The Hidden History of the North Star

This bright dot right here is Polaris, the North Star. A lot of people think that this star always points north. But that's not actually true. Even our ancient ancestors knew this. And we can tell by looking at the ancient tales they told about this star. Because hidden in these old stories are clues. So we're going to decode three myths from different cultures. Some of these stories are 10 to 15,000 years old. On the surface, they sound like fantasy. But when you look closer, they preserve an incredible astronomical discovery. So let's discover the knowledge encoded in these stories and uncover the hidden history of the North Star. Every time the North Star comes up, the same thing happens. Someone points to the brightest star in the sky they can find and says, is that the North Star? But Polaris isn't that bright. In fact, it barely cracks the top 50. Today, finding the North Star is just a fun fact. But back then, finding it was the difference between making it home and never being seen again. So ancient cultures did something brilliant. If they wanted to protect a piece of knowledge, they encoded it into a story. They were survival manuals. Take the Paiute people, for example. They called Polaris the one that never moves. If you look at this time-lapse I shot, you can see exactly why the name fits. All the stars wheel around a single point. All except the one that never moves. It's the most useful star you can learn. If you can find the Big Dipper or Cassiopeia in the sky, you can find Polaris, and you'll instantly know which direction North is. But remember, these stories were survival manuals. And our first ancient story reveals a disturbing truth. The star that doesn't move actually does move. It's a story about the destruction of a magical artifact, the heavens being knocked off balance, and why Polaris won't always be the North Star. If you were living in the frozen lands of ancient Finland, there was one name you whispered with deep respect. Ilmarinen. He was a blacksmith, but he didn't just make horseshoes. He was the kind of craftsman who could forge the dome of the sky itself. And one day, he created his masterpiece. A millstone called the Sampo. Now, this wasn't just a mill. It was a cosmic mill, with three separate chambers that ground endlessly, day and night. The first chamber ground out grain for endless food. The second ground out salt for eternal preservation. And the third ground out pure gold. It was a paradise. But if you know anything about stories, you know that paradise never lasts. You see, the ancient people believed the sky itself was a giant rotating dome, spinning around a single massive point. They called it the Nail of the North. As long as the nail held, the mill would turn and the people would continue to thrive. But the North, they kept all of this wealth for themselves. And far to the South, there were people who weren't thriving. They watched this northern abundance with jealousy that rotted them from the inside out. Their lands were barren. Their people were starving. And one day, they decided they were done watching the North thrive. So, under the cover of darkness, a group of Southern raiders set sail. They journeyed to the North, slipping past the guards, and managed to do the impossible. They stole the Sampo. They dragged this massive cosmic machine onto their boat and set sail for home, thinking they had pulled off the greatest heist in history. But they made one fatal mistake. During their escape, they woke up the leader of the North, a powerful witch queen that everyone feared. When the North realized that the mill was stolen, the witch queen transformed herself into a giant eagle and pursued the thieves across the sea. She shrieked across the ocean, with a wingspan so wide it blotted out the stars, and descended on the thief's tiny boat. A chaotic battle ensued. The boat was rocking, the eagle was tearing at the sails, and the thieves were fighting for their lives. But in the middle of this violent struggle, the unthinkable happened. The Sampo broke. It fell from the boat, and the machinery of the universe shattered into the dark ocean depths. When the mill broke, the nail of the North that held the sky in place snapped. The heavens began to shake. The sky itself started to slide off its axis. The sun and moon were knocked out of their orbits. The perfect rotation of the universe was ruined. The golden age was over. When the dust settled, the cosmic order had to be rebuilt from scratch, on a broken axis. That's why the sky looks the way it does today. A broken machine, wobbling on a bent nail. On the surface, this story sounds like pure myth. But if we peek just below the surface, we can find the clues that they've left for us. The North Star, the Nail of the North, isn't permanent. It drifts. Here's another timelapse I took of Polaris. Watch what happens when I stack these images together. Stars trail around the Nail of the North. But if you zoom in, you'll notice