Slightly off-topic, but I recently learned that the Aboriginals may have had contact with Tamil people from South India.
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
#172There are a few examples of oral cultures ensuring perfect transmission across a large expanse of time.
One example is the several different recitation styles used to memorize Sanskrit verses. These methods give memorizers multiple ways to remember a line, and also prevent errors like the inadvertent mixing of adjacent words (" euphonic combination"). The "checksumming schemes" are far more elaborate than you'd imagine. [1] The result is perfect transmission of text and its pronunciation, including pitch accent.
Another example is a "multi-party verification" scheme in some Aboriginal Australian cultures. "... storytelling among contemporary Aboriginal people can involve the deliberate tracking of teaching responsibilities. For example, a man teaches the stories of his country to his children. His son has his knowledge of those stories judged by his sister’s children—for certain kin are explicitly tasked with ensuring that those stories are learned and recounted properly—and people take those responsibilities seriously. ... the 'owner-manager' relationship, requiring a story to be discussed explicitly across three generations of a patriline, constitutes a cross-generational mechanism which may be particularly successful at maximising precision in replication of a story across successive generations". [2]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_chant
[2]: "Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast Dating from More than 7000 Years Ago", Patrick D. Nunn, https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2015.1077539
Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
#173Earlier 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.
But if the floods are a yearly phenomenon, why would you necessarily write about a single big flood?
For the same reason people in places where it snows every year still remember the really big blizzards: some floods are worse than others. Any given generation will have a flood they recall that set the (ahem) high water mark for comparison to future floods.
Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
#174When you understand it you call it "science" or "technology". When you don't understand it you call it "religion" or "ritual".
These are smart people. Just like us. Time is money for them just like it is for us. They probably had a very good, practical reason to do this "ritual". As surely as tapping keyboards.
Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
#175Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
#176It 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?
In parts of the UK it's often called 'tig' in the US and other parts of the UK it's called 'tag'
Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you just found out the roots of every religion.
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.
You would be interested to know that Abraham lived at the time of the Gilgamesh epic, and he traveled widely telling his story.
I'm aware there is no direct archeological evidence of Abraham, except for Gilgamesh, so now you need to decide which direction the knowledge flowed.
Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
“A dog walks into a bar and says, ‘I cannot see a thing. I’ll open this one.’”
The old Sumerian joke? I love reading the posited explanations for that joke in academia and when it’s posted randomly people usually have a stab at it too.
Hmm. Blind people called dogs, because they have to use their nose instead of their eyes?
Not sure how that's funny though.
Makes me wonder, dogs supposedly have evolved to be better companions of humans, and lateral gene transfer is a thing. I wonder of they had much poorer sight 7k years ago, or perhaps, a popular local breed did.
(Naturally, to support my blind hypothesis, and walking into a bar instead of seeing it)
Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
#179Earlier 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.
The similarities between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis flood story are far too extensive to be due to chance. For example, compare the following passages, describing how Noah / Utnapishtim let out birds to search for dry land, after their boats get grounded on a tall mountain. Genesis 8:6-12: After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth u…
> Historically, much of Genesis was likely written during the Babylonian exile.
That's very very unlikely, there's too much other stuff linked with it that is older than that. You might be able to claim that when it was set to paper, but there's no way Genesis itself is only from then.
According to Genesis Abraham lived at the time that Gilgamesh was recorded, with Noah living a little before then. It's quote possible Gilgamesh was written down from their stories, rather than the other way around. Genesis records how Abraham traveled widely telling his story, including to kings.
Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have to agree here. Also just kind of doesn't pass the common sense test. We all learn the "game of telephone" as a kid and how information can change even just being passed once. In fact I've heard archaeologists in the past specifically say that no oral tradition can survive intact more than 100 years. Usually this statement is in reference to certain creation myths being relatively modern inventions. A claim of 12…
> In fact I've heard archaeologists in the past specifically say that no oral tradition can survive intact more than 100 years. Usually this statement is in reference to certain creation myths being relatively modern inventions. Maybe you meant 1000 years? If you really meant 100 years, there's an obvious counterexample: The "Happy Birthday Song", published in 1893. Arguably no one learns it by reading the words and…
You are aware that the Happy Birthday Song has dozens upon dozens of variations (and not just the parody ones), right?
The Happy Birthday Song isn't even the Happy Birthday Song! It's Good Morning To All! Happy Birthday lyrics didn't even make it into print until 1912 and that's not even the version that we use today. That version was first published in 1924 by Robert Coleman. The copyrighted version that even credited the Hill sisters with the melody (from Good Morning to All, in 1893) didn't come around till 1935.
As for peoples' literacy, yes, that's the point. That history is often unreliable. We even have disputes between early _written_ historians writing about the same events and have to compare them and also evaluate whether they were alive at the time of the events and what their sources were. Often we can discount what those people wrote today based on what we've learned from the past.
I said 100 years and I meant it. If you really think about it deeply, it should be obvious. Hell, I don't know who my father is and my own mother couldn't manage to stay consistent between tellings of that story...
You expect a complicated tradition to stay the same for 12000 years? I went to Catholic Church my whole childhood and I couldn't even tell you beat-for-beat what happens at mass if you put a gun to my head.