7 ms·

The Rig Veda is only 3000–3500 years old, contrary to folk traditions holding it to be much older. The Yamnaya culture is 5300 years old and only lasted 700 ye

by kragen 2y ago

The Rig Veda is only 3000–3500 years old, contrary to folk traditions holding it to be much older. The Yamnaya culture is 5300 years old and only lasted 700 years. When the oldest parts of the Rig Veda were composed (and they are, incidentally, about the proper way to praise the gods, not about historical events) the Yamnaya culture had died about 1100 years ago. Those 1100 years included a lot of warfare, mostly nomads living in tents, without writing. How much do English-speakers today know about the events in early 10th century France that eventually led to English becoming a sort of pidgin French, full of words like "eventually" and "sort" that didn't exist in Beowulf? How much effort do they typically devote to passing on traditions about Æthelwold's challenge to Edward the Elder in Wessex? And that's after 1100 years of a literate, mostly settled culture with libraries that contain physical books from that time, in a culture that values that kind of factual knowledge of history, rather than more practical sorts of knowledge such as how to properly worship Agni to gain his favor and which plants to poison your arrows with. Oral tradition can preserve knowledge to an astounding degree. There are songlines, as I understand it, that record the geography of landforms that have been undersea since the Ice Age (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-indigenous-songlines-match-long-sunken-landscape-off-australia1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-indigenou... roughly the same time as the Proto-Indo-European culture). But it is hardly surprising when it is silent on a topic we wish we knew more about.

singularity2001 2y ago
The actual surviving texts are even less than 2000 years old. one just beliefs that the oral tradition was written down pretty unaltered but that's questionable in my opinion
- empath75 2y ago
  There's one good reason to believe that they wrote it down (mostly) unaltered and continued transmitting it (mostly) unaltered, which is that they continued copying it and reciting it well past the point where they even understood what many of the words meant any more, and they developed a lot of techniques to recite it and memorize it based purely on phonemes and developed ideas about how the sounds themselves carried religious power, divorced of any meaning. That's not to say that they didn't understand it at all, but surely if it were going to be altered, they would have updated the language to something more understandable at some point. Instead they wrote commentaries about the text, reinterpreting it over time. It wasn't really until the 19th century that it was re-translated and the connection to other indo-european cultures and pantheons was rediscovered.
  - singularity2001 2y ago
    So someone wrote down chants in the 19th century and realized that similar chants were written down almost 2000 years earlier?
    - kragen 2y ago
      No, all of the texts we're talking about here have been passed down in written form for 2000–3000 years, if we ignore the Scandinavian ones. It was only the first 1000–1500 years of the preservation of the Rig Veda that were exclusively oral.
      - singularity2001 2y ago
        am I living in a bubble in which Wikipedia gives me different articles? According to my Internet the oldest surviving fragment is from 1040CE from Nepal.
        elureleahcim 2y ago
        The oldest written copy may be from 1040, but this is a written copy of a written copy of a written copy of ... etc, going back another millennia or so, before we get to the oral tradition.
        kragen 2y ago
        Correct, thank you. Palm-leaf manuscripts typically last about 200 years. WP does claim that some experts believe the Rig Veda was not written down until quite late: > It is unclear as to when the Rigveda was first written down. The oldest surviving manuscripts have been discovered in Nepal and date to c. 1040 CE.[3][78] According to Witzel, the Paippalada Samhita tradition points to written manuscripts c. 800–1000 CE.[79] The Upanishads were likely in the written form earlier, about mid-1st millennium CE (Gupta Empire period).[33][80] Attempts to write the Vedas may have been made "towards the end of the 1st millennium BCE". The early attempts may have been unsuccessful given the Smriti rules that forbade the writing down the Vedas, states Witzel.[33] The oral tradition continued as a means of transmission until modern times.[81] As I understand it, the Tipitaka, Panini, Patanjali, etc., were also first written down around the end of the first millennium BCE or the beginning of the first millennium CE, as writing was adopted relatively late in India.
philwelch 2y ago
I think it’s not so much that the Rigveda by itself gives us a direct insight into Proto-Indo-European culture, but rather that if we compare it to Western texts it can help us reconstruct elements of a shared ancestral culture, or at least a shared ancestral language (from which we can perhaps infer something about culture).
- kragen 2y ago
  Certainly. But what I was commenting on was the claim that, because "there are basically no migration stories in _any_ indo-european mythological cycles or oral traditions," we can conclude, "migration or invasion (...) was a gradual process that wouldn't have been particularly noticeable in any one life time." I don't think that conclusion is justified.
  - FlyingSnake 2y ago
    I’m not sure if you’re talking about my comment, but I didn’t make that claim. I simply asserted that Rigveda might be not a good source of data if we’re looking for evidence of a migration.
    - kragen 2y ago
      No, I was talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43005206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43005206, the ancestral comment containing the phrases I quoted from it, between quote marks. The Rig Veda does provide important evidence of a migration, but not by narrating it. Rather, the vocabulary, grammar, and mythological content are so similar to the Avestan texts that a common linguistic origin seems inescapable. That of course doesn't demonstrate population replacement on its own, but lacking Starlink or even homing pigeons, some kind of migration was clearly involved.
      - FlyingSnake 2y ago
        Ah ok. I agree with you. The prevalence of Steppe Ancestry in all modern day Indians should be enough to conclude that some form of migration happened. All this politically tinged talk about supposed purity of DNA is utter nonsense.
wqaatwt 2y ago
> events in early 10th century France Were there such events? > How much effort do Not a lot. Since they don’t need to because of writing. As far as we can tell non-literate societies put in massively more effort into preserving oral traditions. Of course it’s debatable but there is some evidence that oral knowledge can be preserved for thousands of years.
- kragen 2y ago
  > Were there such events? [That is, events in early 10th century France that eventually led to English becoming a sort of pidgin French, full of words like "eventually" and "sort" that didn't exist in Beowulf] There certainly were; quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_Normandy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_Normandy (28 August 0932 – 20 November 0996): > Richard either introduced feudalism into Normandy or he greatly expanded it. By the end of his reign, the most important Norman landholders held their lands in feudal tenure. Normandy, as you may or may not know, is in France. Then, a century later, his great-grandson, Duke of Normandy, conquered England, subjugating the Britons, Anglo-Saxons, et al., under a French-speaking noble elite. If Jarl Rikard had been cut down by bandits in his youth, or had merely failed to enlist the Norman landholders' swords under his banner (and that of his son, grandson, and great-grandson), the Norman invasion would not have happened. Similarly, if Richard's son Richard had been unable to escape from the court of King Louis IV in 0946, or unable to then win back Normandy from the king by force of arms, his grandson William would have been in no position to conquer—and it is unlikely that the subdivided Duchy would have been able to raise an army to successfully invade England, a feat that has not been repeated in the ensuing 959 years. And so on. > Of course it’s debatable but there is some evidence that oral knowledge can be preserved for thousands of years. Yes, your comment was written in reply to a comment naming one of the most surprising examples of such preservation, as a result of non-literate societies, as you said, "put[ting] put in massively more effort into preserving oral traditions". Nevertheless, they seem to preserve massively less historical knowledge despite that effort.
  - wqaatwt 2y ago
    > There certainly were That’s rather indirect. But you do have a point. However we do know quite a bit about those events? So any English speaker who cares can learn about them. > How much effort do they typically devote Well unlike illiterate societies they don’t need to because of books. > massively less historical knowledge despite that effort. Well obviously, we can’t really compare them with more literate societies. Then again we’re just very lucky that there was no complete societal collapse in the Greco-Roman world since the 500-600s BC. or so. Some highly literate civilizations like Carthaginians or the Etruscans were effectively entirely erased because nobody bothered to copy their texts). The problem with oral traditions is that they can preserve knowledge of events that might have happened > 500 years ago (e.g. Homer describes cities, weapons and other aspects of pre Bronze age collapse Mycenaean civilization but it’s all intermixed with contemporary(Greek dark age) stuff and it’s very hard to separate fact from fiction (even ignoring the supernatural bits).

