Solar and lunar eclipses were widely explained as the male Moon and female Sun mating with or marrying each other. Several astronomers note that these explanations show Aborigines understood that eclipses are caused by the paths of the Sun and Moon crossing each other. Norris (2009) argues that early Aborigines must have had a very good understanding of this in order to identify a lunar eclipse as being caused by the alignment of the Sun and Moon (since the Sun does not actually appear in the sky).