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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

#261

Post by danans »

busterarm wrote: post #180
danans wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 credit…

My point is that the Happy Birthday song is an oral tradition which has lasted more than 100 years. That seems corroborated by the 1924 date you cited. That's all.

Of course I don't think oral traditions go unchanged for 12,000 years. Some very old oral traditions, like the ones from ancient India, stayed relatively unchanged only because their emphasis shifted suddenly and dramatically from active composition to ritual performance, to the extent that most people had no idea what the actual language used meant. Their opacity became a feature, not a bug.

However, despite the details changing, consistent storylines and story fragments exist across many ancient cultures, sometimes because they are derived from the same narrative source, and other times because of shared experiences across divergent cultures.

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

#262

Post by utkarsh858 »

xienze wrote: post #191
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…

That’s clever and all, but how can you actually be sure the message was completely unchanged over 7000 years without an original written record? I get that special recitation tricks can make it harder to mess up, but I don’t think you can definitively say the information never once changed.

The people who follow this tradition of oral recitation where trained from childhood in a special school (kind of boarding) where certain values facilitating the lossless transfer of meaning like truthfulness, honesty etc, were imbibed deep into students. It was strictly not allowed to edit (add or subtract) the original verses( if one does so he/she can write another book). After certain years has passed by, only those who were capable enough and 'morally' qualified were authorised to become teachers and pass on the knowledge. Even today in some places in India(not so rampant as in like 100 years ago) the same culture is followed.

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

#263

Post by utkarsh858 »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #213
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…

The Saraswati description in the RgVeda is not 7000 years old. The text itself is believed to be only around 3500 years old

The river itself dried in around ~5000BC. The text attributed itself as being authored in 3000BC. The idea that text was written in 1500BC (3500 years ago) was proposed by Max Muller which was contested by his contemporary western and Indian scholars alike ( they proposed earlier dates) In his late life, Max himself admitted that the dates he gave were hypothetical, they were to considered minimum and it could actually be more than that.

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

#264

Post by g8oz »

utkarsh858 wrote: post #263
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Saraswati description in the RgVeda is not 7000 years old. The text itself is believed to be only around 3500 years old

The river itself dried in around ~5000BC. The text attributed itself as being authored in 3000BC. The idea that text was written in 1500BC (3500 years ago) was proposed by Max Muller which was contested by his contemporary western and Indian scholars alike ( they proposed earlier dates) In his late life, Max himself admitted that the dates he gave were hypothetical, they were to considered minimum and it could actual…

"Scientific data and new evidence converge on the understanding that between 3000 and 2000 BCE (about 4,000 years ago), the river's demise began when Sutlej diverted from the present-day Ghaggar-Hakra valley to join the river Beas. By around 3792 BP (c. 1800 BCE), the river had completely dried up."

https://theprint.in/opinion/first-we-lost-saraswati-river-no...

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

#265

Post by 10u152 »

verisimi wrote: post #243
roughly wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pare…

I bet you've not seen a mustard seed, but you still get what is being said, in the parable of the mustard seed. If the parable is talking to a foundational reality, rather than cultural situations, I think it can endure. I get what you are saying, but even parables don't have 'the truth'. I would imagine that there may even be parables that argue the opposite position. And both, opposing positions could be right, dep…

This is tangential, but have people really not seen a mustard seed?

Seeded/whole seed mustard was commonplace in my family.

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

#266

Post by yummypaint »

kelipso wrote: post #236
abc_lisper wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the harsh conditions in Australia, where there a thousand ways to die, put the onus on truth and preservation of it in the oral tradition. Unlike most other cultures where it's kind of ok to gradually deviate from the truth. It is worth paying attention to the aborigine stories.They have also made astronomical observations that are pretty accurate to the date. https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/australias-indig…

It kind of feels like a local optima situation where they relied on memory so much that they didn't feel the need for writing. Either that or the fact that there was no writing for so long resulted in them specialising in memory techniques a lot.

We didn't evolve reading and writing. Literacy is just a recently developed hack. Memorization was the only way for the vast majority of human history.

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

#267

Post by Ar-Curunir »

utkarsh858 wrote: post #263
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Saraswati description in the RgVeda is not 7000 years old. The text itself is believed to be only around 3500 years old

The river itself dried in around ~5000BC. The text attributed itself as being authored in 3000BC. The idea that text was written in 1500BC (3500 years ago) was proposed by Max Muller which was contested by his contemporary western and Indian scholars alike ( they proposed earlier dates) In his late life, Max himself admitted that the dates he gave were hypothetical, they were to considered minimum and it could actual…

I encourage you to read research literature from the last century. Given that all of our linguistic estimates put Proto-Indo-European itself at around 3000 BCE, it makes no sense to claim that the RigVeda was composed earlier at that time. Indeed, Sanskrit likely did not exist at that time.

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

#270

Post by ryzvonusef »

> One stick was 11,000 years old and the other 12,000 years old, radiocarbon dating found.

so there were two sticks, at the same site/ritual, but one stick was a 1000 years older than the other?

does that mean the ancestors of the present day people were coming to this location for the ritual for a 1000 years? but then for some reason stopped?

This is so fascinating!

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