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Wow. That last bullet point is particularly remarkable to me - both the implied level of 'technological understanding' and presumed foreplanning for significant

Wow. That last bullet point is particularly remarkable to me - both the implied level of 'technological understanding' and presumed foreplanning for significant journeys 30K years back and for the capacity of oral history to record what come today might not be the most pertinent information. Also quite amusing in the context of contemporary Australia's philosophy where alien plants and animals are concerned! :)

yuchi 9y ago
Citing that article: > “It suggests that Aboriginal oral traditions may have endured for up to 30,000 years, and lends further weight to the idea that some Aboriginal myths pertaining to gigantic animals may be authentic records of extinct megafauna” Wow ^ 2
- pamqzl 9y ago
  I'm always extremely skeptical when someone suggests that oral traditions could possibly have survived for long periods of time. That's twelve hundred generations! Given what we know about the speed at which Chinese Whispers tend to drift, the idea that any story can last 1200 generations is an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary proof. Hundreds of Aboriginal tribes had hundreds of contradictory myths on hundreds of subjects. Most of them are verifiably false (e.g. those rocks over there are not, in fact, the remains of three young women who got turned into stone for disobeying their father). Some of them are probably correct by complete accident. As for gigantic animals... well, they're a pretty common motif in myths and stories all around the world. Maybe it's some distant memory our cultures all have of the larger animals that used to live around here... or maybe it's just because giant animals are cool. In Aboriginal myths, giant animals are often really really giant, because they're used as explanations for geographic features -- e.g. rivers are caused by the meanderings of a giant snake.
  - micheljones 9y ago
    Some tribes in north of Australia have verifiable myths about the geography of the lands that have been under the sea off the north of Australia for 6-8 thousand years at least (meaning, the description of the land features matches the sea floor geography).
    - flukus 9y ago
      Has anyone quantified their myths properly? If not then they're just cherry picking.
      - micheljones 9y ago
        Do you have any proof that they are just cherry picking?
        flukus 9y ago
        No, I just assume they are until they provide data to prove otherwise. We don't even know if the same tribes were in the same area that long ago.
  - aaron695 9y ago
    I wouldn't take it as 'extremely skeptical', it's fact that this is junk 'science' We can look at story drift even in non primitive societies where they have writing and it's huge within generations.
oh_sigh 9y ago
On a similar timescale, lots of cultures from the middle east have a flood myth, which is thought to be a real event from about 15k years ago.
- micheljones 9y ago
  I'm sorry, but that statement is very likely incorrect. 15kya was very soon after the last glacial maximum (24-18kya) and sea levels weren't significantly affected by then. The receding of the ice sheets started at cca 18kya, but was going slowly at first and only accelerated after 15kya. Most of middle east cultures draw the myth from Mesopotamian cultures, whose flood myth most likely refers to the flooding of the Persian gulf (which Eufrat and Tigris drain to currently, but used to be a fertile lowland with multiple rivers) cca 8kya. https://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-beneath-persian-gulf.html https://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-... Considering the map in this article, with abundance of rivers across the whole Persian gulf plain, I would suggest that the myth of exile from Eden is also related to it - after the flooding and subsequent move of people upriver between the Eufrat and Tigris there was a need to create irrigation channels to keep the agricultural production up at necessary levels. Creating and maintaining these channels is hard, back-breaking work, and it might have inspired the famous 'By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food' line.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > Most of middle east cultures draw the myth from Mesopotamian cultures, whose flood myth most likely refers to the flooding of the Persian gulf I thought the GP was actually referring to this event. Do we have a time frame for that which negates that possibility, because otherwise I'm not sure how your evidence refutes rather than corroborates.
    - micheljones 9y ago
      That's ok.
    - flukus 9y ago
posterboy 9y ago
Maybe their digestive tract had carried the seeds ...

yuchi 9y ago

Citing that article: > “It suggests that Aboriginal oral traditions may have endured for up to 30,000 years, and lends further weight to the idea that some Aboriginal myths pertaining to gigantic animals may be authentic records of extinct megafauna” Wow ^ 2

pamqzl 9y ago
I'm always extremely skeptical when someone suggests that oral traditions could possibly have survived for long periods of time. That's twelve hundred generations! Given what we know about the speed at which Chinese Whispers tend to drift, the idea that any story can last 1200 generations is an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary proof. Hundreds of Aboriginal tribes had hundreds of contradictory myths on hundreds of subjects. Most of them are verifiably false (e.g. those rocks over there are not, in fact, the remains of three young women who got turned into stone for disobeying their father). Some of them are probably correct by complete accident. As for gigantic animals... well, they're a pretty common motif in myths and stories all around the world. Maybe it's some distant memory our cultures all have of the larger animals that used to live around here... or maybe it's just because giant animals are cool. In Aboriginal myths, giant animals are often really really giant, because they're used as explanations for geographic features -- e.g. rivers are caused by the meanderings of a giant snake.
- micheljones 9y ago
  Some tribes in north of Australia have verifiable myths about the geography of the lands that have been under the sea off the north of Australia for 6-8 thousand years at least (meaning, the description of the land features matches the sea floor geography).
  - flukus 9y ago
    Has anyone quantified their myths properly? If not then they're just cherry picking.
    - micheljones 9y ago
      Do you have any proof that they are just cherry picking?
      - flukus 9y ago
        No, I just assume they are until they provide data to prove otherwise. We don't even know if the same tribes were in the same area that long ago.
- aaron695 9y ago
  I wouldn't take it as 'extremely skeptical', it's fact that this is junk 'science' We can look at story drift even in non primitive societies where they have writing and it's huge within generations.

oh_sigh 9y ago

On a similar timescale, lots of cultures from the middle east have a flood myth, which is thought to be a real event from about 15k years ago.

micheljones 9y ago
I'm sorry, but that statement is very likely incorrect. 15kya was very soon after the last glacial maximum (24-18kya) and sea levels weren't significantly affected by then. The receding of the ice sheets started at cca 18kya, but was going slowly at first and only accelerated after 15kya. Most of middle east cultures draw the myth from Mesopotamian cultures, whose flood myth most likely refers to the flooding of the Persian gulf (which Eufrat and Tigris drain to currently, but used to be a fertile lowland with multiple rivers) cca 8kya. https://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-beneath-persian-gulf.html https://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-... Considering the map in this article, with abundance of rivers across the whole Persian gulf plain, I would suggest that the myth of exile from Eden is also related to it - after the flooding and subsequent move of people upriver between the Eufrat and Tigris there was a need to create irrigation channels to keep the agricultural production up at necessary levels. Creating and maintaining these channels is hard, back-breaking work, and it might have inspired the famous 'By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food' line.
- kbenson 9y ago
  > Most of middle east cultures draw the myth from Mesopotamian cultures, whose flood myth most likely refers to the flooding of the Persian gulf I thought the GP was actually referring to this event. Do we have a time frame for that which negates that possibility, because otherwise I'm not sure how your evidence refutes rather than corroborates.
  - micheljones 9y ago
    That's ok.
  - flukus 9y ago

posterboy 9y ago

Maybe their digestive tract had carried the seeds ...