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

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

#151

Post by rhelz »

PsylentKnight wrote: post #123
rhelz wrote: post #108

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 p…

Where did it say it's a curse? The first line says it's a healing ritual

You have to go look up the Nature article which this po-sci article was written from.

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

#152

Post by vlovich123 »

swatcoder wrote: post #120
utkarsh858 wrote: post #100

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 r…

Yeah, in language that suits HN, formal poetic structure amounts to error correction in oral tradition. It dramatically narrows the possibilities of what idea or word or sound or whatever could fit in any particular place in the verse, making it easier to memorize and accurately recite. Clever (and some blundering) poets and changes in language still set up these recitations to evolve away from whatever they original…

But language itself and pronunciation of that language shifts over time. Probably better than hand transcription, but 7000 years is a long time.

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

#153

Post by IncreasePosts »

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.

But if the floods are a yearly phenomenon, why would you necessarily write about a single big flood?

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

#154

Post by ffgjgf1 »

scotty79 wrote: post #26
wincy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now now we aren’t allowed to assert that our culture is better or worse than any other, that is an inviolable cardinal sin for our pristine progressive rationalist minds. We have all of modern pharmacology and they have tiny sticks poked into burning animals in the fireplace. Different healing rituals for different folks.

They more or less survived 12000 years healing themselves like that. Let's check back in 12000 years of what medicine that actually works leads to.

Human populations can survive just fine with low/minimal growth and average life expectancy of 30 or so for thousands of years, just like all other animal species, we aren’t that different after all.. You don’t need basically any access to medical treatments for that.

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

#155

Post by teddyh »

rhelz wrote: post #108

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 p…

Computer programs do nothing. It’s computers, i.e. actual hardware, which work. We forget this at our peril.

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

#156

Post by endofreach »

vlovich123 wrote: post #152
swatcoder wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, in language that suits HN, formal poetic structure amounts to error correction in oral tradition. It dramatically narrows the possibilities of what idea or word or sound or whatever could fit in any particular place in the verse, making it easier to memorize and accurately recite. Clever (and some blundering) poets and changes in language still set up these recitations to evolve away from whatever they original…

But language itself and pronunciation of that language shifts over time. Probably better than hand transcription, but 7000 years is a long time.

“A dog walks into a bar and says, ‘I cannot see a thing. I’ll open this one.’”

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

#157

Post by lawlessone »

mistercheph wrote: post #113
whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The whole premise of our present civilization is that every one before us was a nose picking drooler, and that we have more to say to the past then the past has to tell us about ourselves. We lack the collective self consciousness to see ourselves through the eyes of the people of other times, thinking through what it means to be understood through artifact, and the distortions it produces. The closest we come is pro…

Theres a lot to unpack here...

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

#158

Post by roughly »

verisimi wrote: post #133
swatcoder wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, in language that suits HN, formal poetic structure amounts to error correction in oral tradition. It dramatically narrows the possibilities of what idea or word or sound or whatever could fit in any particular place in the verse, making it easier to memorize and accurately recite. Clever (and some blundering) poets and changes in language still set up these recitations to evolve away from whatever they original…

Yes poetry is a sort of decent checksum. However I think parables are an even better checksum, as they can be translated also, but if the meaning is altered the story fails to be coherent. Parables are imo, the best form of information transference across time, imo.

Meaning is culturally contingent, though - the appropriate “moral” of a parable can change as culture changes around it, which can lead to changes to the parable itself.

For a contrived example, 100 years ago, the idea that one would defy one’s parents and pursue one’s own dreams would have been frowned upon, and any parables referencing that action would clearly contain the moral that one should listen to one’s parents. Today, that would be an almost unthinkable moral - discard your dreams and stick to whatever hidebound business your parents were in? Surely we got something wrong in the translation here.

Written in meter, though, clearly the only word that fits here is “shan’t”, not “must”.

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

#159

Post by tgv »

adrianN wrote: post #96
xdennis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it argues against the claim that it must have had a (real) healing effect for it to be passed along.

People are quick to call in the placebo effect, as a scientific sounding explanation, but is nobody reminded of faith healing? People get up out of wheel chairs, cast away their crutches and say they've been healed.

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

#160

Post by krapp »

tgv wrote: post #159
adrianN wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think it argues against the claim that it must have had a (real) healing effect for it to be passed along. People are quick to call in the placebo effect, as a scientific sounding explanation, but is nobody reminded of faith healing? People get up out of wheel chairs, cast away their crutches and say they've been healed.

>but is nobody reminded of faith healing? People get up out of wheel chairs, cast away their crutches and say they've been healed.

That's just common fakery.

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