How did the five pointed star become central to American Iconography?

by 907Pilot

I am watching Texas Rising and I have seen two flags with 5 point stars on them and it got me thinking. Puerto Rico, Alaska, Mississippi, Texas, and the United States all have the five pointed star in their flags. What is their connection and how did it become so prevalent?

BlueStraggler

Five-pointed stars are also used on the flags of:

  • Communist states like China, Cuba, USSR, North Korea
  • Muslim states like Algeria, Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan, Syria, Tunisia
  • African states like Ghana, Burkina Faso, DR Congo, Somalia, Senegal

It's pretty safe to say that the symbology of the five-pointed star goes far beyond American Iconography. For instance, many of the Muslim states noted above got their star from the Ottoman Empire's star-and-crescent flag, which in turn took inspiration from sources going back through Byzantium into antiquity. Communist states use the 5-pointed star as a symbol of international socialism, which does not have a strong relation to American iconography at all.

The popularity and versatility of the 5-pointed star probably owes a lot to its simple geometric properties: it is the simplest star formed by joining the vertices of a polygon. That alone guarantees it will be popular in a format dominated by other simple shapes such as bars, crosses, and circles.

Seiferus

While we're at it, why did they flip the stars upside down on the Republican Elephant icon after Bush was elected?