The Great Flood

[Birdjaguar]

I don’t have much to offer except that robust oral traditions lose nearly zero information in their transmission, and drawing from all the peoples of the world it would not be unreasonable that an oral history or two made it thousands of years unimpeded.

That might be so.

We know that within our historical record spoken language has changed pretty dramatically over short periods of time (hundreds of years) and even more so since the first cities were built. I do not think that any oral tradition begun in one language could be continued and be intelligible over 1000 years, let alone 10,000. A single story strand over such a time line is unlikely and multiple strands would end up with thousands of variants over time. In addition, given the small tribal nature of life 4000-10,000 years ago, the likelihood of any storyteller and his descendants living in some unbroken chain is pretty low. 10,000 years is a very long time. It is over twice the length of our written history. Conjecturing such a thing is fine, but it is too easy to say that a modern oral tradition that says "the land flooded and we moved inland many moons ago" means 1000 years. It reminds me of of how folks read the Books of the Prophets in the Bible and interpret them to fit current events. It's just making the story fit the outcome you want.

Some real life examples of very long oral traditions would be nice. Seeing the myth that Berzerker is talking about would be helpful

 

[Hrothbern]

There are many aboriginal Dreamtime stories, that are a little bit or a quite a bit different, between the various tribes all over Australia.
As far as I know in all or most tribes the Rainbow Serpent plays a big role. A serpent with remarquable similarities with the Nordic Midgard serpent (on the other side of the world)
here some stories: http://dreamtime.net.au/dreaming/story-list/ there are many more.


In this wikipedia list there are 328 "different indigenous languages" for Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_Aboriginal_languages
Here it is estimated at 290-363
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_languages

All that diversity on a small continent !!!

I understand also that many stories easily incorporated recent events and info of post colonial time.
All in all indicating how mercurial language and oral story telling can be in editing and adding.

It reminds me of of how folks read the Books of the Prophets in the Bible and interpret them to fit current events. It's just making the story fit the outcome you want.

I think that fitting older stories to more actual situations, to make them more vivid, or "telling", or more consistent with other stories that got new elements, or whatever.... is part of the process over time.

From the many Dreamtime stories I have read: many elements stay kind of similar in most stories.
The rebirth, the resurrection of the moon after three days is a common element, often with some (different story) how human kind lost that ability for that resurrection.
And on the other hand... whereas in most stories the moon is male, there are tribes where the moon is female (quite a change imo).

But apart from that strong editing factor... I would not be surprised if common factors could belong to very old info.
The Rainbow Serpent a possible indication of something very global old.

EDIT
I did a short check on Flood stories.
Here are three of them: https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/flood-legends/australian-aboriginal-flood-stories/

one containg also the following text:
".......The sky opened and the water poured down in a great deluge. Many people were drowned, but some were saved on mangrove boats. They paddled towards the ranges in Central Australia, the Mardudjara people (now camped at Jigalong) leading the way. They were the first people to take dogs to the centre of the continent.

At last they reached the MacDonnell Ranges, but then the receding waters turned to ice...."

Because of the amount of post colonial editing of the Dreamtime stories, it could very well be that flood stories were added later on (post-colonial because of the bible flood).
But the one I quoted has on top a reference to Ice afterwards.
And that could fit the comet... and would be odd to assume as a post colonial editing.

 

[Berzerker]

Women having increased pain during childbirth was likely partly due to humans learning to walk upright, and the long process of restructuring of the hips to do so through evolution.

While Homo Erectus women may have apparently had less pain in childbirth (how do we know this anyway?), it may be because their hips were not completely fully formed to the state and structure that they are now in Homo Sapien women.

That was the explanation in the past but recent research says enhanced pain in child birth was not the result of bipedalism. They know by measuring the cranium, shoulders and pelvis of babies and women. Seems agriculture might be a factor but our heads are just larger and birth canals narrower.

Oh, and childbirth hurts no matter if you're a human, or a dog, or a monkey, or a zebra. The dilation, and the ripping and tearing is hard on the female, no matter the species. Watch an animal give birth some time. It hurts them just as much as it hurts a human female. I have a friend who describes the experience as similar to "trying to pass a football out of your butt." She would know. She's had three children.

Genesis says Eve would suffer increased pain... That means Eve was being compared to someone else. I believe that someone was her erectus ancestors.

