3 ms·

Go play a game of telephone with 20 people and see how well information travels. Now multiply that by 100 years.

IAmBroom 1y ago
If that game of telephone includes the sentence "I'm going to kidnap your child", I'll bet it travels faster and more accurately than you think it will.
cubefox 1y ago
That calculation doesn't make sense.
soperj 1y ago
Except oral histories seemed to have been very important to people and passing them down accurately has been noted throughout history
- b112 1y ago
  No TV, no books. Lightly populated rural communities, without a lot of visitors. People loved stories because they were bored.
  - AlotOfReading 1y ago
    It's not boredom. Humans have always told stories and we still tell them today. How often does the 500 mile email come up on HN, or The Story of Mel? What about the SR-71 speed check? It's an innate human characteristic to love stories and most social media is lightly disguised storytelling.
    - b112 1y ago
      It's not boredom. Says someone who didn't listen to an old timers 70th rendition of the same old story. There are stories, and then there are stories. I grew up pre-Internet with limited books, no way to get more, 3 fuzzy TV channels on a good day, and nothing else. People today don't even know what boredom is. You don't know what boredom is, until you've watched the same episode of The Andy Griffith Show 15 times, and still think it is entertaining. Now go to pre-literate times. No TV. Yes, stories are fun. But hearing the same story over and over 1000 times is only fun if you're so bored, any external stimulus is a blessing.
      - AlotOfReading 1y ago
        Let's not assume things about age. I'm old enough to remember holding the stupid rabbit ears. Never liked the Andy Griffith show though. I've also spent plenty of nights sitting a fire with a bunch of nomads in the middle of nowhere. It's not fundamentally different from media today. Audiobooks, Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Disney movies, true crime media, etc. People don't choose these for lack of alternatives. They're activities people like (excepting the parents forced to watch Frozen for the thousandth time). Strong oral storytelling cultures also have many, many stories available to them. It's not as tedious as syndicated TV was. Two examples of collections that survive to the modern day are the Jewish bible (old testament) and the Christian New Testament, each of which has dozens of stories you're likely familiar with no matter your religious background. They're not communicated solely through everyone sitting down around a campfire, and not every recitation is in the formal verbiage of the source material. Often recitation is associated with a calendar (e.g. the sermon schedules ministers follow in modern churches, or performed only at particular seasonal festivals). Different recitations are often performed in new ways to adjust things to the audience (e.g. referencing recent events) or with slight changes to keep things fresh. So on and so forth. It's a much richer world than you may be aware of.
advisedwang 1y ago
100 years doesn't require a game of telephone with 20 people. It requires maybe 2 or 3. And for a event known to a whole town, you have multiple independent narrators which can help stabilize information. My family has far more trivial information passed down orally that is way older than 100 years.
- cogman10 1y ago
  Mine doesn't. I know just a handful of things about my great grandparents. Things I do know about my family history didn't come from oral traditions but rather records placing my ancestors in places. Even from what I know of my parents, I'm sure I've forgotten or misremembered a bunch of stories that they've told me about their lives. I couldn't reliably retell more than a handful of stories.
  - b_t_s 1y ago
    Life in the last century or so has become far less conducive to oral history with travel and entertainment. It's much easier to maintain an oral history when live storytelling & music are practically the only form of entertainment and your extended family has lived in the same place for many generations. Still it's not that uncommon even today. I don't know much about my mothers family but I grew up hearing occasional stories and genealogy about the famous ancestor on my fathers side despite the fact that he died over a century ago on another continent. And boy oh boy did we get an education when we went back to visit the old family farm...found out I was related to him at least 2 different ways, as well as half the people on that stretch of road and the hotel owner in town. It seemed like there wasn't a person in town who couldn't tell you their connection to the only really significant person/even in the towns history.
Jtsummers 1y ago
The telephone game lacks features in the telling that are common in oral storytelling that help reinforce the content and reduces the number of errors. Repeated telling, repetition in the structure, rhyming and alliteration (which is used, or even if they're used, depends on the language), being made into a song (seems to stick better than just straight speaking), etc. If you played the telephone game with a deliberately constructed story using those elements and taught that story to the next "generation" by repetition over a period of time before they, in turn, repeated it to the next generation it would be much more reliable. It also wouldn't be the telephone game.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  I'm convinced that poems are an effective error-correcting code for remembering things.
MomsAVoxell 1y ago
Ask an Australian aborigine to sing you one of their 20,000 year old songs. Humans have a context problem. We all insist ours is the best culture; whereas, all culture is a lie which only persists in the retelling. In that sense, we Westerners have a long, long way to go to catch up with the aborigines.

