5 ms·

> The original caretakers of the Australian continent have been telling the same stories orally for 40,000 years. I know that this is commonly believed, but ho

by lisper 1mo ago

> The original caretakers of the Australian continent have been telling the same stories orally for 40,000 years. I know that this is commonly believed, but how could you possibly know?

bcraven 1mo ago
I recommend everyone watch the documentary First Footprints[0], it is the most wondrous thing I have ever seen. The simple answer is that some storied reference events that happened that long ago.[1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n6VJ5jq7zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n6VJ5jq7zY [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/aboriginal-tale-ancient-volcano-oldest-story-ever-told https://www.science.org/content/article/aboriginal-tale-anci...
- thaumasiotes 1mo ago
  > The simple answer is that some storied reference events that happened that long ago. This is another thing that you can't know. If there is a match between an inferred geological event and a mythological event, you'd still have to ask "what is the rate of this happening by coincidence?"
  - lukan 1mo ago
    And then you'd still have to ask yourself, whether anything is real or a simulation, or a dream of god, etc. Otherwise history is indeed much guesswork, as we don't have a timemachine and rely on lot's of indirect evidence for everything.
    - MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
      This is like looking at a seismograph or an electrocardiogram and concluding that it doesn’t represent anything worth knowing “because nothing is real”, “they were just dreaming because they were primitive”, or “we don’t have a <mythological and impossible device> to prove these stories”. We do have methods of proving these stories - we can dig trenches and see the history as it was described, in the land itself. Please, do not dismiss this on the basis of some authoritarian postulates about not having developed your own cultures time machines. Song lines literally are a verifiable time record.
      - lukan 1mo ago
        I was mainly mocking the absolutistic comment above, I find it very possible that the aborigines culture remembers very old events and that there can be proof in the conventional sense for it. But it would be indirect proof.
        MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
        It is direct proof in the geological record, what part of that are you just failing to understand?
        lukan 1mo ago
        Do you have the qualification to evaluate, whether some parts in the soil is a direct proof of some oral telling? Do you know their language? Can you rule out missunderstanding, misstranslation or plain fraud? I cannot, so I fail to understand the absolute direct proof here. Do you have a researcher btw. who says there is absolute proof for this? I doubt it, I rather think their language is along the lines of: "those findings indicate that ..". "The original caretakers of the Australian continent have been telling the same stories orally for 40,000 years." And especially for this claim of yours, citing from the one given link: "Eruption 37,000 years ago may have sparked a legend about four giants" Notice the "may"?
        MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
        [flagged]
        lukan 1mo ago
        I did research and just gave you a quote that says maybe. I have zero reason to assume your position there is definitely proof for the claim 40000 years memory to be correct. "Do your own research for my claim" doesn't work around here.
        1mo ago
  - MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
    Your mistake is leaning on the mythology, having, it seems, not actually listened to the songs and stories yourself, directly. There is no coincidence - the song lines record real geological events, such as the lowering of the oceans, the formations of islands, the drying up of lakes - on an ancient timeline - all of which are verified in the geological record. Please, do not lean so hard on the petard of treating this subject as one of methods and coincidence. These are real cultural artifacts, which encode real events.
    - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
      > These are real cultural artifacts, which encode real events. The total amount of evidence for the second half of your claim is zero, and you should realize that. It's something people want to believe, but it's not something there is any reason to believe.
      - MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
        [flagged]
        marcusverus 1mo ago
        Occam's razor suggests that a coincidence is just a teensy bit more likely than a story surviving unchanged for a thousand generations.
- lisper 1mo ago
  Thanks. I don't have time to watch the video, but the article still leaves me skeptical. Matching myths to past events seems to me fraught with all the same potential pitfalls as matching them to future events and thence labeling them as prophecies, especially when the event in question is as common as a volcano erupting. But I will admit it's not entirely implausible either.
  - nkoren 1mo ago
    I also don't have time to watch the video, but am somewhat familiar with the topic. One of the primary themes of the dreamtime stories is about the origins of various landforms: how this hill got here, how this valley got there, etc. They're often quite detailed, because explaining the unique quirks of the landscape is part of the appeal. So, not just a generic "why the valley is here" stories, but specific "why the valley has seven sharp zig-zag kinks in it" kind of stories. There are a number of such stories which tell about landforms which have been under the ocean for 11,000 years, since the great meltwater pulses raised the ocean at the end of the ice age. Long after the stories were documented by anthropologists -- who thought it was unusual that so much mythology would be concerned with the topography of the seafloor -- sonar was invented, which confirmed that the landforms existed more or less exactly as the stories said. So personally I think that's pretty hard proof of at least 11,000 years of accurate oral tradition.
  - _bernd 1mo ago
    I have no proof on hand but I have seen for instance a documentary on the French German station ARTE tv where they featured a kind of crazy dude who have gone through more or less every oral story of a tribe, the western world actually have written down. Then he started to compare and traced bits and pieces and this is really crazy who many parallels you will find. He then together with anthropologist estimated how old these stories might could be, based on travels and migrations like those of the caretakers...
  - MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
    You’re making a very glib conclusion. Please, if you have an interest, make an effort to learn more about this subject. It’s not just matching myths .. its recording a history of geologically recorded events, along song lines actually walked where those geological events occurred. “Prophecies” is a very euro-centric way to dismiss the subject. Indeed, there is encoding for you to be discovered, which has been rigorously demonstrated. Dig deeper.
smallnix 1mo ago
I remember they found remnants of a 10k yr old ritual ground that matches the ritual in the oral tradition. Found it https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01912-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01912-w
- vintermann 1mo ago
  There is also a legend of incestuous royals connected to the Boyne valley tombs in Ireland, written down in the 12th century. DNA examination of a person buried in the tombs found that his parents were indeed very closely related. This suggests almost 5000 years of oral tradition, even surviving a fairly big cultural replacement event. If that can happen, it's not so surprising a story can last 20-30000 years either - especially not if there's not much else making a similar impression to tell stories about.
MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
Indeed, there are scientific studies which correlate specific tales to geologic events which occurred in the tens of thousands of years ago - there are multiple studies now. The one I know of by way of personal experience (heard the songs, been there many times) is the tale of the creation of Wadjemup (Rottnest Island) ... I don’t have references handy at the moment - I leave it up to you as an exercise to go on a course of interesting discovery - because there are some very fascinating papers for you to read, if you maintain the interest in the subject. The treatise on the potential crypto mechanisms (kinship system in a multi-lingual environment) is extremely fascinating, if I get a chance to find the references in a few days or so I’ll try to follow up … but anyway, do go do your own search, it is worth the journey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agcH95AfU58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agcH95AfU58
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]

