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Which ones? I thought the oldest oral stories were from Aboriginal Australians, like "Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast Dating from More

Which ones? I thought the oldest oral stories were from Aboriginal Australians, like "Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast Dating from More than 7000 Years Ago" - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049182.2015.1077539 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049182.2015.10... . The Black Sea deluge hypothesis for the flood myth was only 7,600 years ago and Lake Agassiz 8,200 year ago.

ncmncm 5y ago
Sea level rose continuously from 20,000 until 8000 years ago, 120 m in all. Each of 600 generations experienced its own deluge as the shore moved inland, often hundreds of miles all told. Local events were often more dramatic, maybe including the Black Sea filling in. Then there was the global Younger Dryas cataclysm 12,000 years ago.
- eesmith 5y ago
  Thing is, while all those global- or continental-scale flooding events did happen, there's only speculation that they are coupled to oral traditions. And stronger speculation that they are linked to more regional floods, eg, from flood-prone Mesopotamia. We can look at the Great Flood of Gun to see how mythology incorporates more localized floods - sea level rise wouldn't cause flooding of the Yellow River and the Yangtze valleys some 4,000 years ago. As the paper I cited says: > While there are a few claims of considerably greater antiquity that are difficult to dismiss—the Klamath memory of the 7630-year-old eruption of Mt Mazama (Deur 2002) is one—most of these are inevitably based on sparse information from which credible arguments are difficult to construct. Most scientists hold a sceptical view of such ‘deep’ oral histories (Henige2009; Owsley and Jantz 2001), a position that is prudent, although there are some who regard it as unduly cautious (Echo-Hawk 2000) then listing much more concrete examples of how local myths can be tied to global sea level rise, for example: > Some of these stories recall that the Aboriginal name of Fitzroy Island is gabaɽor ‘lower arm’ of a former main-land promontory that became partly submerged. Another recalls the name of a place halfway between Fitzroy Island and King Beach that is now submerged; its name was Mudaga (the Indindji word for the pencil pine, Athrotaxis cupressoides) after the trees growing there along with an explanation for why these stories might have persisted: > the only plausible explanation for the Indindji people of coastal Queensland continuing to tell the story of Mudaga ... for thousands of years after it was no longer visible, is if that story were part of an explicitly taught package of stories inherited through land-owning Indindji patrilines. For the existence of Mudaga, even submerged, constitutes evidence of knowing one’s country, and thus establishing one’s relationship with that country. Without such ritualised framing, the transmission of such stories across perhaps over 100 generations would seem to be implausibly vulnerable to chance link-breaking The connection between the Gilgamesh floods and global sea-level rise, or the Black Sea, etc., has no comparable evidence.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Of course there will never be definitive evidence connecting sea level rise to universal flood mythology. It comes down, in the end, to plausibility: people everywhere have always been subject to existential catastrophe, including flood, conflagration, desertification, famine, pandemic, invasion, eviction, genocide, cyclone, earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, bolide strike -- need I go on? Yet, only one of these shows up as formative in all places and nearly all peoples. There are other ways to interpret universality. One is that a progenitor people carried an origin story with them, over tens of millennia, as they spread out to cover the planet. The universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters (one now lost) can be explained no other way. The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia. The end of generation-on-generation flooding that immediately preceded the rise of sedentary agriculture and civilization must have been as profoundly affecting as the flood's previous relentless progress. There must have been, after 12 millennia, a deeply ingrained expectation that the sea would continue rising indefinitely, the world perhaps ending with the sea finally submerging all land. Building with an expectation not to be soon evicted by water must have seemed audaciously sacrilegious, in many places, for many generations after. Association of high ground with the gods' favor must have been cemented early. Peoples accustomed to higher ground would have, instead, continual experience of invasion by people displaced, again finally trailing off. So, is the null hypothesis that universal flood myths are local memories, with those citing universal older experience having something to prove? Or should the older origin be the baseline, with citations of scattered recent events seeding disconnected, coincidentally matching myths obliged to find support? The choice is fatuous. Each may be true, in different places. A recent flood event can easily loom larger in memory than legend. Absent a recent flood or tsunami, the universal experience remains.
    - eesmith 5y ago
