Ever since early humans first stared at the night sky, the moon has played a starring role in stories and folklore. Personified by gods and goddesses such as the Greek Selene, Roman Luna, Chinese Chang'e, and Hindu Chandra, the moon takes various shapes depending on who's doing the looking. Many Western cultures see a man's face in the moon, with his misshapen eyes, nose, and mouth formed from the dark lunar "seas" — actually vast hardened lava plains — on the moon's near side. Others see a whole male figure, with stories from Germany and elsewhere telling of a man banished to the moon for chopping wood on the Sabbath.
Some cultures don't see a man at all, but instead a woman, like the New Zealand Maori legend of Rona, the moon's maiden. In Angola, a tale tells of a frog in the moon. In a Chinese tale, the goddess Chang'e flees to the moon, where she is turned into a toad; according to the myth, she and her rabbit, Yutu, can be seen on the moon's surface creating the elixir of immortality with a mortar and pestle. Many of these tales are thousands of years old, but some remain alive and well to this day. In 2019, China landed the world's first spacecraft and lunar rover on the far side of the moon; their names were Chang'e-4 and Yutu-2. |
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