Moon Stories and Myths

Early humans have always looked at space or their world and the objects or things in them and what they couldn't understand they would make that object a god or goddess or something equally hard to understand...

The Native American Algonquian tribe called the first full moon in January the Wolf Moon.  This name represented the hungry wolves that howl at night.  They used the moon to represent their connection to nature, animals and their culture.

The Chinese believed there were 12 moons and they were made of water.  Each moon represented one month.  The mother of the moons was the Sun.

The Inuit people of Greenland believe the Moon chases the Sun.  The Moon works so hard to keep up and gets thinner and thinner.  (I kind of like this story!)

People look at the moon today and ask, "Do you see the bear on the moon?" or "Do you see the rabbit?" or "Do you see the crab on the moon?"  What do you see?

Making up stories about moons and planets helps our brains process what we see.  Many times when we see something we don't understand we make sense of it using what we are familiar with, like rabbits, bears and crabs.  Look at this picture:

This is a strange, real image from Mars. The rover Curiosity took this series of pictures.  Experts have been looking at it for awhile and can't figure out what is going on?  Can you make sense of these photos?  What is your brain telling you it might be?