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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

#141

Post by swatcoder »

ajkjk wrote: post #117
swatcoder wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think anybody else would describe an ideology as a collection of rituals.

FWIW, that's incorrect. It's not at all unusual for ideology to get modeled and analyzed that way in sociology, anthropology, etc

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

#142

Post by golergka »

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…

Isn't that how ancient Greek texts (that are attributed to mythical Homer) have been passed down too?

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

#143

Post by danans »

busterarm wrote: post #86
rhplus wrote: post #4

I’m surprised by how tenuous the link is between the cave find and the archival find. Is the bar really that low for claims in archaeological papers or am I missing something? It’s a compelling story, but surely Occam’s razor would conclude that poking sticks into dead animals and fire pits is just what people have done for thousands of years? Where’s the evidence that there was chanting and a healing ceremony? Edit:…

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 notes from a page.

Furthermore, considering that until pretty recently in history most people were illiterate, the stories they learned were transmitted to them orally (even if read from a book).

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

#144

Post by 0_____0 »

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…

Poetic structure is such a strong framework that linguists have been able to recover information about the dialect and pronunciation of English in the time of Shakespeare, from Shakespearean works.

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

#146

Post by mistermann »

ajkjk wrote: post #117
swatcoder wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think anybody else would describe an ideology as a collection of rituals.

I certainly would (not as a comprehensive explanation though of course). The range of forms of conceptualization any one individual is capable of (or not) is strongly influenced by the ideology to which they subscribe (or are captured by).

If you simply consider how the human mind works, this "should" be fairly obvious. But one's ability or likelihood to think about such things is once again a function of the norms and accepted practices of one's ideology. That which is not known of, essentially does not exist.

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

#147

Post by biztos »

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.

Herzog talks about this a bit in his cave-painting movie[0]. It's fascinating to think that for thousands of years, our ancestors lived without any significant change to their world. I like to imagine that they were pretty happy with that (subject to the normal animal stresses of survival) -- but as you say, it's impossible to tell.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmMUlNeLApU

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

#148

Post by standyro »

galdosdi wrote: post #45
scotty79 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering what a huge percentage of modern US health ailments are self inflicted through lifestyle, it's hard to imagine future generations wouldn't look at our cars and our big macs with the same patronizing quaint view as we would healing with burning sticks. The modern person who sticks to a healthy lifestyle while still having modern medicine for emergencies and misfortunes will surely live better than just abo…

You’re still cherry picking, though.

Leukemia and certain cancers were often a death sentence as recently as 1990. Now the survival rate over five years is like 65%+

You can cherry pick a lot of data, but in general the trend line of lifespan and health outcomes has improved the modern average person’s life significantly.

The average person also was pretty likely to die in a motor vehicle accident in 1970, so much so that in CDC reports would just name the accident section “Motor Vehicle Accidents”

I don’t disagree that the public health response to things like obesity are mostly societal issues and lifestyle induced, nor a major problem, but I would still rather live today with unfettered access to knowledge on how to even approach these health issues, than live in the past.

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

#149

Post by Hypomixolydian »

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.

This is what Manly P. Hall described as "acroamatic cipher" in his book "The Secret Teachings Of All Ages" [chapter "The Cryptogram as a factor in Symbolic Philosophy"]

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

#150

Post by rhelz »

greenhearth wrote: post #140
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…

It says nothing about cursing. Please read article first before commenting.

I read the original Nature article, not the one written by an underpaid and overworked english major who wrote the popular article.
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