So this is just an excuse to regurgitate all that stuff from previous threads, apparently.

Adam and Eve have NOTHING to do with any floods. Floods are supposedly the topic of this thread.

As I said, I was responding to someone asking about how long oral traditions can survive. I try to answer questions, if that bothers you, oh well.

Our solar system is constantly on the move, and so are the other stars. Given enough time, constellations don't look anything like they did before.

I said the sky doesn't change much, not that it doesn't change at all. And every 26,000 years or so, the constellation that rose before the sun on the vernal equinox will do so again thanks to precession. The sky would have changed more as people wandered across the latitudes in a much shorter time, but the cosmologies we shared long ago dealt with 'creation'. For example, the widespread belief the primordial world was covered in water and darkness.

 

[uppi]

I don’t have much to offer except that robust oral traditions lose nearly zero information in their transmission, and drawing from all the peoples of the world it would not be unreasonable that an oral history or two made it thousands of years unimpeded.

Even if we assume that these oral traditions are based on real events, how would we ever be able to date the events referred to that precede the invention of any calendar? How would we able to tell if a story is 5000, 10000, or 50000 years old? And without an approximate age of such a story, correlation to geological evidence or even other stories seems futile. Humans tend to like to settle near water, so it doesn't seem to be far fetched to assume that most tribes experienced a near-catastrophic flooding event at some time of their existence and all of these stories might refer to a different event.

 

[Synobun]

The argument that oral traditions stand the test of time is rather silly, anyways. Weren't any of you forced to play Telephone as a child? All it takes is one person to change a minor detail and the gig is up. If a handful of children in a room can't manage to keep details right for two minutes, how long do you expect ego-filled sages and community leaders to keep it together for generations? Since this is on the magnitude of thousands of years, all it takes is one minor detail to be obscured or changed every few generations and you'll still be left with nothing useful by the modern era.

That there are vague details within the realm of being correct isn't proof of consistent or accurate oral tradition. It is very easy to get details right without specifics. "Once there was a flood" is a pretty safe bet in a world where you spend as much time as possible by the rivers which we know flood on a yearly basis.

 

[timtofly]

Diversity comes from groups splitting and isolation. Differences in beliefs and ideology come from the level of technology.

Today we have tossed aside for the most part the beliefs that even gave a time reference to begin with.

I would contend that without God the passage of time has no meaning at all.

 

[Hrothbern]

Even if we assume that these oral traditions are based on real events, how would we ever be able to date the events referred to that precede the invention of any calendar? How would we able to tell if a story is 5000, 10000, or 50000 years old? And without an approximate age of such a story, correlation to geological evidence or even other stories seems futile. Humans tend to like to settle near water, so it doesn't seem to be far fetched to assume that most tribes experienced a near-catastrophic flooding event at some time of their existence and all of these stories might refer to a different event.

Agree
very difficult and speculative.

Although we do have ofc a chance we find someday a cave painting that can be dated describing such events.
And again, most likely, there will have been various floods.

There are BTW quite some Dreamtime stories that start with people travelling because of some Great Drought.
Whereby I guess that droughts occurred much more than floods.
But in general any story where people a tribe start travelling long distance could have to do with slow climate change or sudden catastrophs.
There are quite some stories like that worldwide.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Weren't any of you forced to play Telephone as a child? All it takes is one person to change a minor detail and the gig is up. If a handful of children in a room can't manage to keep details right for two minutes, how long do you expect ego-filled sages and community leaders to keep it together for generations?

I think Noah's ark was a canoe that got exaggerated to being a giant ark over the generations.
'The whole area' (a few miles around where they were settled at the time) is obviously exaggerated to 'the whole world'.
'Hills' exaggerated to 'mountains'

"Grandpa, how did that canoe end up on that hill"
"A guy built a boat to survive the flood"
"Why, how did he know the flood was coming"
"Um, (I don't know), God told him"
"But grandpa, how did the animals survive the flood"
"Oh! That's right! The animals were on the boat, too!"

 

[stinkubus]

I don’t have much to offer except that robust oral traditions lose nearly zero information in their transmission, and drawing from all the peoples of the world it would not be unreasonable that an oral history or two made it thousands of years unimpeded.