by lisper 1mo ago

> The original caretakers of the Australian continent have been telling the same stories orally for 40,000 years. I know that this is commonly believed, but how could you possibly know?

bcraven 1mo ago

I recommend everyone watch the documentary First Footprints[0], it is the most wondrous thing I have ever seen. The simple answer is that some storied reference events that happened that long ago.[1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n6VJ5jq7zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n6VJ5jq7zY [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/aboriginal-tale-ancient-volcano-oldest-story-ever-told https://www.science.org/content/article/aboriginal-tale-anci...

thaumasiotes 1mo ago
> The simple answer is that some storied reference events that happened that long ago. This is another thing that you can't know. If there is a match between an inferred geological event and a mythological event, you'd still have to ask "what is the rate of this happening by coincidence?"
- lukan 1mo ago
  And then you'd still have to ask yourself, whether anything is real or a simulation, or a dream of god, etc. Otherwise history is indeed much guesswork, as we don't have a timemachine and rely on lot's of indirect evidence for everything.
  - MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
    This is like looking at a seismograph or an electrocardiogram and concluding that it doesn’t represent anything worth knowing “because nothing is real”, “they were just dreaming because they were primitive”, or “we don’t have a <mythological and impossible device> to prove these stories”. We do have methods of proving these stories - we can dig trenches and see the history as it was described, in the land itself. Please, do not dismiss this on the basis of some authoritarian postulates about not having developed your own cultures time machines. Song lines literally are a verifiable time record.
    - lukan 1mo ago
      I was mainly mocking the absolutistic comment above, I find it very possible that the aborigines culture remembers very old events and that there can be proof in the conventional sense for it. But it would be indirect proof.
      - MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
        It is direct proof in the geological record, what part of that are you just failing to understand?
        lukan 1mo ago
        Do you have the qualification to evaluate, whether some parts in the soil is a direct proof of some oral telling? Do you know their language? Can you rule out missunderstanding, misstranslation or plain fraud? I cannot, so I fail to understand the absolute direct proof here. Do you have a researcher btw. who says there is absolute proof for this? I doubt it, I rather think their language is along the lines of: "those findings indicate that ..". "The original caretakers of the Australian continent have been telling the same stories orally for 40,000 years." And especially for this claim of yours, citing from the one given link: "Eruption 37,000 years ago may have sparked a legend about four giants" Notice the "may"?
        MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
        [flagged]
        lukan 1mo ago
        I did research and just gave you a quote that says maybe. I have zero reason to assume your position there is definitely proof for the claim 40000 years memory to be correct. "Do your own research for my claim" doesn't work around here.
        1mo ago
- MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
  Your mistake is leaning on the mythology, having, it seems, not actually listened to the songs and stories yourself, directly. There is no coincidence - the song lines record real geological events, such as the lowering of the oceans, the formations of islands, the drying up of lakes - on an ancient timeline - all of which are verified in the geological record. Please, do not lean so hard on the petard of treating this subject as one of methods and coincidence. These are real cultural artifacts, which encode real events.
  - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
    > These are real cultural artifacts, which encode real events. The total amount of evidence for the second half of your claim is zero, and you should realize that. It's something people want to believe, but it's not something there is any reason to believe.
    - MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
      [flagged]
      - marcusverus 1mo ago
        Occam's razor suggests that a coincidence is just a teensy bit more likely than a story surviving unchanged for a thousand generations.
lisper 1mo ago
Thanks. I don't have time to watch the video, but the article still leaves me skeptical. Matching myths to past events seems to me fraught with all the same potential pitfalls as matching them to future events and thence labeling them as prophecies, especially when the event in question is as common as a volcano erupting. But I will admit it's not entirely implausible either.
- nkoren 1mo ago
  I also don't have time to watch the video, but am somewhat familiar with the topic. One of the primary themes of the dreamtime stories is about the origins of various landforms: how this hill got here, how this valley got there, etc. They're often quite detailed, because explaining the unique quirks of the landscape is part of the appeal. So, not just a generic "why the valley is here" stories, but specific "why the valley has seven sharp zig-zag kinks in it" kind of stories. There are a number of such stories which tell about landforms which have been under the ocean for 11,000 years, since the great meltwater pulses raised the ocean at the end of the ice age. Long after the stories were documented by anthropologists -- who thought it was unusual that so much mythology would be concerned with the topography of the seafloor -- sonar was invented, which confirmed that the landforms existed more or less exactly as the stories said. So personally I think that's pretty hard proof of at least 11,000 years of accurate oral tradition.
- _bernd 1mo ago
  I have no proof on hand but I have seen for instance a documentary on the French German station ARTE tv where they featured a kind of crazy dude who have gone through more or less every oral story of a tribe, the western world actually have written down. Then he started to compare and traced bits and pieces and this is really crazy who many parallels you will find. He then together with anthropologist estimated how old these stories might could be, based on travels and migrations like those of the caretakers...
- MomsAVoxell 1mo ago
  You’re making a very glib conclusion. Please, if you have an interest, make an effort to learn more about this subject. It’s not just matching myths .. its recording a history of geologically recorded events, along song lines actually walked where those geological events occurred. “Prophecies” is a very euro-centric way to dismiss the subject. Indeed, there is encoding for you to be discovered, which has been rigorously demonstrated. Dig deeper.

smallnix 1mo ago

I remember they found remnants of a 10k yr old ritual ground that matches the ritual in the oral tradition. Found it https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01912-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01912-w

vintermann 1mo ago
There is also a legend of incestuous royals connected to the Boyne valley tombs in Ireland, written down in the 12th century. DNA examination of a person buried in the tombs found that his parents were indeed very closely related. This suggests almost 5000 years of oral tradition, even surviving a fairly big cultural replacement event. If that can happen, it's not so surprising a story can last 20-30000 years either - especially not if there's not much else making a similar impression to tell stories about.

MomsAVoxell 1mo ago

Indeed, there are scientific studies which correlate specific tales to geologic events which occurred in the tens of thousands of years ago - there are multiple studies now. The one I know of by way of personal experience (heard the songs, been there many times) is the tale of the creation of Wadjemup (Rottnest Island) ... I don’t have references handy at the moment - I leave it up to you as an exercise to go on a course of interesting discovery - because there are some very fascinating papers for you to read, if you maintain the interest in the subject. The treatise on the potential crypto mechanisms (kinship system in a multi-lingual environment) is extremely fascinating, if I get a chance to find the references in a few days or so I’ll try to follow up … but anyway, do go do your own search, it is worth the journey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agcH95AfU58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agcH95AfU58

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]