by kragen 2y ago

singularity2001 2y ago

The actual surviving texts are even less than 2000 years old. one just beliefs that the oral tradition was written down pretty unaltered but that's questionable in my opinion

empath75 2y ago
There's one good reason to believe that they wrote it down (mostly) unaltered and continued transmitting it (mostly) unaltered, which is that they continued copying it and reciting it well past the point where they even understood what many of the words meant any more, and they developed a lot of techniques to recite it and memorize it based purely on phonemes and developed ideas about how the sounds themselves carried religious power, divorced of any meaning. That's not to say that they didn't understand it at all, but surely if it were going to be altered, they would have updated the language to something more understandable at some point. Instead they wrote commentaries about the text, reinterpreting it over time. It wasn't really until the 19th century that it was re-translated and the connection to other indo-european cultures and pantheons was rediscovered.
- singularity2001 2y ago
  So someone wrote down chants in the 19th century and realized that similar chants were written down almost 2000 years earlier?
  - kragen 2y ago
    No, all of the texts we're talking about here have been passed down in written form for 2000–3000 years, if we ignore the Scandinavian ones. It was only the first 1000–1500 years of the preservation of the Rig Veda that were exclusively oral.
    - singularity2001 2y ago
      am I living in a bubble in which Wikipedia gives me different articles? According to my Internet the oldest surviving fragment is from 1040CE from Nepal.
      - elureleahcim 2y ago
        The oldest written copy may be from 1040, but this is a written copy of a written copy of a written copy of ... etc, going back another millennia or so, before we get to the oral tradition.
        kragen 2y ago
        Correct, thank you. Palm-leaf manuscripts typically last about 200 years. WP does claim that some experts believe the Rig Veda was not written down until quite late: > It is unclear as to when the Rigveda was first written down. The oldest surviving manuscripts have been discovered in Nepal and date to c. 1040 CE.[3][78] According to Witzel, the Paippalada Samhita tradition points to written manuscripts c. 800–1000 CE.[79] The Upanishads were likely in the written form earlier, about mid-1st millennium CE (Gupta Empire period).[33][80] Attempts to write the Vedas may have been made "towards the end of the 1st millennium BCE". The early attempts may have been unsuccessful given the Smriti rules that forbade the writing down the Vedas, states Witzel.[33] The oral tradition continued as a means of transmission until modern times.[81] As I understand it, the Tipitaka, Panini, Patanjali, etc., were also first written down around the end of the first millennium BCE or the beginning of the first millennium CE, as writing was adopted relatively late in India.