      > Yet, only one of these shows up as formative in all places and nearly all peoples. Most peoples in Africa don't have a flood myth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths#Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths#Africa . Nor is there a Japanese myth. And the Norse flood myth may be from Christian influence. Any theory of a progenitor people must explain why some it persisted in some cultures but not others. > The universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters (one now lost) can be explained no other way. ??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matariki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matariki - Matariki is the Māori name for the cluster of stars known to Western astronomers as the Pleiades in the constellation Taurus. Matariki is a shortened version of Ngā mata o te ariki o Tāwhirimātea, or "the eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E1%B9%9Bttik%C4%81 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E1%B9%9Bttik%C4%81 - "The star cluster Kṛttikā ... corresponds to the open star cluster called Pleiades in western astronomy ... In Indian astronomy and Jyotiṣa (Hindu astrology) the name literally translates to "the cutters". ... The six Krittikas who raised the Hindu God Kartikeya are Śiva, Sambhūti, Prīti, Sannati, Anasūya and Kṣamā." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades - "In Japan, the cluster is mentioned under the name Mutsuraboshi ("six stars") in the 8th-century Kojiki" > The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia. There are gods in a lot of mythologies too. > There must have been, after 12 millennia, a deeply ingrained expectation that the sea would continue rising indefinitely Yet most of those flood stories have the waters rise then fall, and for a short period -- or before humans ever existed. And in the Great Flood of Gun-Yu, humans end up controlling the flood - a far cry from a universal mythos of ever-rising waters. > is the null hypothesis that universal flood myths are local memories The null hypothesis is that there is no universal flood myth.
Spooky23 5y ago
I specified that because that’s what I know, not to take away from others. (I’m afraid that I’m ignorant of ancient history in East Asia and Oceania) If you think of the deluges in the Black Sea, Doggerland, the Bahamas (submerged evidence of significant human construction exists), and the Persian Gulf, they all happened while the world was adapting the end of the ice age. One would imagine that coastal lowlands were great places to live, so human society was likely traumatized throughly by these events. Think about how Greek mythology would fit into the framework of those ancient (to Greeks) cataclysmic events. The narrative of gods dying for a great good or fighting off more ancient gods are also common themes. Humans may have had a near extinction event 70,000 years ago and some of those themes likely imprinted on us via generations of long forgotten history and religion. We’re no smarter than our ancient ancestors. We know more and understand some things better, but I think mythology is ultimately evidence of those before us trying to explain events consistent with the framework of what they understood.
- eesmith 5y ago
  You might be interested in the paper I linked to, which gives examples of more direct connections between modern Aboriginal myths and 7,000 year old sea level rise. At that paper points out, one of the ways that oral traditions might last longer is if "a particular society remains comparatively isolated, not subject to the (repeated) cultural intrusion that might lead to radical alteration or replacement of Indigenous traditions". Western mythologies are not isolated. In Snorri Sturluson's 13th century telling of the flood after Ymir's death, Bergelmir and his wife escaped by holding on to a hollowed-out tree trunk. Does that reflect pre-Christian Norse traditions, or a syncretization with Christian traditions that in turn drew on older Middle Eastern flood myths? It's also difficult to determine if the mythology is indeed 7,000 years old, or a more recent mythology. Consider the Cantre'r Gwaelod, "an area of land which, according to legend, was located in an area west of present-day Wales which is now under the waters of Cardigan Bay" (quoting Wikipedia), with oldest records from the 1200s, and similar to the stories of Helig ap Glanawg. The petrified forest of Ynyslas shows that 4-5,000 years ago the beach was a forest, and that people lived in it. So, are the stories of Cantre'r Gwaelod the result of oral tradition that passed down for 4,000 years? Or are they a more modern just-so story that attempts to explain why there are petrified trees on the beach? (Note that the tradition interprets glacial moraines as dikes.) Or, consider the story of Giant's Causeway. Tradition is that Fionn mac Cumhaill built a path from Ireland to Scotland - both parts of the same lava flow, but with no reason to believe this is a result of an ancient oral tradition from when those land masses were connected. > some of those themes likely imprinted on us via generations of long forgotten history and religion On the flip side, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths#Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths#Japan points out: ] Japan lacks a major flood myth. Japanese scholars in the 19th century such as Hirata Atsutane and Motoori Norinaga used the global flood myths of other cultures to argue for the supremacy of Shinto and promote Japanese nationalism.[22] They claimed that the fact that Japan has no flood myth showed that it was both the centre and highest point on Earth, making it the closest place on Earth to the heavens. As such, this to them demonstrates the veracity of the Japanese creation myth, where Japan comes first and foremost. Why were Japanese people not similarly imprinted? > a near extinction event Our ancestors then may have had no clue that the rest of humans had died out. There may have been no emotional or cultural imprint to pass on. Consider if everyone died in the year 1600, except for those on Australia. Our history and loss would not have been reflected in their stories.

