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I am not too sure about this. Every "dreamtime" story I have investigated has turned out to be so vague it could be anything or was "discovered" in very recent

I am not too sure about this. Every "dreamtime" story I have investigated has turned out to be so vague it could be anything or was "discovered" in very recent times. More fundamentally there is no reason to think that Australian Aboriginal oral history is anymore reliable than it is anywhere else in the world (i.e. not at all after a few generations).

jacobush 8y ago
I don't know but it sounded convincing to me. Maybe there is more to stories in other parts of the world too, but they couldn't be cross referenced yet. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/16/indigenous-australian-storytelling-records-sea-level-rises-over-millenia https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/16/indig...
- danieltillett 8y ago
  This is not exactly convincing. They admit that everywhere else in the world this doesn't happen, but somehow it happens in Australia. Given all these stories have appeared in recent time I am not convinced. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
  - Sevrene 8y ago
    Aboriginals passed down their history and culture orally, so you can't really expect them to provide evidence other than their retelling. I don't think anyone is saying that the Dreamtime stories are 100% true, but it was probably influenced by something. The question is how much is story, and how much is fact? The tree sisters story [1] (which was actually taught in schools) is apparently completely fake and the modern highway network apparently resembles the way aboriginals navigated Australia too [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(Australia)#Aboriginal_Legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(Australia)#Abor... [2] https://theconversation.com/how-ancient-aboriginal-star-maps-have-shaped-australias-highway-network-55952 https://theconversation.com/how-ancient-aboriginal-star-maps...
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      They are just stories like every other culture in the world has and are as unreliable as a form of history as everyone else's oral histories (myths). Aboriginal people are just people and they don't have some magically ability that allows information to be passed down via oral transmission through 300 generations. Edit. The huge diversity of Aboriginal languages is proof that information was not transmitted accurately. If you can't even preserve the word for "foot" (just an example) down 300 generations how can it be expected that a story of even less practical utility and far greater complexity would be maintained accurately. The whole idea is ludicrous.
      - jbattle 8y ago
        Pure speculation: but the Aborigines are AFAIK relatively unique in their cultural isolation. Contrast this to any tribe living in Asia+Africa+Europe where migration over large scales definitely happened and cultural diffusion across thousands of miles and hundreds of distinct cultures was very possible. I could see where this kind of cultural and physical mixing (migration) could dilute or mutate folk tales, washing out distinctive 'fact-derived' aspects of the stories
        danieltillett 8y ago
        Actually there was quite a large amount of migration within Australia, it is just hard to track do to the lack of distinct cultural artifacts that survive over time. The Basques have been where there are for a long time and they have had a oral culture for most of the time and yet their myths are not any more factual than anyone else's.
      - ubernostrum 8y ago
        Oral cultures are... different from what we're used to. There's a fair bit of research on this (Walter Ong is your starting point if you want to start diving into it). Without debating whether the information preserved is factually accurate, it's known that oral cultures develop interesting and complex -- from an information-theoretical perspective -- mechanisms for preserving information, and for making it possible to retain accurately in memory amounts of information that tend to shock people from cultures oriented around writing as the means of information preservation.
  - RVuRnvbM2e 8y ago
    There are multiple similar examples. Here's one backed up with genetic evidence. https://www.nature.com/articles/520033a https://www.nature.com/articles/520033a
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      This one has come up before here on HN. Apart from the obvious fact that there are only four major points on the compass and so chance could be 100% responsible for this story, aboriginal people travelled around and would have seen these palms to the north. Take out the gods from the story and the story is exactly what would be expected - where are the palms from - oh they come from the north.
  - btilly 8y ago
    Actually it does happen elsewhere in the world. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_memory for a few examples. However there is an odd problem. There is evidence that literacy is in direct conflict with memorizing complex oral traditions. Oral traditions can be surprisingly long - for a well-known example consider that Homer's works were preserved as an oral tradition. People who can read and write are unable to memorize works of this length. And anthropologists learned the hard way that teaching someone who has already memorized things of this length causes them to forget what they previously knew.
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      These are not exactly convincing examples especially when near identical examples of these stories are found other cultures where they are accepted as pure myth. Most oral epics and stories were never intended to accurately transmit facts about the past. The idea of history as based on facts is a very recent idea and it is one of the reasons we have so many problems with the written records from ancient historians. They had no problem making up entire stores and conversations that never happened as long as it furthered the purpose of their writing. The purpose of these oral traditions is not to transmit facts, but to explain to the next generation what is important to their culture and/or entertain.