If that game of telephone includes the sentence "I'm going to kidnap your child", I'll bet it travels faster and more accurately than you think it will.

cubefox 1y ago

That calculation doesn't make sense.

soperj 1y ago

Except oral histories seemed to have been very important to people and passing them down accurately has been noted throughout history

b112 1y ago
No TV, no books. Lightly populated rural communities, without a lot of visitors. People loved stories because they were bored.
- AlotOfReading 1y ago
  It's not boredom. Humans have always told stories and we still tell them today. How often does the 500 mile email come up on HN, or The Story of Mel? What about the SR-71 speed check? It's an innate human characteristic to love stories and most social media is lightly disguised storytelling.
  - b112 1y ago
    It's not boredom. Says someone who didn't listen to an old timers 70th rendition of the same old story. There are stories, and then there are stories. I grew up pre-Internet with limited books, no way to get more, 3 fuzzy TV channels on a good day, and nothing else. People today don't even know what boredom is. You don't know what boredom is, until you've watched the same episode of The Andy Griffith Show 15 times, and still think it is entertaining. Now go to pre-literate times. No TV. Yes, stories are fun. But hearing the same story over and over 1000 times is only fun if you're so bored, any external stimulus is a blessing.
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      Let's not assume things about age. I'm old enough to remember holding the stupid rabbit ears. Never liked the Andy Griffith show though. I've also spent plenty of nights sitting a fire with a bunch of nomads in the middle of nowhere. It's not fundamentally different from media today. Audiobooks, Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Disney movies, true crime media, etc. People don't choose these for lack of alternatives. They're activities people like (excepting the parents forced to watch Frozen for the thousandth time). Strong oral storytelling cultures also have many, many stories available to them. It's not as tedious as syndicated TV was. Two examples of collections that survive to the modern day are the Jewish bible (old testament) and the Christian New Testament, each of which has dozens of stories you're likely familiar with no matter your religious background. They're not communicated solely through everyone sitting down around a campfire, and not every recitation is in the formal verbiage of the source material. Often recitation is associated with a calendar (e.g. the sermon schedules ministers follow in modern churches, or performed only at particular seasonal festivals). Different recitations are often performed in new ways to adjust things to the audience (e.g. referencing recent events) or with slight changes to keep things fresh. So on and so forth. It's a much richer world than you may be aware of.

advisedwang 1y ago

100 years doesn't require a game of telephone with 20 people. It requires maybe 2 or 3. And for a event known to a whole town, you have multiple independent narrators which can help stabilize information. My family has far more trivial information passed down orally that is way older than 100 years.

cogman10 1y ago
Mine doesn't. I know just a handful of things about my great grandparents. Things I do know about my family history didn't come from oral traditions but rather records placing my ancestors in places. Even from what I know of my parents, I'm sure I've forgotten or misremembered a bunch of stories that they've told me about their lives. I couldn't reliably retell more than a handful of stories.
- b_t_s 1y ago
  Life in the last century or so has become far less conducive to oral history with travel and entertainment. It's much easier to maintain an oral history when live storytelling & music are practically the only form of entertainment and your extended family has lived in the same place for many generations. Still it's not that uncommon even today. I don't know much about my mothers family but I grew up hearing occasional stories and genealogy about the famous ancestor on my fathers side despite the fact that he died over a century ago on another continent. And boy oh boy did we get an education when we went back to visit the old family farm...found out I was related to him at least 2 different ways, as well as half the people on that stretch of road and the hotel owner in town. It seemed like there wasn't a person in town who couldn't tell you their connection to the only really significant person/even in the towns history.

Jtsummers 1y ago

The telephone game lacks features in the telling that are common in oral storytelling that help reinforce the content and reduces the number of errors. Repeated telling, repetition in the structure, rhyming and alliteration (which is used, or even if they're used, depends on the language), being made into a song (seems to stick better than just straight speaking), etc. If you played the telephone game with a deliberately constructed story using those elements and taught that story to the next "generation" by repetition over a period of time before they, in turn, repeated it to the next generation it would be much more reliable. It also wouldn't be the telephone game.

WalterBright 1y ago
I'm convinced that poems are an effective error-correcting code for remembering things.

MomsAVoxell 1y ago

Ask an Australian aborigine to sing you one of their 20,000 year old songs. Humans have a context problem. We all insist ours is the best culture; whereas, all culture is a lie which only persists in the retelling. In that sense, we Westerners have a long, long way to go to catch up with the aborigines.