ncmncm 5y ago

Sea level rose continuously from 20,000 until 8000 years ago, 120 m in all. Each of 600 generations experienced its own deluge as the shore moved inland, often hundreds of miles all told. Local events were often more dramatic, maybe including the Black Sea filling in. Then there was the global Younger Dryas cataclysm 12,000 years ago.

eesmith 5y ago
Thing is, while all those global- or continental-scale flooding events did happen, there's only speculation that they are coupled to oral traditions. And stronger speculation that they are linked to more regional floods, eg, from flood-prone Mesopotamia. We can look at the Great Flood of Gun to see how mythology incorporates more localized floods - sea level rise wouldn't cause flooding of the Yellow River and the Yangtze valleys some 4,000 years ago. As the paper I cited says: > While there are a few claims of considerably greater antiquity that are difficult to dismiss—the Klamath memory of the 7630-year-old eruption of Mt Mazama (Deur 2002) is one—most of these are inevitably based on sparse information from which credible arguments are difficult to construct. Most scientists hold a sceptical view of such ‘deep’ oral histories (Henige2009; Owsley and Jantz 2001), a position that is prudent, although there are some who regard it as unduly cautious (Echo-Hawk 2000) then listing much more concrete examples of how local myths can be tied to global sea level rise, for example: > Some of these stories recall that the Aboriginal name of Fitzroy Island is gabaɽor ‘lower arm’ of a former main-land promontory that became partly submerged. Another recalls the name of a place halfway between Fitzroy Island and King Beach that is now submerged; its name was Mudaga (the Indindji word for the pencil pine, Athrotaxis cupressoides) after the trees growing there along with an explanation for why these stories might have persisted: > the only plausible explanation for the Indindji people of coastal Queensland continuing to tell the story of Mudaga ... for thousands of years after it was no longer visible, is if that story were part of an explicitly taught package of stories inherited through land-owning Indindji patrilines. For the existence of Mudaga, even submerged, constitutes evidence of knowing one’s country, and thus establishing one’s relationship with that country. Without such ritualised framing, the transmission of such stories across perhaps over 100 generations would seem to be implausibly vulnerable to chance link-breaking The connection between the Gilgamesh floods and global sea-level rise, or the Black Sea, etc., has no comparable evidence.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Of course there will never be definitive evidence connecting sea level rise to universal flood mythology. It comes down, in the end, to plausibility: people everywhere have always been subject to existential catastrophe, including flood, conflagration, desertification, famine, pandemic, invasion, eviction, genocide, cyclone, earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, bolide strike -- need I go on? Yet, only one of these shows up as formative in all places and nearly all peoples. There are other ways to interpret universality. One is that a progenitor people carried an origin story with them, over tens of millennia, as they spread out to cover the planet. The universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters (one now lost) can be explained no other way. The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia. The end of generation-on-generation flooding that immediately preceded the rise of sedentary agriculture and civilization must have been as profoundly affecting as the flood's previous relentless progress. There must have been, after 12 millennia, a deeply ingrained expectation that the sea would continue rising indefinitely, the world perhaps ending with the sea finally submerging all land. Building with an expectation not to be soon evicted by water must have seemed audaciously sacrilegious, in many places, for many generations after. Association of high ground with the gods' favor must have been cemented early. Peoples accustomed to higher ground would have, instead, continual experience of invasion by people displaced, again finally trailing off. So, is the null hypothesis that universal flood myths are local memories, with those citing universal older experience having something to prove? Or should the older origin be the baseline, with citations of scattered recent events seeding disconnected, coincidentally matching myths obliged to find support? The choice is fatuous. Each may be true, in different places. A recent flood event can easily loom larger in memory than legend. Absent a recent flood or tsunami, the universal experience remains.
  - eesmith 5y ago
    > Yet, only one of these shows up as formative in all places and nearly all peoples. Most peoples in Africa don't have a flood myth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths#Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths#Africa . Nor is there a Japanese myth. And the Norse flood myth may be from Christian influence. Any theory of a progenitor people must explain why some it persisted in some cultures but not others. > The universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters (one now lost) can be explained no other way. ??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matariki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matariki - Matariki is the Māori name for the cluster of stars known to Western astronomers as the Pleiades in the constellation Taurus. Matariki is a shortened version of Ngā mata o te ariki o Tāwhirimātea, or "the eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E1%B9%9Bttik%C4%81 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E1%B9%9Bttik%C4%81 - "The star cluster Kṛttikā ... corresponds to the open star cluster called Pleiades in western astronomy ... In Indian astronomy and Jyotiṣa (Hindu astrology) the name literally translates to "the cutters". ... The six Krittikas who raised the Hindu God Kartikeya are Śiva, Sambhūti, Prīti, Sannati, Anasūya and Kṣamā." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades - "In Japan, the cluster is mentioned under the name Mutsuraboshi ("six stars") in the 8th-century Kojiki" > The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia. There are gods in a lot of mythologies too. > There must have been, after 12 millennia, a deeply ingrained expectation that the sea would continue rising indefinitely Yet most of those flood stories have the waters rise then fall, and for a short period -- or before humans ever existed. And in the Great Flood of Gun-Yu, humans end up controlling the flood - a far cry from a universal mythos of ever-rising waters. > is the null hypothesis that universal flood myths are local memories The null hypothesis is that there is no universal flood myth.