jacobush 8y ago

I don't know but it sounded convincing to me. Maybe there is more to stories in other parts of the world too, but they couldn't be cross referenced yet. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/16/indigenous-australian-storytelling-records-sea-level-rises-over-millenia https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/16/indig...

danieltillett 8y ago
This is not exactly convincing. They admit that everywhere else in the world this doesn't happen, but somehow it happens in Australia. Given all these stories have appeared in recent time I am not convinced. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- Sevrene 8y ago
  Aboriginals passed down their history and culture orally, so you can't really expect them to provide evidence other than their retelling. I don't think anyone is saying that the Dreamtime stories are 100% true, but it was probably influenced by something. The question is how much is story, and how much is fact? The tree sisters story [1] (which was actually taught in schools) is apparently completely fake and the modern highway network apparently resembles the way aboriginals navigated Australia too [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(Australia)#Aboriginal_Legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(Australia)#Abor... [2] https://theconversation.com/how-ancient-aboriginal-star-maps-have-shaped-australias-highway-network-55952 https://theconversation.com/how-ancient-aboriginal-star-maps...
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    They are just stories like every other culture in the world has and are as unreliable as a form of history as everyone else's oral histories (myths). Aboriginal people are just people and they don't have some magically ability that allows information to be passed down via oral transmission through 300 generations. Edit. The huge diversity of Aboriginal languages is proof that information was not transmitted accurately. If you can't even preserve the word for "foot" (just an example) down 300 generations how can it be expected that a story of even less practical utility and far greater complexity would be maintained accurately. The whole idea is ludicrous.
    - jbattle 8y ago
      Pure speculation: but the Aborigines are AFAIK relatively unique in their cultural isolation. Contrast this to any tribe living in Asia+Africa+Europe where migration over large scales definitely happened and cultural diffusion across thousands of miles and hundreds of distinct cultures was very possible. I could see where this kind of cultural and physical mixing (migration) could dilute or mutate folk tales, washing out distinctive 'fact-derived' aspects of the stories
      - danieltillett 8y ago
        Actually there was quite a large amount of migration within Australia, it is just hard to track do to the lack of distinct cultural artifacts that survive over time. The Basques have been where there are for a long time and they have had a oral culture for most of the time and yet their myths are not any more factual than anyone else's.
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      Oral cultures are... different from what we're used to. There's a fair bit of research on this (Walter Ong is your starting point if you want to start diving into it). Without debating whether the information preserved is factually accurate, it's known that oral cultures develop interesting and complex -- from an information-theoretical perspective -- mechanisms for preserving information, and for making it possible to retain accurately in memory amounts of information that tend to shock people from cultures oriented around writing as the means of information preservation.
- RVuRnvbM2e 8y ago
  There are multiple similar examples. Here's one backed up with genetic evidence. https://www.nature.com/articles/520033a https://www.nature.com/articles/520033a
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    This one has come up before here on HN. Apart from the obvious fact that there are only four major points on the compass and so chance could be 100% responsible for this story, aboriginal people travelled around and would have seen these palms to the north. Take out the gods from the story and the story is exactly what would be expected - where are the palms from - oh they come from the north.
- btilly 8y ago
  Actually it does happen elsewhere in the world. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_memory for a few examples. However there is an odd problem. There is evidence that literacy is in direct conflict with memorizing complex oral traditions. Oral traditions can be surprisingly long - for a well-known example consider that Homer's works were preserved as an oral tradition. People who can read and write are unable to memorize works of this length. And anthropologists learned the hard way that teaching someone who has already memorized things of this length causes them to forget what they previously knew.
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    These are not exactly convincing examples especially when near identical examples of these stories are found other cultures where they are accepted as pure myth. Most oral epics and stories were never intended to accurately transmit facts about the past. The idea of history as based on facts is a very recent idea and it is one of the reasons we have so many problems with the written records from ancient historians. They had no problem making up entire stores and conversations that never happened as long as it furthered the purpose of their writing. The purpose of these oral traditions is not to transmit facts, but to explain to the next generation what is important to their culture and/or entertain.