Hi basilstarsearcher-ga,
Well, I’ve spent the last few hours working on your question and
unfortunately have nothing concrete to show for it. What I do have is
a bunch of facts (or myths?) which may help to narrow down your
search.
First – the stars we are talking about are Mizar and Alcor, two stars
of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) which are, from our viewpoint, so close
together that they could be mistaken for one star by a person with
less than perfect vision.
The second thing we know (or at least which is alleged), is that these
two stars were used by many different cultures as a sort of an eye
test.
What we don’t know is whether or not this legend is even true. The
websites I found either disagree with each other regarding WHO used
the eye test or tended to just repeat each other’s information, often
with the exact same wording. (In terms of information, the internet
can be such a double-edged sword at times!) This leads me to
speculate on the veracity of the entire premise.
Here are some samples of what I found –
“Ancient Arab sky watchers and some Native American tribes considered
this a test of good eyesight. An eyechart in the sky!”
http://home.earthlink.net/~kjdaschke/article25.htm
“You can also test your eyesight on the "Babylonian eye test star,"
the second from the end of the handle of the Big Dipper. If you can
see two stars, one fainter than the other, you have good eyesight (and
would have been accepted into the Babylonian army!)”
http://galvin.sau.edu/buzz/dec2/sky.html
“… it is the American Indian eye test. If you can see the two stars of
Mizar, you have good vision.”
http://isaac.exploratorium.edu/~pauld/eclipse/africa/inthedark.html
“Now centuries ago it was said that these 2 stars, bright Mizar and
dimmer Alcor, were used as a kind of ancient eye exam for one of an
Arab sultan's armies. If a recruit could see the 2 stars he was in, if
he couldn't he was out.”
http://www.jackstargazer.com/scripts_apr2001.html
“Which double star was supposedly used by ancient Arabs (or in some
tales, used by the old Turkish army) as a test of acute vision?”
http://www.explorit.org/astronews/astroJun-01.html
“Spotting that dim one was an eye test used by several peoples,
including the Romans and some American Indian tribes.”
http://www.nctimes.net/news/051400/m.html
“Together Mizar and Alcor make up one of the skies easiest naked-eye
double stars. The pair have the old English name of 'Jack and his
Wagon' and discriminating Alcor used to be an old eye slight test for
the Navy.”
http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/astron/const/ConstList/ursamajor.html
“The ability to see Alcor was once an indication of keen vision and
therefore a test for apprentice hunters. Ancient Arabs referred to it
as "the Test" and "the Riddle."”
http://www.andrewfazekas.com/dipper-article.htm
“Ancient civilizations used this double star set as an eye test. Those
who could see and describe the double stars and their orientation to
each other were allowed to go out on hunting and warring parties with
edged weapons.”
http://www.dudleyobservatory.org/index.asp?pg=Skywatch2001/skywatch_6-2001.htm
And at least one person disagrees with which stars were in fact used
as the eye test --
“… Native Americans used the Pleiades star cluster as an "eye test"
for warriors. Because there are nine bright stars in this cluster, on
average most people will only see five of those stars. Those with
better eyesight (and a very dark, clear sky) may see up to seven of
them.”
http://www.wetdreamspoetry.com/swdreams/astronomy.php
There are no websites (that I could find) that specifically speak of
using the stars to select archers, then winning a battle as a result.
So, we’ll have to go with deductive reasoning here.
Assuming all of the above references ARE true, we have Babylonians,
Arabs, Romans, Native Americans, the English, and possibly the Turks.
That gives us a lot of potential battles and leaders. At least, since
the stars are in Ursa Major, we can eliminate any country in the
southern hemisphere.
We could conceivably narrow down our search bit further by limiting
our scope to times and places where archers were used in war, but this
doesn’t really help. Many cultures used archers up until the
development of firearms.
And, as Feilong said, many battles have been won against 3-1 odds.
Google Search: battle "three to one" outnumbered
://www.google.com/search?q=battle+%22three+to+one%22+outnumbered&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N
The best I could come up with was this ---
“Crècy, Battle of: (26 August 1346) The monumental destruction of the
flower of French chivalry by a much smaller English force under Edward
III and the Black Prince, one of the first times the new English
tactics of deploying archers in force against a tightly packed enemy
was used against the French. It had been first tried with great
success nine years earlier at Halidon Hill, but the lesson was ignored
by the French and they paid dearly for it.”
http://www.chronique.com/Library/Glossaries/glossary-KCT/gloss_c.htm
“In 1346, at Crècy, much to their own surprise, the English were able
to crush the army of the preeminent kingdom in Europe, though
outnumbered three to one, taking only one casualty for every 84
inflicted.”
http://jciss.llnl.gov/Review/RMADocs/syst.htm
I did a pretty thorough (though not exhaustive) search of Native
American websites. The closest I could come there was this ---
“In December 1835, native warriors under Osceola outmaneuvered and
overwhelmingly defeated an Army force that outnumbered their own by
more than two to one.”
http://www.flausa.com/interests/multicultural/nativebio.php
Other than that, I’m out of ideas. Maybe Feilong wants go back through
his list of battles and see if any of them match against our
parameters, and between us we can find you an answer.
I suspect that it’s not going to be spelled out plainly anywhere, and,
like I said above, I am even beginning to doubt its veracity. It’s got
the feel of a legend to me. But hey, I’ve been proved wrong before.
:-)
I do hope that if we can’t answer it here, you come back and post the
answer when your teacher gives it to you. I’ll be watching this
question to see what happens.
-K~ |
