Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 301 posts

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#91

Post by parasti »

sandworm101 wrote: post #80
the-smug-one wrote: post #6

Very cool :-). I don't know that much about the natives of Australia and their history, I wonder how many of these oral traditions have been written down. An immediate google gave me this document, seems interesting at a glance: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/159354575.pdf

When I lived on the west coast a native friend of mine spoke of how some elders no longer wanted stories to be written down. They have seen how their oral stories get documented, effectively transforming them from a living secret into a fixed text in a dead book. The book then goes on a shelf, fodder for the endless stream of anthropology classes taught ay universities in distant cities. More people read the story in…

I come from a background with a strong folk singing tradition, and this reminds me of the two camps of folk singers within it: the purists who want to preserve the "original" tempo, lyrics, melody as it was recorded and documented a century ago and who frown upon deviation from that, and the modernists who adapt, improvise and reinterpret folk songs as they see fit.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#92

Post by llamaimperative »

xdennis wrote: post #89
mritchie712 wrote: post #81

this ritual likely had a real effect on the person (similar to placebo effect). They probably wouldn't have kept it up for 12k years if they weren't getting some tangible improvement.

Multiple religions are thousands of years old and they can't all be true.

Placebo effect absolutely can yield effects for all religions. That's pretty much what's interesting about it: it doesn't matter much what stimulus is producing the effect.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#93

Post by giraffe_lady »

InitialLastName wrote: post #77
kstenerud wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 18th century BC) caused quite a lot of controversy when it was translated in 1870 due to its striking similarity to many parts of the Hebrew Bible (which was written MUCH later). Similar controversies erupted over the stories of Osiris (c. 25th century BC). By the 10th century BC, almost all of the story themes that we ascribe to more modern authorship had already been written.

The similarity between the EoG and Genesis flood stories can probably be laid to the fact that the first major human societies were built around flood plains of rivers in regions that have otherwise stable climates. When your society spends centuries in that situation, floods are the single most important natural event that happens to you. If would be shocking if they didn't feature prominently in your stories.

There are other similarities between the epic of gilgamesh and genesis beyond just the flood, it's a very interesting subject imo. Ultimately both were originally oral traditions long before they were written anywhere, both emerging out of the ancient east mediterranean/west asian cultural milieu.

IIRC the current scholarly consensus is that the shared parts represent two surviving variants of an even earlier story that was widely told across cultures in that region.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#94

Post by renewiltord »

sandworm101 wrote: post #80
the-smug-one wrote: post #6

Very cool :-). I don't know that much about the natives of Australia and their history, I wonder how many of these oral traditions have been written down. An immediate google gave me this document, seems interesting at a glance: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/159354575.pdf

When I lived on the west coast a native friend of mine spoke of how some elders no longer wanted stories to be written down. They have seen how their oral stories get documented, effectively transforming them from a living secret into a fixed text in a dead book. The book then goes on a shelf, fodder for the endless stream of anthropology classes taught ay universities in distant cities. More people read the story in…

Interesting. I do like the documentation for immortality but with stories there is an obsession with "the actual" or "the original" and many people equate legibility with originality. "Source? The original documented here is blah blah".

Sampling a continuous process once and describing it as the process.

"The original value of sin(t) is sqrt(3)/2."

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#95

Post by walthamstow »

psychoslave wrote: post #69
sambeau wrote: post #63

It occurred to me recently that tig/tag has probably been passed down through oral tradition from child to child for millennia. It's possible that it's older than homo-sapiens, older than the taming of fire. Millions of years of tradition. And it still being passed on orally, child-to-child.

What is tig/tag?

A name so regional that it featured on the NY Times' UK & Ireland accent/dialect quiz

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/britis...

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#96

Post by adrianN »

xdennis wrote: post #89
mritchie712 wrote: post #81

this ritual likely had a real effect on the person (similar to placebo effect). They probably wouldn't have kept it up for 12k years if they weren't getting some tangible improvement.

Multiple religions are thousands of years old and they can't all be true.

They don't have to be true to have an effect on people.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#97

Post by whatwhaaaaat »

InitialLastName wrote: post #77
kstenerud wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 18th century BC) caused quite a lot of controversy when it was translated in 1870 due to its striking similarity to many parts of the Hebrew Bible (which was written MUCH later). Similar controversies erupted over the stories of Osiris (c. 25th century BC). By the 10th century BC, almost all of the story themes that we ascribe to more modern authorship had already been written.

The similarity between the EoG and Genesis flood stories can probably be laid to the fact that the first major human societies were built around flood plains of rivers in regions that have otherwise stable climates. When your society spends centuries in that situation, floods are the single most important natural event that happens to you. If would be shocking if they didn't feature prominently in your stories.

Why do we think peoples of the past would be unable to distinguish between a normal river flooding and a “world ending” flood? What about the ~450 feet of sea level rise in the last 15k years?

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#98

Post by sophacles »

Ekaros wrote: post #22
iLoveOncall wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Wait you are telling me they were not for some religious rites? Or had some religious significance? Isn't that the usual reasoning for nearly everything found ever...

It very rarely is. Most things found are known to be tools, dwellings, pottery for storage or cooking, clothing, etc.

Wierd stuff, the stuff without a mundane explanation is labeled ritual, and since its wierd - you (presumably non-archaeologist) are more likely to see articles (etc) about "look at this wierd thing we found".

It's also worth noting that "ritual" doesn't mean "religious". Yes there are a lot of religious rituals in the world today, and throughout written history - so there's a reasonable assumption that often the "ritual" stuff might have been associated with religion. There are however many secular rituals in modern life (and throughout history). Some examples from the present day US:

* Swearing in for various offices/jobs

* Many aspects of court and the legal system (gavels, the whole trial format, the bill signing ceremonies, etc)

* the national anthem before sports games

* parades

* school graduations, awards presentations, and other ceremonies

Many objects associated with these are "ritual objects" - gavels, mortarboard hats, medals on soldiers, fancy diplomas, and on and on. Just because you can provide a deeper explanation of the symbolism doesn't change the fact that they are ritual objects.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#99

Post by swatcoder »

liquidpele wrote: post #52
mistermann wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every ideology would be a more accurate story, though perhaps less satisfying.

Uh.. no?

An ideology can be seen as a collection of rituals in action, reasoning, and rhetoric situated among core beliefs about what life is, what the world is, and what's important to them.

And each ideology has a specific history of events, founders, and later elaborators that shape what these rituals and beliefs are.

Many ideologies reject deities or are at least ambivalent about them, but they're not really operationally different than religions.

So for as much as little bits of history linger in relgious rituals, both blurred and resharpened in later years, the same is absolutely true for ideologies.

The capitalism or feminism or humanism or atheism or whatever else you point to today is similar to the one sharing its name in the past, or in some other region, but is not the same, and these differences are all vestiges of little seed events that happened here or there.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#100

Post by utkarsh858 »

In India, there is a custom of passing ancient knowledge through poetic verses. Every poetic verses is sung in a specific 'meter'. If there is a discrepancy in recitation then remembering and passing knowledge 'letter by letter' can not succeed. Many of the verses are thousands of years old. I read some describing an ancient extinct river ~7000 years ago, later rediscovered through satellite imagery (don't know the right term).
Post reply on HN