Sea Level Rise and Aboriginal Ancient Oral History

[ignorantianescia]

Melbourne, the southernmost state capital of the Australian mainland, was established by Europeans a couple hundred years ago at the juncture of a great river and a wind-whipped bay. Port Phillip Bay sprawls over 750 square miles, providing feeding grounds for whales and sheltering coastlines for brine-scented beach towns. But it’s an exceptionally shallow waterway, less than 30 feet in most places. It’s so shallow that 10,000 years ago, when ice sheets and glaciers held far more of the planet’s water than is the case today, most of the bay floor was high and dry and grazed upon by kangaroos.

To most of us, the rush of the oceans that followed the last ice age seems like a prehistoric epoch. But the historic occasion was dutifully recorded — coast to coast — by the original inhabitants of the land Down Under.

Without using written languages, Australian tribes passed memories of life before, and during, post-glacial shoreline inundations through hundreds of generations as high-fidelity oral history. Some tribes can still point to islands that no longer exist — and provide their original names.

That’s the conclusion of linguists and a geographer, who have together identified 18 Aboriginal stories — many of which were transcribed by early settlers before the tribes that told them succumbed to murderous and disease-spreading immigrants from afar — that they say accurately described geographical features that predated the last post-ice age rising of the seas.

“It’s quite gobsmacking to think that a story could be told for 10,000 years,” Nicholas Reid, a linguist at Australia’s University of New England specializing in Aboriginal Australian languages, said. “It’s almost unimaginable that people would transmit stories about things like islands that are currently underwater accurately across 400 generations.”

More: www.climatecentral.org/news/tales-of-sea-level-rise-told-for-10000-years-18586

[unkleE]

That's fascinating.

I used to do environmental management and policy work for the NSW government. One of my jobs (for about 7 years around the turn of the millennium) related specifically to the rivers and catchments along the NSW coastline. These are very dynamic ecosystems, and one of the most important factors to consider was the processes set in place by sea level rise (finishing about 6000-8000 years ago from memory), and how far these processes had progressed. For example, coastal estuaries tend to fill up with sand over time and become coastal wetlands. In developing an environmental plan for these areas, it was important to know whether what we see has reached a relatively stable state, or is still midway through a geomorphic change process which no human management is realistically going to halt.

You also occasionally come across aboriginal middens when visiting coastal areas, a reminder of the nations and people that were here long before us whites invaded. I had wondered what it was like for these peoples to have their traditional lands reduced and changed, but I hadn't ever thought to check if that memory was incorporated into their stories.

Thanks.

[James Hannam]

Feb 9, 2015 12:59:16 GMT ignorantianescia said:

“It’s almost unimaginable that people would transmit stories about things like islands that are currently underwater accurately across 400 generations.”

And it is, sadly, almost certainly not true that they did. Finding correspondences across the gamut of native Australian myth is hardly surprising. We know all about parallel mania here.

J

[fortigurn]

It seems incredibly unlikely to me. I wonder how they intend to validate it? It's a huge claim, and I can't see it faring well in peer review.

[timoneill]

Feb 9, 2015 22:28:51 GMT James Hannam said:

Feb 9, 2015 12:59:16 GMT ignorantianescia said:

“It’s almost unimaginable that people would transmit stories about things like islands that are currently underwater accurately across 400 generations.”

And it is, sadly, almost certainly not true that they did. Finding correspondences across the gamut of native Australian myth is hardly surprising. We know all about parallel mania here.

J

They aren't talking about "finding correspondences across the gamut of native Australian myth". Aboriginal lore is very practical stuff - oral maps, information about how to travel across country and when, where water can be found etc. A hell of a lot of it is geography, though sometimes of a kind we whitefellas find difficult to understand. That's the stuff that sounds like what we call "myth" but is actually practical information encoded in story. But a lot of it is just plain practical information. These people have been living in one of the toughest landscapes on the planet for up to 60,000 years. And they didn't just survive, they thrived. How? Because they knew "country" like the backs of their hands. And they passed that information down from generation to generation in a way that has preserved it for millennia.

So this is nothing like "parallel mania". Anyone who has had any exposure to what indigenous Australians know about the land and how well they preserve that knowledge would not find the claim they have oral memories going back this far even remotely far fetched. In fact, it makes perfect sense.

