Aboriginal storytelling accurately records sea level rises 7,000 years ago | Hacker News Reader

Aboriginal storytelling accurately records sea level rises 7,000 years ago

theguardian.com

116 pointsa_w38 comments

Neil Gaiman recently did a SALT seminar about what makes stories last. http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/jun/09/how-stories-last/

TLDL - Long-term warnings about phenomena like volcanoes are important for survival, but once the message spans three generations, it's coming from people you don't know, so there's a certain Darwinian quality to the elements of a story that will survive for centuries. This is one reason diverse cultures end up with similar stories.

...and yet, might we not also consider that oral traditions could serve to persist knowledge too important to be committed to perishable archives. Even now in the West.

I don't know.

In the Heinlein novel Orphans of the Sky, the protagonist is taught to recite the Holy Scriptures of Newtonian Physics, but the literal meaning is confused by religious re-interpretation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky

Which is a work of fiction. So it doesn't serve as evidence for actual events.

> Which is a work of fiction.

So was the speculations of /user?id=lurcio

Thanks for the Neil Gaiman link.

The concept of the article is absolutely mind-boggling. Interesting how this only happened in Australia.

The paper itself (linked in The Guardian and freely accessible online, to everyone's credit)

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00049182.2015.10...

Flood myths are astoundingly common https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths

There are many other oral histories that have documented similarly ancient events. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_memory#Species for a list of some that have been claimed.

yeah I find interesting that many legend and myths all have the sea rise event in common.

and nothing about lowering, 'cept for like moses or that five chinese brother

Is lowering ever as dramatic as flooding?

Yes. It allows people to migrate easily which inevitably leads to conflicts.

Since we are land animals, a lowering of the sea would provide more grounds to be covered by humans; more space means less interaction and less conflict.

Maybe the sense of wonderment in finding new grounds is not enough to be folk-told throughout generations. As in the news, we tend to stick to the bad news rather than the good ones.

Aboriginal people wouldn't be in Australia at all if it weren't for sea level lowering, so you could say it's actually more dramatic than flooding.

"There is considerable discussion among archeologists as to the route taken by the first migrants to Australia, widely taken to be ancestors of the modern Aborigines. Migration took place during the closing stages of the Pleistocene, when sea levels were much lower than they are today."[1]

"It is generally believed that Aboriginal people are the descendants of a single migration into the continent, a people that split from the first modern human populations to leave Africa 64,000 to 75,000 years ago, although a minority propose that there were three waves of migration, most likely island hopping by boat during periods of low sea levels"[2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_Australia#Arriva... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians#Arrival...

If I'm reading Wikipedias article on glacial periods correctly it indicates that the last time sea levels lowered significantly would have been between 71k and 115k years ago. I wonder if language complex enough to have an oral tradition existed that far back.

Very likely. You may be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language ("The results suggest that language first evolved around 350,000-150,000 years ago, which is around the time when modern Homo sapiens evolved") an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity ("Howiesons Poort, Blombos, and other South African archaeological sites, for example, show evidence of marine resource acquisition, trade, and abstract ornamentation at least by 80,000 years ago.")

Relative sea levels can change because the land is rising as well as sea levels dropping - post glacial rebound means that areas that were heavily glaciated can actually be lifting at quite a rate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

e.g. Here in Scotland you just have to look at a shoreline to see that relative sea levels have dropped quite a bit even though sea levels have risen. When I was a kid I can remember my father talking about legends of Vikings sailing round Roseisle in Moray - which is quite high and dry now.

Nope, more like 12-8k years ago. Check out the Holocene sea level rise [1]. Jeffrey Rose's Persian Gulf Oasis / Out of Arabia theory is especially intriguing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_glacial_retreat

The parent was talking about sea levels lowering.

It's worth bearing in mind that not all flood myths are necessarily about rises in sea level. Extreme seasonal flooding is another possibility, especially for a population relatively new to an area occasionally prone to it, as is new lake formation or existing lakes bursting through a natural dam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis

I'm personally a huge fan of Szukalski and his crackpot art-theories about how, in all ancient art, there is a hidden proto-language which is being used to give us all a dire warning that in fact, every 60,000 years or so, a major deluge occurs, the planet is covered in water, which eventually recedes, but land-lubbers need to reset .. its a total crackpot theory, but if you're interested in great artwork and a wicked read through a highly profound mind, check out the book "BEYHOLD!! THE PROTONG!", Szukalski.

http://www.amazon.com/Behold-Protong-Robert-Williams/dp/0867...

Totally great stuff, had me looking at ancient art again, and I thoroughly enjoy finding Protong absolutely everywhere these days, its madness .. in a good way.

