منذُ خمسين ألف عام كانت الشعوب الأولى في أستراليا تسافر لمسافاتِ طويلة باستخدام خرائط النجوم في السماء ليلا أو ما يعرف بالـStar Maps
روبرت فولر هو طالب دكتوراه يدرس علم الفلك الثقافي للسكان الأصليين في جامعة نيو ساوث ويلز.
وبينما كان يبحث في المعرفة الفلكية للشعوب الأصلية المعروفة باسم ياهلاي وكاميلاروي في شمال غرب ولاية نيو ساوث ويلز وجد مصطلح "خرائط النجوم" - وهي طريقة تُستخدم لتعليم المسافرين كيفية التنقل خارج مناطق سكناهم
واكتشف فولر خلال البحث أن "خرائط النجوم" كانت وسيلة لتعليم الناس كيفية السفر خلال النهار خارج بلدانهم.
STARMAPS01 Robert Fuller 31”
“So if you think of a list of maybe six stars in a row, each of those stars is a point along the landscape on their trip and that point is something that they have to remember. So the person teaching is using those stars point by point to teach the person okay, your first stop is this water hole, and then the next star is the river you go to, and maybe the next star is the mountain. So it’s a memory aid, not so much a navigation aid.”
وكان معلم فولر لمادة المعرفة الفلكية هو احد زعماء السكان الاصلين ومُلم بثقافة سكان ياهلاي المتمركزين بالقرب من حدود ولايتي كوينزلاند ونيو ساوث ويلز ويُدعى Ghillar Michael Anderson
وكان أندرسون أحد مؤسسي سفارة خيمة السكان الأصليين التي اُنشئت في العاصمة الفيدرالية كانبرا في العام الفِ وتسعمئةِ واثنين وسبعين 1972.
STARMAPS02 Ghillar Michael Anderson 17”
“So a lot of the star maps primarily focus on identifying pathways via water holes to and from ceremonial locations over vast distances and so you're looking at anywhere between five to six hundred miles.”
وقد مرت أسرار النجوم على أجداد أندرسون عندما حضر معظم الشعائر والطقوس الخاصة بالسكان الأصليين في ستينيات القرن الماضي
ويعتبر Anderson نفسهُ محظوظا لتعلم الحكمة والموعظة مباشرة من كبار السن الذين ولدوا في أواخر القرن التاسع عشر
STARMAPS03 Ghillar Michael Anderson 13”
“That’s why I have that knowledge so strongly embedded within me because I learnt from grandparents and old people, who were grandparents of others, who learnt off their grandfathers, who were born before the white men came into our country.”
وبعد ذلك اتجه السكان الأصليين إلى خرائط النجوم لاتخاذ القرارات قبل السفر إلى خارج بلدانهم
STARMAPS04 Ghillar Michael Anderson 20”
“Those star maps are most prevalent in the sky anywhere between August and September - these are the two months that give you direction and guidance. So, depending on the brightness of the stars, we will make our decision which way we’re going or whether we’ll be staying in our general location and go with the flow close to the ceremonies.”
ويقول روبرت فولر أن المسارات تغطي مسافات شاسعة تصل إلى 700 كيلومتر
STARMAPS05 Robert Fuller 23”
“They used to go to a place up near Quilpie from Goodooga, which is near the Lightning Ridge, and meet another group of Aboriginal people from the central desert area, north of Alice Springs. Those people would have traveled maybe 1500 km to meet the Euahlayi people for a ceremony and of course they must have used a similar method to teach people how to travel that long distance.”
ويقول Ghillar Michael Anderson أن الأمر يستغرق بضعة أشهر عندما نجوب البلدان الأخرى
STARMAPS06 Ghillar Michael Anderson 14”
“But we can only go if they send us invitation by way of a message stick and then we will carry that message stick on our spear to show because that’s our passport across their country; that’s an invitation, otherwise the tribes will not allow us to pass across their country.”
تم إنشاء طرق تجارية معقدة في جميع أنحاء القارة الأسترالية قبل وصول الأوروبيين
وقد تم العمل في تجارة الموارد النادرة والبضائع الغريبة مثل الحجارة المعروفة لدى السكان الأصليين والأدوات الخاصة بهم لتحسين نوعية الحياة لمجتمعات الشعوب الأولى
ويقول روبرت فولر انه بالاضافة إلى تبادل السلع والبضائع فتم ايضا تجارة القصص الاغاني
STARMAPS07 Robert Fuller 24”
“We have a couple of instances where some older culture people have drawn some pictures of what Australia looked like before 1788 in terms of trade routes. It looks like a basket weave. There are so many of them it goes east to west and north to south and all over. Aboriginal people travelled quite long distances to trade.”
وقد مكنت أنماط النجوم السكان الأصليين من حفظ نقاط الطريق إلى أماكنهم المقصودة.
وأصبحت أفضل طريقة لتعليم ايجاد الطرق من خلال لغة الغناء، حيث كان التنقل الشفهي لمسار السفر يعرف باسم songline”, ويسمى أيضا "مسار الحلم".
STARMAPS08 Robert Fuller 25”
“This was a song. The star map actually gave you the verses of a song so that you could then remember the instructions of how to travel and of course, that brings up the question of something called “songlines”. Now, songlines have been known about for a long time but not in any detail and songlines are actually routes across the Australian landscape which are encoded in the song.”
Robert Fuller مدرس علم الفلك الثقافي للسكان الأصليين في جامعة نيو ساوث ويلز
هذا التقرير من اعداد Amy Chien-Yu Wangومنال العاني
Ghillar Michael Anderson says songlines have a special significance.
STARMAPS09 Ghillar Michael Anderson 11”
“Songlines on the earth are the ones that show you where the creators traveled and of course, these sacred places along the songline is where creation took place.”
Fuller’s research compared a couple of these routes up on Google Maps.
As he placed the push pins where the various points were on the route, he suddenly noticed that two of the routes were almost perfectly following the major roads on the map.
STARMAPS10 Robert Fuller 10”
“This was from northern New South Wales, all the way up to Queensland, up to the Bunya Mountains, which are northwest of Brisbane, and all the way up to Carnarvon Gorge, which is up in central Queensland.”
These findings got Fuller thinking.
He reflected and realised that when early European explorers first set foot on this country, they would’ve had Aboriginal people as guides.
STARMAPS11 Robert Fuller 36”
“For example, Major Mitchell, who traveled up to this country in about 1845. He had a couple of Aboriginal guides from down the Sydney way but those Aboriginal people would've asked the local people about what were the best routes to travel, and of course, these people would've told them these routes that they know very well, which are actually songlines, so Mitchell would've marked down these routes, and after Mitchell, would've come possibly the drovers, farmers, and eventually they would've had dirt roads for the carts, and eventually those dirt roads would've been turned into paved roads.”
The ancient songlines telling the story of the landscape are still alive after tens of thousands of years.
Many of the routes embedded in these songlines have turned into tracks and highways forming the modern Australian road network.
استمعوا هنا الى البث المباشر لاذاعتنا و لاذاعة BBC أيضا
http://www.sbs.com.au/arabic/live