[James Hannam]

Feb 10, 2015 7:25:43 GMT timoneill said:

They aren't talking about "finding correspondences across the gamut of native Australian myth". Aboriginal lore is very practical stuff - oral maps, information about how to travel across country and when, where water can be found etc. A hell of a lot of it is geography, though sometimes of a kind we whitefellas find difficult to understand. That's the stuff that sounds like what we call "myth" but is actually practical information encoded in story. But a lot of it is just plain practical information.

That's the problem here. Facts can be passed on unchanged because they are constantly being validated against reality. If the water runs our here and appears there, the traditions adapt to the new state of knowledge. Without that validation, the knowledge will be as prone to decay and mutation as any other oral tradition.

In this case, we are being asked to believe that oral traditions of a lost land that, being lost, cannot have been validated for thousands of years, were nonetheless passed down accurately. That is extremely unlikely.

J

[timoneill]

Feb 10, 2015 13:58:50 GMT James Hannam said:

That's the problem here. Facts can be passed on unchanged because they are constantly being validated against reality. If the water runs our here and appears there, the traditions adapt to the new state of knowledge. Without that validation, the knowledge will be as prone to decay and mutation as any other oral tradition.

Sorry, but you don't understand Australian Aboriginal concepts of time and reality and so are trying to apply western conceptions that simply don't apply. I can't pretend to understand these things to any great degree, but there are common conceptions across all indigenous Australian traditions that are totally contrary to our purely linear conception of time. The "Dreaming" is an eternally present past - a kind of archetype of how things are/always have been/always will be. Anything "new" or "now" is seen as a transient or subsidiary wrinkle in the "Dreaming" of a particular clan, place or concept. So those vanished island are eternally "there" even when they are not there because they are fixed in the lore. They are part of the Dreaming of that country and the fact that they have disappeared doesn't mean they don't get passed down because the Dreaming archetype of that country retains them.

In this case, we are being asked to believe that oral traditions of a lost land that, being lost, cannot have been validated for thousands of years, were nonetheless passed down accurately. That is extremely unlikely.

J

See above. You aren't thinking like a blackfella, white man. You don't know enough about this stuff to make an assessment of what is "likely" here.

[ignorantianescia]

I know much less about Aboriginal culture than any of the Australians here, but I'd not be surprised if this is more than just a, what?, tenfold fluke? There are other examples of unlikely long oral traditions that can be confirmed. An example would be the Zoroastrian Gathas that are written in the archaic and ancient Gathic language (also called Old Avestan) and were written down around 900 AD. But based on the archaic features of the long-extinct language, scholars are willing to date those texts to a much earlier age, ranging from 1500 BC to 500 BC. My lecturer preferred a time in the middle, which would make a two-thousand-year transmission period. That's not too bad.

Sure, 2,000 years is a fraction of the rather deep time like 10,000 years that this story is about. But it shows the possibility of oral traditions that span millennia.

[unkleE]

Apart from being Australian, I don't claim to know much about Aboriginal culture, But I do observe that aboriginal identity seems very strong. I think this may be one reason why they have fared so badly in white Australia (e.g. even today it was reported that aboriginal health, education and employment are still well below the same stats for whites, despite massive efforts and expenditure to fix things up) - their identity and culture is so ingrained that they find it harder than you'd expect to assimilate into the dominant white culture. And as Tim said, the lore that is handed down is very practical - e.g. songlines and rock paintings in the desert areas give detailed instructions about where to find water (extremely important in those hot harsh environments). Boundaries, walking tracks, where food is found in the various seasons, who can marry who within a small tribe, etc, are all remembered and passed down. So there were good practical reasons to keep the knowledge alive.

There are locations in Northern Territory and Western Australia where rock paintings have been created or valued at the same location for millennia, indicating a long-term continuity in interest in the information recorded there.

I recall a documentary, The Last Nomads, about an aboriginal couple who crossed tribal taboos to be married, and were isolated from their tribe in the central desert for their entire life. The rest of the tribe eventually lost the ability to live in that arid area and accepted re-settlement on a reservation, but this old coupe continued to live in the desert, maintaining on their own the waterholes like their ancestors had done for centuries before them, until a team tracked them down and offered them a place to live in their old age that would be easier for them. Their first contact with white people was filmed - it was an amazing thing to watch. The whole thing reinforced to me how ancient their life was until they accepted white hospitality - and died soon afterwards.

