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The evidence is: (1) Palm Trees in Central Australia are related to those from Northern Australia and arrived 30Kyr ago and (2) an Aboriginal tale of gods carry
by cjensen 12y ago
The evidence is: (1) Palm Trees in Central Australia are related to those from Northern Australia and arrived 30Kyr ago and (2) an Aboriginal tale of gods carrying the Palm Tree seeds from the North.
The quoted professor concludes from this that Aboriginal oral history has survived for 30,000 years.
The heck? Consider two explanations off the top of my head:
1. The Aborigines forgot the actual origin of the Palm seeds. Recently (<2Kyr), a tale was invented of the seed origin which happens to involve the seeds being carried from the same cardinal direction.
2. The Aborigines forgot the actual origin of the Palm seeds. Recently (<2Kyr), a visitor from the North recognized the Trees, and guessed they were carried from the North. This story was passed down as fact.
A tale that lasts 30,000 seems like Magic to me. Neither of my top-of-the-head explanations requires Magic. Do they teach Occam's Razor in Tasmanian Ecology school?
- femto 12y agoIt seems quite plausible to me. Think of it in terms of information theory. Each person is an unreliable channel, but there are hundreds or thousands operating in parallel. The net result is a reliable information transmission channel that stretches back many, many years. As I understand it, the Aborigines have a strict oral tradition, so the passing down of these stories isn't a casual chat over a meal, but a formal education, where accuracy is paramount. Under these circumstances, the reliability of each individual ancestral line goes up, so when they are all operating in parallel, I'd expect the error rate to be quite low, errors in each generation being corrected by a majority vote.