronomic Parallels in the Context of New Data from India
doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2026.54.3.113-122
Y.E. Berezkin
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 3, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia
New folkloric data collected in Maharashtra, India, have changed our views of the ancient ethnoastronomy of South Asia. Previous reconstructions of beliefs about celestial objects were nearly exclusively based on the comparison of data on Northern and Central Eurasia with those on the New World. Motifs relating to Ursa Major, one of the most important constellations in folk astronomy, are described. An attempt is made to assess the relative age of these beliefs by collating data on Eurasia and America. Four routes whereby people had migrated to the New World are reconstructed, one of these being related to the spread of Algonquin ancestors. Rather than being Paleolithic relicts, parallels between Siberia and India were caused by later northern influences on South Asian ethnoastronomy. `