Spooky23 5y ago

I specified that because that’s what I know, not to take away from others. (I’m afraid that I’m ignorant of ancient history in East Asia and Oceania) If you think of the deluges in the Black Sea, Doggerland, the Bahamas (submerged evidence of significant human construction exists), and the Persian Gulf, they all happened while the world was adapting the end of the ice age. One would imagine that coastal lowlands were great places to live, so human society was likely traumatized throughly by these events. Think about how Greek mythology would fit into the framework of those ancient (to Greeks) cataclysmic events. The narrative of gods dying for a great good or fighting off more ancient gods are also common themes. Humans may have had a near extinction event 70,000 years ago and some of those themes likely imprinted on us via generations of long forgotten history and religion. We’re no smarter than our ancient ancestors. We know more and understand some things better, but I think mythology is ultimately evidence of those before us trying to explain events consistent with the framework of what they understood.

eesmith 5y ago
You might be interested in the paper I linked to, which gives examples of more direct connections between modern Aboriginal myths and 7,000 year old sea level rise. At that paper points out, one of the ways that oral traditions might last longer is if "a particular society remains comparatively isolated, not subject to the (repeated) cultural intrusion that might lead to radical alteration or replacement of Indigenous traditions". Western mythologies are not isolated. In Snorri Sturluson's 13th century telling of the flood after Ymir's death, Bergelmir and his wife escaped by holding on to a hollowed-out tree trunk. Does that reflect pre-Christian Norse traditions, or a syncretization with Christian traditions that in turn drew on older Middle Eastern flood myths? It's also difficult to determine if the mythology is indeed 7,000 years old, or a more recent mythology. Consider the Cantre'r Gwaelod, "an area of land which, according to legend, was located in an area west of present-day Wales which is now under the waters of Cardigan Bay" (quoting Wikipedia), with oldest records from the 1200s, and similar to the stories of Helig ap Glanawg. The petrified forest of Ynyslas shows that 4-5,000 years ago the beach was a forest, and that people lived in it. So, are the stories of Cantre'r Gwaelod the result of oral tradition that passed down for 4,000 years? Or are they a more modern just-so story that attempts to explain why there are petrified trees on the beach? (Note that the tradition interprets glacial moraines as dikes.) Or, consider the story of Giant's Causeway. Tradition is that Fionn mac Cumhaill built a path from Ireland to Scotland - both parts of the same lava flow, but with no reason to believe this is a result of an ancient oral tradition from when those land masses were connected. > some of those themes likely imprinted on us via generations of long forgotten history and religion On the flip side, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths#Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths#Japan points out: ] Japan lacks a major flood myth. Japanese scholars in the 19th century such as Hirata Atsutane and Motoori Norinaga used the global flood myths of other cultures to argue for the supremacy of Shinto and promote Japanese nationalism.[22] They claimed that the fact that Japan has no flood myth showed that it was both the centre and highest point on Earth, making it the closest place on Earth to the heavens. As such, this to them demonstrates the veracity of the Japanese creation myth, where Japan comes first and foremost. Why were Japanese people not similarly imprinted? > a near extinction event Our ancestors then may have had no clue that the rest of humans had died out. There may have been no emotional or cultural imprint to pass on. Consider if everyone died in the year 1600, except for those on Australia. Our history and loss would not have been reflected in their stories.