Polaris isn't perfectly at the center. It makes a tiny circle of its own. Just like the myth says, the perfect rotation of the universe isn't perfect anymore. But this story goes much deeper. Let's get a closer look with my telescope. Here's Polaris up close. Right now, it sits about 0.7 degrees away from true north. That's roughly one and a half moon widths off center. And the reason why? Well, it's because the Earth doesn't spin perfectly upright. The gravity from the sun and the moon tug on it just enough to make the axis wobble. Exactly like a spinning top starting to lose its balance. This is the broken mill. 5,000 years ago, that axis pointed somewhere else entirely. It was nearly 30 degrees away from where it is today. Pointed at a star called Thuban. Ancient Chinese astronomers actually recorded this. For centuries, they watched Thuban drift away from true north. Constantly updating their star maps. But they never forgot its importance. They called it Yushu, the pivot star that used to hold the sky in place. Now, in the story of the Sampo, when the Nail of the North slipped out of place, the entire world changed forever. Was this just to add drama to the story? Well, here's what makes me think it wasn't. Because thousands of miles away, on the opposite side of the world, there's another story. One that describes a pole star slipping and the destruction that followed. And unlike the tale of the Sampo, this one has left evidence we can actually measure. If you know your astronomy, you'll know that there's no pole star in the southern hemisphere. Just an empty patch of sky. But the Palawa people of Tasmania say it wasn't always like this. They have a tale of a great star in the south. You see, the sun and moon gave birth to their son named Mawaini. Now, Mawaini was the great south star. And his parents placed him in the southern sky to be the guardian of the ice. And Mawaini had a brother named Dramardin. Mawaini was strong and powerful, while Dramardin was more gentle. Mawaini decided he wanted to create the very first human. But there was a huge problem. He didn't know what he was doing. But that didn't stop him. He worked tirelessly. And eventually, his creation was complete. But when his brother Dramardin looked down at this creature, he was horrified at what he saw. Mawaini built this human with a thick, heavy tail like a kangaroo. And even worse, he forgot to give the human knees. This first human couldn't sit. It couldn't lie down. It just stood on the ice, stiff-legged, in constant agony. So Dramardin decided to intervene. He cut off its tail and broke its legs to create knee joints. And afterwards, he rubbed animal fat into the wounds to help heal this first human. But Mawaini saw this and he became furious at what his brother had done. And the brothers began to fight. A war broke out in the heavens. And after a long, vicious fight, Dramardin struck Mawaini with such great force that the Great South Star fell from the sky. Now the human Mawaini created had children who spread across the lands. And they watched as Mawaini slowly fell from the heavens. In those days, the sea was far away. They walked along ancient hunting lands that stretched from Australia to Tasmania, guided by Mawaini, the Great South Star. But when the Guardian of the Ice fell into the ocean, his frozen world followed. And the world began to change. Seasons shifted. Waters rose until eventually the hunting grounds they used to cross began to drown. And the people became cut off from the world. When they looked to the south for their Guardian Star, all that was left was just empty, black sky. They were alone on an island at the edge of the world. Look to the southern sky today and you'll see nothing. No Mawaini. No Great South Star. Just a relatively empty sky. But earlier we learned something important. The celestial pole, it drifts. So let's rewind the clock. Using sky simulation software, we can travel back and we can see around 14,000 years ago, a bright star named Canopus was hovering close to the southern celestial pole. Not as precise as, say, Polaris is in the north today. But it was close. Roughly the width of your fist held out at arm's length. More than close enough to be considered a Great South Star. As we run the clock forward in time over thousands of years, we can see that Great South Star begin to drift down, farther and farther away from the south celestial pole. It falls from the sky, just like the myth tells us. Now here's where things get really interesting. The elders, they didn't just watch a star fall out of place over generations. They witnessed what happened to the earth after it fell. And we can prove it. The tale talks about humans walking from Australia to Tasmania. Not sailing. Walking. If we look at the geological records, the last ice age ended roughly 12,000 years ago. Before that time, sea levels were much lower. Australia and Tasmania weren't separated. They were joined by a wide, dry plain you could simply walk across. But as the ice age