philwelch 2y ago

I think it’s not so much that the Rigveda by itself gives us a direct insight into Proto-Indo-European culture, but rather that if we compare it to Western texts it can help us reconstruct elements of a shared ancestral culture, or at least a shared ancestral language (from which we can perhaps infer something about culture).

kragen 2y ago
Certainly. But what I was commenting on was the claim that, because "there are basically no migration stories in _any_ indo-european mythological cycles or oral traditions," we can conclude, "migration or invasion (...) was a gradual process that wouldn't have been particularly noticeable in any one life time." I don't think that conclusion is justified.
- FlyingSnake 2y ago
  I’m not sure if you’re talking about my comment, but I didn’t make that claim. I simply asserted that Rigveda might be not a good source of data if we’re looking for evidence of a migration.
  - kragen 2y ago
    No, I was talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43005206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43005206, the ancestral comment containing the phrases I quoted from it, between quote marks. The Rig Veda does provide important evidence of a migration, but not by narrating it. Rather, the vocabulary, grammar, and mythological content are so similar to the Avestan texts that a common linguistic origin seems inescapable. That of course doesn't demonstrate population replacement on its own, but lacking Starlink or even homing pigeons, some kind of migration was clearly involved.
    - FlyingSnake 2y ago
      Ah ok. I agree with you. The prevalence of Steppe Ancestry in all modern day Indians should be enough to conclude that some form of migration happened. All this politically tinged talk about supposed purity of DNA is utter nonsense.

wqaatwt 2y ago

> events in early 10th century France Were there such events? > How much effort do Not a lot. Since they don’t need to because of writing. As far as we can tell non-literate societies put in massively more effort into preserving oral traditions. Of course it’s debatable but there is some evidence that oral knowledge can be preserved for thousands of years.

kragen 2y ago
> Were there such events? [That is, events in early 10th century France that eventually led to English becoming a sort of pidgin French, full of words like "eventually" and "sort" that didn't exist in Beowulf] There certainly were; quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_Normandy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_Normandy (28 August 0932 – 20 November 0996): > Richard either introduced feudalism into Normandy or he greatly expanded it. By the end of his reign, the most important Norman landholders held their lands in feudal tenure. Normandy, as you may or may not know, is in France. Then, a century later, his great-grandson, Duke of Normandy, conquered England, subjugating the Britons, Anglo-Saxons, et al., under a French-speaking noble elite. If Jarl Rikard had been cut down by bandits in his youth, or had merely failed to enlist the Norman landholders' swords under his banner (and that of his son, grandson, and great-grandson), the Norman invasion would not have happened. Similarly, if Richard's son Richard had been unable to escape from the court of King Louis IV in 0946, or unable to then win back Normandy from the king by force of arms, his grandson William would have been in no position to conquer—and it is unlikely that the subdivided Duchy would have been able to raise an army to successfully invade England, a feat that has not been repeated in the ensuing 959 years. And so on. > Of course it’s debatable but there is some evidence that oral knowledge can be preserved for thousands of years. Yes, your comment was written in reply to a comment naming one of the most surprising examples of such preservation, as a result of non-literate societies, as you said, "put[ting] put in massively more effort into preserving oral traditions". Nevertheless, they seem to preserve massively less historical knowledge despite that effort.
- wqaatwt 2y ago
  > There certainly were That’s rather indirect. But you do have a point. However we do know quite a bit about those events? So any English speaker who cares can learn about them. > How much effort do they typically devote Well unlike illiterate societies they don’t need to because of books. > massively less historical knowledge despite that effort. Well obviously, we can’t really compare them with more literate societies. Then again we’re just very lucky that there was no complete societal collapse in the Greco-Roman world since the 500-600s BC. or so. Some highly literate civilizations like Carthaginians or the Etruscans were effectively entirely erased because nobody bothered to copy their texts). The problem with oral traditions is that they can preserve knowledge of events that might have happened > 500 years ago (e.g. Homer describes cities, weapons and other aspects of pre Bronze age collapse Mycenaean civilization but it’s all intermixed with contemporary(Greek dark age) stuff and it’s very hard to separate fact from fiction (even ignoring the supernatural bits).