None of which proves anything, but I'm happy to accept what these guys say, unless and until someone shows they are wrong.

[timoneill]

Feb 10, 2015 21:08:44 GMT unkleE said:

There are locations in Northern Territory and Western Australia where rock paintings have been created or valued at the same location for millennia, indicating a long-term continuity in interest in the information recorded there.

There are several clear examples of Aboriginal paintings and rock art that depict megafauna species that have been extinct for tens of thousands of years. Some of this art may simply be very, very old. But some of it seems to have preserved memories of Thylacoleo marsupial lions, the huge tapir-like marsupial Palorchestes and the giant echidna Zaglossus and several other examples via traditional images long after these ancient creatures vanished. See above about how the Dreaming is an eternal present in the indigenous Australian world view.

[fortigurn]

Feb 10, 2015 22:25:50 GMT timoneill said:

There are several clear examples of Aboriginal paintings and rock art that depict megafauna species that have been extinct for tens of thousands of years.

I'm not aware of any which aren't disputed. It's more likely that such images would be contemporary with the megafauna than that the indigenous people would wait several thousand years after the animals died and then choose to depict them, given their well documented practice of recording contemporary fauna.

[timoneill]

Feb 11, 2015 3:40:47 GMT fortigurn said:

Feb 10, 2015 22:25:50 GMT timoneill said:

There are several clear examples of Aboriginal paintings and rock art that depict megafauna species that have been extinct for tens of thousands of years.

I'm not aware of any which aren't disputed.

You'd expect something like this to be undisputed? I wouldn't.

It's more likely that such images would be contemporary with the megafauna than that the indigenous people would wait several thousand years after the animals died and then choose to depict them, given their well documented practice of recording contemporary fauna.

Did I say they "waited" and then "chose to depict them" after they were extinct? What I said was in the context of the long-term continuity and conservatism of Aboriginal lore.

[fortigurn]

Feb 11, 2015 8:35:31 GMT timoneill said:

You'd expect something like this to be undisputed? I wouldn't.

Nor would I, which is why I hesitate to speak confidently of clear examples of indigenous art depicting megafauna.

Did I say they "waited" and then "chose to depict them" after they were extinct? What I said was in the context of the long-term continuity and conservatism of Aboriginal lore.

Yes I understand that. I was commenting on your post which said some of the art 'may simply be very, very old', but some of it might have preserved memories 'long after these ancient creatures vanished'. I was expressing the view that it seems more likely that such art (if is genuinely representing megafauna), 'may simply be very, very old' than that it preserved memories 'long after these ancient creatures vanished'.

Actually now I think of it, do we have any clear examples of megafauna recorded in their oral history?

[jamierobertson]

Feb 11, 2015 9:34:28 GMT fortigurn said:

I was expressing the view that it seems more likely that such art (if is genuinely representing megafauna), 'may simply be very, very old' than that it preserved memories 'long after these ancient creatures vanished'.

Or option #3 - images were based in part on skeletal remains. I don't think it's hard to look at Thylacosmilus and figure out roughly what it looked like. A parallel would be dragon lore in China, which IIRC was heavily influenced by the locals digging up dinosaur bones and trying to explain them. (Yes, yes, I know dragons aren't dead ringers for what we now know about how dinosaurs looked, but they're not a bad effort. At least as good as Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' Crystal palace sculptures, anyway...)

[James Hannam]

Feb 10, 2015 20:01:02 GMT ignorantianescia said:

My lecturer preferred a time in the middle, which would make a two-thousand-year transmission period. That's not too bad.

Sure, 2,000 years is a fraction of the rather deep time like 10,000 years that this story is about. But it shows the possibility of oral traditions that span millennia.

I don't think we can say these tests were first written down in the tenth century. That is just the date that our versions date from. But there are Sassanid commentaries on these hymns dating from the third century AD onwards and traditions of texts existing long before that. I don't see any evidence for a prolonged period of oral transmission, and certainly not up to the tenth century.

Best wishes

James