ended, the glaciers melted. The oceans rose. Between about 12,000 and 8,000 years ago, that land bridge slowly drowned. Now the Sampo and Moaini tales mention that as the pole star drifts, the world goes through dramatic changes. These cultures may not have known why the world changes when the pole star drifts. But modern science does. When the earth wobbles and the axis shifts, the pole star isn't the only thing that changes. It also changes how sunlight hits the planet. Right now, the northern hemisphere is actually closest to the sun during the winter time. But 13,000 years ago, it was flipped. The northern hemisphere got summer when it was closest to the sun. Over centuries, those extra intense summers helped melt those massive ice age glaciers. Sea levels began to rise. Entire climate zones shifted. And when that happened, it caused massive changes in the world. 9,000 years ago, the Sahara Desert was green with lakes and vegetation. As earth wobbled, monsoons shifted south. Within 2,000 years, it became the desert we know today. Now this wobble of the earth isn't the only thing that drives the climate. But it is something that humans can observe. But there's one civilization, one of the most influential in history, that didn't just remember these shifts. They measured them. In ancient Greece, there was a boy with a ridiculous claim. He said that his father was the sun. Now that boy's name was Phaeton. Phaeton never met his father. But his mother said that this was true. His father really was the sun. The god who dragged the sun across the sky with a chariot of fire-breathing horses. Now when other kids heard Phaeton say that his dad was the sun, they just laughed. They teased him constantly, saying things like, Sure, Phaeton. And my dad happens to be Zeus. Day after day, they mocked him. Until one day, Phaeton had enough. He set out to prove, once and for all, that his father truly was the sun. And he traveled to the edge of the world, to the kingdom where his dad resided. When he finally stood before his father, he told him everything. The teasing, the bullying, the accusations that his mother was a liar. Then he looked to his father and said, Prove to me that I'm your son. Now after hearing that, Helios was instantly overwhelmed with guilt. So to show his love for his son, Helios swore an oath, granting Phaeton one wish. And this was Helios' fatal mistake. Helios expected something simple, like gold or power. But the request Phaeton made was one no one could have imagined. Instead, he pointed at the chariot and said, I want to drive the sun across the sky for all to see, so no one will ever doubt me again. When Helios heard this, he was horrified. Helios begged him to choose something else, telling him, I can give people proof. I can light your name across the sky if you want. But please, not this. You don't understand how dangerous this is. But Phaeton's mind was made up. And because of the oath, Helios couldn't say no. So the next morning, at the edge of the horizon, Phaeton climbed aboard the chariot. Standing at the reins, he felt it. He was finally what he always claimed to be. The son of a god. Nervous but excited, he started the steep ascent into the sky. But the horses sensed something was wrong. This wasn't Helios at the reins. It was someone else. They felt the driver's hesitation, so they started to surge higher and higher, dragging the sun away from its usual path. Down on Earth, people watched the sun get smaller and smaller in the sky. The sun's light grew weak. Farms began to frost in the middle of summer, and entire regions plunged into sudden, brutal cold. Phaeton was struggling to maintain control, so he pulled the horses as hard as he could, causing the chariot to drop steeply. The sun came too close to the ground. Snow-capped mountains melted. Forests burst into flame. And Africa was scorched into a desert. On Mount Olympus, the gods were watching this destruction unfolding. The great god Zeus realized he had to intervene before there was nothing left to save. So without thinking, he grabbed a thunderbolt and hurled it at the chariot, hoping this would save the world. The bolt tore through the sky and shattered the chariot. Phaeton was thrown overboard, and like a streak of falling light, he fell from the sky to his death. Helios seized the reins and calmed the horses. He returned the sun to its proper path, and order was restored. But the damage was done. Some lands became scorching deserts. Others became frozen worlds. All because one boy needed to prove who he really was. The Fall of Phaeton is a famous Greek tale. But here's the twist that many people today don't know about. The great philosopher Plato said about the story that it wasn't just a myth. It was symbolic. This may sound like a myth, but it actually describes the heavens drifting out of alignment and the great destruction on Earth that returns at long intervals. Not a one-time disaster, a cycle. But Plato, he was a philosopher, not a scientist. He knew that