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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to believe a story can persist for 15,000 years by verbal transmission.

Hard to believe, but it happens. Australian Aboriginal story telling, for example, conveys historical events from 10k+ years ago: http://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preser...

You may find this interesting: The town of Carencro, Louisiana takes its name from an American Indian legend about a mastodon that died there. The name has been interpreted as either "carrion crow" for wake of vultures that feasted upon its carcass, or "carnero"--"bone pile"--for the bones of the creature itself. The fossil was discovered in the 18th century. Oral cultures have a long memory.

Mastodons used to be everywhere. Finding a mastodon's bones is not that unusual, so is not compelling proof of the veracity of the legend.

As far as I remember the story was regarding a fairly specific segment of Bayou Carencro where the creature was said to have drowned, and is where the fossils were found. That makes it a bit more compelling than some Mastodon being unearthed in the general region.

That is some good evidence. But consider that if there are 1000 stories, and 1 turns out to have supporting evidence, does that mean the other 999 are reliable, too?

It's like the psychic who correctly predicted the last 7 presidential elections. One doesn't hear about the other psychics whose predictions didn't pan out.

Going by Wikipedia the guy that related the story did so after the bones were found.

Wikipedia is filled with speculative cryptozoological connections to extinct animals, the notes are more of an acknowledgement that such speculation exists as a cultural artifact connected to that animal, rather than that the speculation is valid or well-supported.

Alongside the comments about Aboriginal legends, a copy of my comment from elsewhere in the thread:

The Klamath Native American tribe has legends of the eruption of Mt. Mazama that formed Oregon's Crater Lake - which happened in ~5677 BC [1]. If oral legends that reflect real events can last seven and a half thousand years, is there any reason to think they couldn't last 15ky, or 20ky? It seems to me all that's needed is a continuous cultural line.

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

Maybe if you only have a handful of stories it's easier.

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