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

phys.org

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

#101

Post by rcxdude »

whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #97
InitialLastName wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They almost certainly could, but also they would also almost certainly be prone to the same kind of embellishments of such stories as they are passed on.

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

#102

Post by triceratops »

ViktorRay wrote: post #87
angstrom wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My three-year-old daughter plays this with cat. It's a cross-species thing that is possibly part of mammalian brain development in origin. The cat is less than one year old. Our 17 year old cat does not engage in this at all and hisses at the kitten for even trying to start a game of tag. This makes me wonder if that origin is more related to predator/prey.

In regards to your 17 year old cat… All mammalian species have something in common. When mammals are young we all love playing. This is true for humans, dogs, elephants, primates, cats and so on. But play ends up disappearing as the mammal gets older. Compare a playful baby elephant to an adult elephant. The baby elephant loves playing. Not just with other elephants but with humans and dogs and so on. But older eleph…

Dogs seem to want to play until they're physically unable to.

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

#103

Post by astrange »

angstrom wrote: post #79
popol12 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(game)

My three-year-old daughter plays this with cat. It's a cross-species thing that is possibly part of mammalian brain development in origin. The cat is less than one year old. Our 17 year old cat does not engage in this at all and hisses at the kitten for even trying to start a game of tag. This makes me wonder if that origin is more related to predator/prey.

The cat might not want to move as much anymore if it has arthritis.

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

#105

Post by lawlessone »

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?

>What is tig/tag?

the chain is broken..

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

#106

Post by tolerance »

openrisk wrote: post #70

Its impossible to tell, but the sense of passage of time must have been dramatically different in earlier periods of human development. Persistent rituals passed on from elders to youngsters, oral transmission of huge poems and other such "low tech" information tools must have given some structure to what otherwise might have felt as an eternal reboot.

The persistency that you're describing is key. I'd like to think that previous generations were far more content with time and what is associated with it. The mundane of the day-by-day, aging, death, etc.

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by rhelz »

Kinda sad that the ritual was a way to curse somebody. 12,000 years of hurting each other.

Side Node: computer programing is kinda cool. It is a set of incantations which actually does work.

EDIT: Hello, all you down-voters and people who say I should read the article before commenting :-) I to, don't like it when people just start commenting without reading the article.

I also don't like it when people take what a pop-sci writer too seriously. In this case, I was interested enough to read the original article in Nature, where it says this practice was for cursing (see quote at the end)

Don't forget Gell-Man's Amnesia :-)

"Howitt described how magic was employed to harm a victim using a ritual fire and a wooden object smeared or attached with a piece of human or animal fat (major sources of lipids): “In all these tribes a general, I may say almost an universal, prac- tice has been to procure some article belonging to the intended victim. A piece of his hair, some of his faeces, a bone picked by him and dropped, a shred of his opossum rug, or at the present time of his clothes, will suffice, or if nothing else can be got he may be watched until he is seen to spit, when his saliva is carefully picked up with a piece of wood and made use of for his destruction..."

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

#109

Post by fsckboy »

llamaimperative wrote: post #90
ViktorRay wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to your 17 year old cat… All mammalian species have something in common. When mammals are young we all love playing. This is true for humans, dogs, elephants, primates, cats and so on. But play ends up disappearing as the mammal gets older. Compare a playful baby elephant to an adult elephant. The baby elephant loves playing. Not just with other elephants but with humans and dogs and so on. But older eleph…

Play is a semi-structured way of learning important skills! Evolution really just has to make it engaging enough for you to learn the skills, not much of a reason for it to persist after that.

>not much of a reason for it to persist after that

for working out and keeping fit!... oh, hmmm, I guess that's glaring evidence that working out and keeping fit are not beneficial after all

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

#110

Post by Anon84 »

openrisk wrote: post #70

Its impossible to tell, but the sense of passage of time must have been dramatically different in earlier periods of human development. Persistent rituals passed on from elders to youngsters, oral transmission of huge poems and other such "low tech" information tools must have given some structure to what otherwise might have felt as an eternal reboot.

I read somewhere (don't recall exactly where) that your sense of the passage of time is directly related to how much things change because that impacts how many memories you form. Essentially, when every day is the same, not many new memories are created, so you don't notice time passing (New Years was just a few weeks ago, how can it be July already!), but when things are constantly changing, time passes much more slowly. When you're a child and non-stop learning and exploring, 3 months seems like an eternity.

I wonder if technology development has a similar effect. When the world essentially remains unchanged for your entire life, things must seem much faster with days blending together.

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