there was truth within this story, but he couldn't prove it. But one person refused to accept mystery as an answer. So 200 years after Plato, an astronomer made a discovery that changed everything. And his name was Hipparchus. Now, Hipparchus set out to make his own catalog of the stars. To double-check his work, he pulled out star charts that had been drawn more than 150 years earlier, and he discovered something shocking. As he compared his observation to those old records, same stars, same time of year, he noticed something was off. The position of the stars were wrong. Not by much, barely a degree, but enough that over centuries, with very careful record-keeping, the difference was unmistakable. Hipparchus had just discovered that the Earth itself was wobbling on its axis. The point the heavens seem to spin around changes over time. Suddenly, the myth of Phaeton made sense. Phaeton's wild chariot, the sun veering off track, and the world falling out of balance, that's what a shifting pole star actually means in real life. Changing seasons, shifting climate, different places getting scorched or frozen over thousands of years. And the ancients tracked this. To the Greeks, this wasn't just random, it was a cosmic cycle with a time span so long that no human could ever see it complete. And the Greeks even had a name for it, when all the stars returned to the place from which they began. That is called the Great Year. So what is the Great Year? When Hipparchus measured the stars, he discovered something extraordinary. The stars shift positions about one degree every 72 years. Earth spins once a day, giving us day and night. It orbits the sun once a year, giving us seasons. But that tiny one-degree shift Hipparchus found? It's a hidden cycle that connects these stories together. The Sampo shattering and the world wobbling on a broken axis, the Great South Star drifting from its place, and the destruction that followed. Plato, noting this devastation, was not a one-time event, but a repeating pattern. They were all witnessing the same thing. As the Earth wobbles, the pole star changes. But if you follow that wobble long enough, you'll see it creates a massive circle in the sky. A repeating pattern encoded into these stories. A cycle that doesn't take just one day or a few years. In fact, it takes about 26,000 years to complete just one single loop. This is the Great Year. That means the last time Polaris was the North Star was 26,000 years ago. Since then, a lot of stars have held the title of the North Star. And a lot has happened in that time period. Let me show you. Roughly one great year ago, about 26,000 years, the Earth was in the peak of the Ice Age. Massive ice sheets covered North America and Europe. Animals like woolly mammoths and giant ground sloths roamed the Earth. Polaris was the closest bright star to the celestial north. About 14,000 years ago, the bright star Vega would have been the North Star. At this time, the Earth was slowly warming. Ice Age glaciers were melting and sea levels were starting to rise. 12,000 years ago, the Ice Age finally came to an end. Sea levels surged up and many Ice Age animals vanished. Humans invented agriculture. We began farming, staying in one place, and building villages. But above, there was no North Star, just a dark spot in the sky. 5,000 years ago, when Thuban was the North Star, came the Bronze Age, Ancient Egypt, and the birth of writing and recorded history. From the rise of the Greeks all the way through to the fall of the Roman Empire, there was no North Star for these people. The Greek navigator Pythias in 320 BC even described the celestial pole as devoid of stars. As the Middle Ages faded and the Age of Exploration and the Enlightenment began, Polaris started its slow approach towards the celestial pole, moving to where it resides today, marking the completion of one great year. In about 2,000 years, Arai will become our new North Star. In the far future, 12,000 years from now, Vega will take over again, and in about 26,000 years, Polaris will once again return as our North Star, and a great new year begins. Hey friends, a quick note about these stories. So these tales are really condensed versions. And in reality, old myths like these can be 4, 5, even 6 hours long. But I did my best to condense them down and focus on the parts that are about astronomy and the night sky. Now if you're interested in these types of stories, I highly recommend checking out the book The First Astronomers, which is the inspiration for this video. If you purchase it, 100% of the author royalties go to charity for scholarships, community projects, and educational programs for First Nations people. If you're interested, I'll leave a link in the description below. Thank you so much to all my YouTube members and patrons. It's because of you, I can make videos like this. If you want to join, check it out in the description. And if you want to see more astronomy content like this, consider watching some of my other videos.