(Not so keen on Zermatism, however, also mind-bending..)

This reminds me of an Isaac Asimov short story named Nightfall[1] where (spoilers!) a species living in a trinary star system only sees the stars every few thousand years. The stars (indeed the very concept of "night" itself) are considered mythical/religious stories, and when night does come it drives the entire population violently insane, destroying the civilization and becoming the earliest myth of the civilization that rises from the ashes.

[1]: http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/TEXTS/Nightfall.h...

Cool, thanks for the recommendation .. I might've read that in my far, far distant youth, but I'll be picking it up again for sure now its on my to-read list.

Reminds me of the work of the Human Interference Task Force, set up in 1981 to come up with strategies to provide necessary knowledge about the dangers related to active nuclear waste across several millennia to future generations. Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri, two members of the Task Force, proposed breeding "radiation cats" that would change significantly in color when they came near radioactive emissions and serve as living indicators of danger [0]. In order to transport the message, the importance of the cats would need to be set in the collective awareness through fairy tales and myths, which the authors considered to be the most effective way to communicate with future generations.

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

I don't know if the documentary Into Eternity[0] is related to this task force, but it was the first time I was exposed to the idea of preserving information for thousands of years. Fascinated stuff. It never ocurred to me how hard it would be to instruct future generations to stay away of a nuclear deposit after so much time.

[0] http://intoeternity.co.uk/about/index.php

The band Emperor X even wrote a tune to begin the process of getting the myth of the Raycats into the public consciousness:

https://emperorx.bandcamp.com/album/10000-year-earworm-to-di...

It is interesting to here of situations where traditional oral histories line up with scientific measurement. It's a fun topic. But after a while these articles give the false impression that oral traditions are somehow trustworthy. Few ever talk about where the oral history is fundamentally incorrect. It always seems that the scientific discovery comes first, that the oral confirmation is just window dressing in the press release. Is the "extraordinary thing" of confirmation the norm? How many oral histories were disproved during this research?

These articles also tend to polish out the rough edges. How exactly did this people fleeing the rising water levels "negotiate" with peoples in the interior? Was this controlled mediation? Or does the term "negotiate" also cover outright war between cultures? Perhaps part of the reason these stories survived was the bloodshed surrounding their creation. I'd like to see the transcripts.

Isn't it possible that building cities near the coastline is, in the long view, a bad idea ?

Even without global warming or climate change or whatever, isn't it pretty dicey to put anything at 0-5 meters above sea level that is meant to last longer than a generation ?

Major population and infrastructure right on the ocean may be a hallmark of a fairly young civilization.

The coastline is full of useful things that humans like, such as a moderate climate and convenient trade. Even if a hurricane occasionally rolls through and messes it up, that's a transient inconvenience in the long term and easily forgotten.

I was of the understanding that a flood about 7k years ago did happen and that was pretty accepted.

We have the Mayans, bible, and number of flood 'myths' stories. I also believe that there is rock sediment that also backs up this claim that there was heavy flooding around this time frame.

However this does not appear to be global flooding because the Egyptian who have a good documented history never bring it up and I really feel they would have.

My guess is that this flood was when low level lands got submerged, thinking the med base here (which I think lines up with the bible of things well) and low level South America which would line up with the Mayans creation stories. This would also back up my idea that most of civilizations over time have built near water and this is why I believe most of the impressive civilizations will be underwater now as the water levels have been raising. (personally very excited about some of the stuff we are finding underwater these days)

The issue is there is so little research on water levels, and most of the documented stuff is from the coast of the USA rather than a global effort to document it. Keep hoping that someone will build some drones that can just fly around and measure this stuff

Mayans are only 4k years old, and Egyptians 5k, if you can use 'only' in that context...

The oldest writing system is about 5.5k years old (cunieform); I'm not sure if history can be considered well-documented without something like writing.

"The issue is there is so little research on water levels"

That's just not true. Here's one of many graphs on water levels on a global scale: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Lev... . By 7K years ago the major sea level rise was nearly finished. For example, the Persian Gulf was flooded about 8,000 years ago.

Extensive research has been done in part because of how it's coupled to projections of future sea level rise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise .

You imply there is insufficient information on global water rise. A quick search finds this a study on the "Late glacial to post glacial sea levels in the Western Indian Ocean" http://www.researchgate.net/publication/40702427_Late_glacia... . It describes some of the many other studies in sea level rise that were done in places other than the US coasts.

"Keep hoping that someone will build some drones that can just fly around and measure this stuff"

If you read the paper you'll see the aerial photography is not enough. The research also included drilling and submersible dives.

Hey thanks for the reply

I don't pretend to be an expert but I had done googling before but cannot locate the information I was looking for. Yes water levels raised ,again I think that was very common information, but I wanted more of an understanding what specific areas of the world went under water (as in land that was submerged). The current body of information that I have read is very generic where I am much more interested in localized water levels aligned with older civilizations and this is the information that I do not believe is easily accessible. I have been on that wiki link a few times but it is very generic.

And I am very aware that photos above would not assist, however I as thinking more ground penetrating radar enabled drones. Mixed with automated cave exploring bots could start to provide information from under ground on their own. Send them off in to a cave and wait for them to map and come back. We are getting to the stage where we can build these automated exploring bots, I am just waiting. No more waiting on cavers, we can build bots to map these things ourselves

Since you are not an expert, you should not make blanket claims like "The issue is there is so little research on water levels". All you can say is that you don't know what research there is on water levels.

The Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth gives some information about "localized water levels aligned with older civilizations".

One of them concerns the flooding of the Persian Gulf, with a link to http://z6.ifrm.com/4802/123/0/p1011060/Persian_Gulf_Oasis.pd... which posits that the gulf was an oasis during the Ice Age. If you read the paper you'll see the commentary on page 870:

> The notion that coastal regions are more attractive than adjacent hinterlands because of moderate climates, abundant groundwater, ecological diversity and fertility on land, and marine resources; that such regions have been critically important as pacemakers of socioeconomic and demographic change throughout prehistory; and that their role has been largely ignored or misjudged because of sea-level change, has been widely canvassed by archaeologists during the past decade both in general terms and in relation to the Arabian Peninsula (Bailey 2009; Bailey and Flemming 2008; Bailey and Milner 2002; Bailey et al. 2008; Erlandson 2001, 2007; Erlandson and Fitzpatick 2006; Westley and Dix 2006; Westley et al. 2010).

which gives several papers you can track down.

On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth you'll see mention of 'localized flooding at Shuruppak (modern Tell Fara, Iraq) and various other Sumerian cities' which is believed to be a 'localised event caused through the damming of the Kurun through the spread of dunes, flooding into the Tigris, and simultaneous heavy rainfall in the Nineveh region, spilling across into the Euphrates. In Israel, there is no such evidence of a widespread flood.'

If you then wade though the various sites which claim this is evidence of the Biblical flood, you'll come across sites like http://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/reflections-on-the-m... , which point out that there's a long history of flooding in the area:

> There was one such appalling disaster for example, in 1954, when an exceptionally rainy spring combined with the melting snows of Armenia and Kurdistan, so swelled the Tigris River that it submerged the low-lying plain for hundreds of miles, and all Baghdad was in imminent danger of destruction. ...

> All in all, therefore, it is justifiable to conclude from the present evidence, as does Max Mallowan in his recent thoughtful and comprehensive article, “Noah’s Flood Reconsidered” (Iraq, vol. XXVI, 1964, pages 62-83) that the Mesopotamian Flood-story, and the Old Testament version based on it, was inspired by an actual catastrophic but by no means universal disaster that took place, not as Woolley claimed, immediately after the Ubaid period, but some time about 3000 B.C., and that it left its archaeological traces in Kish, Shuruppak, and probably at a good many other places yet to be discovered.

So there are a lot of changes in 'localized water levels' in places where there are ancient civilizations. The question this becomes what kind of changes are you looking for?

Another well-known example of post-glacial flooding of settled human lands is Doggerland. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland .

Still another is Sundaland. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland . Quoting from http://phys.org/news/2008-05-dna-evidence-overturns-populati... :

> Dr Oppenheimer’s book, based on multidisciplinary evidence, writes about the effects of the drowning of a huge ancient continent called ‘Sundaland’ (that extended the Asian landmass as far as Borneo and Java). This happened during the period 15,000 to 7,000 years ago following the last Ice Age. He outlines how rising sea levels in three massive pulses caused flooding and the submergence of the Sunda Continent, creating the Java and South China Seas and the thousands of islands that make up Indonesia and the Philippines today.

In other words, there's a large amount of literature and research on the topic, and as easy to access as most other published scientific literature.

You write about caving robots and ground penetrating radar. That would provide little useful data for the cost. Ground penetrating radar does not work through water, so cannot find submerged sites. While geophysics is important for archaeology, ground penetrating radar mostly used to prioritize manual inspection. And if you read the article about the research in the Indian Ocean you'll see that isotope analysis of core samples an other techniques were very important in the research. I think your views on 'automated exploring bots' is only an expression of techno-optimism.

Interesting that women are the ones who keep the oral histories.

I guess it has to do with their better linguistic abilities an long term memory.

Cold reading.

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