 

[Berzerker]

We know that within our historical record spoken language has changed pretty dramatically over short periods of time (hundreds of years) and even more so since the first cities were built. I do not think that any oral tradition begun in one language could be continued and be intelligible over 1000 years, let alone 10,000. A single story strand over such a time line is unlikely and multiple strands would end up with thousands of variants over time. In addition, given the small tribal nature of life 4000-10,000 years ago, the likelihood of any storyteller and his descendants living in some unbroken chain is pretty low. 10,000 years is a very long time. It is over twice the length of our written history. Conjecturing such a thing is fine, but it is too easy to say that a modern oral tradition that says "the land flooded and we moved inland many moons ago" means 1000 years. It reminds me of of how folks read the Books of the Prophets in the Bible and interpret them to fit current events. It's just making the story fit the outcome you want.

Some real life examples of very long oral traditions would be nice. Seeing the myth that Berzerker is talking about would be helpful

I googled the Alaskan migration myth and got a bunch of other stuff and I skimmed "A Human Paradox" thread and didn't find my link or subject, but I know I posted it here somewhere. The myth was introduced in court (might be Canadian) by Indians to support their claims to certain lands (I think) combined with recent archaeological evidence showing the ancient occupation of said lands. I'll keep looking...

According to their migration story they had to leave inland homes for the coast because of ice and this happened before their Great Flood. It is interesting their mythology does match up with the evidence, the glacial maximum was ~18,000 years ago so they might have left their inland homes before that and lived on the coast 14,000 years ago for the Great Flood.

I imagine there's a few migration legends from people having to leave their homes as the ice sheets advanced. Of course people all over have experienced floods too, the Black Sea has seen many as the ice sheet to the north produced vast lakes that drained as dams burst just like in N America. I'll keep looking but I cant even remember the website I saw it on. I thought it was the one in the OP but I did a search there, but I may be searching the wrong terms.

Languages do change but the information isn't always lost... As people migrated away from that original homeland somewhere in Africa they encountered a new world so most of their languages were shaped by the journey, not the distant past when we lived together in Ethiopia (?). Course the Flood myth is much more recent. Researchers are tracking our languages back to a few families which might have a common origin... If we were a small tribe at one point long ago we probably had the same language. The DNA evidence supports the existence of that small African tribe that took over the world.

All that diversity on a small continent !!!

That is a lot... Supposedly Australians had 40-60,000 years to occupy the continent without an invasion. The article below points out cultural evolution is much faster than genetic and does not necessarily correlate as one language can supplant or modify another without altering the DNA much. But Africa has had the longest amount of time to diversify. Curiously Africa has about 7 times the diversity of Europe and maybe 5-7 the amount of time to diversify.

https://www.languagemagazine.com/africas-linguistic-diversity/

The Rainbow Serpent a possible indication of something very global old.

These could be references to comets or some other object in the solar system or sky, but dragons and serpents also appear in creation myths. A comet breaking up with debris hitting the Earth would be a good candidate for a cosmic serpent...

".......The sky opened and the water poured down in a great deluge. Many people were drowned, but some were saved on mangrove boats. They paddled towards the ranges in Central Australia, the Mardudjara people (now camped at Jigalong) leading the way. They were the first people to take dogs to the centre of the continent.

At last they reached the MacDonnell Ranges, but then the receding waters turned to ice...."

Wow... A comet causing a flood and an ice age. Maybe thats why Noah could be warned to build a boat, God knew the comet would hit the Earth and prepared him for the coming flood. According to the Sumerian myth the gods didn't cause it, but they (Enlil) did want to keep it a secret from humans.

edit: I'm not sure if the Sumerian gods caused the flood

 

[Hrothbern]

The Rainbow Serpent a possible indication of something very global old.

These could be references to comets or some other object in the solar system or sky, but dragons and serpents also appear in creation myths. A comet breaking up with debris hitting the Earth would be a good candidate for a cosmic serpent...

Interesting enough the Rainbow Serpent of Australia and the Midgard Rainbow Bridge of Nordic..... are both curved.... as a tail of a comet on the sky can be !

 

[Lexicus]

Even if we assume that these oral traditions are based on real events, how would we ever be able to date the events referred to that precede the invention of any calendar? How would we able to tell if a story is 5000, 10000, or 50000 years old? And without an approximate age of such a story, correlation to geological evidence or even other stories seems futile. Humans tend to like to settle near water, so it doesn't seem to be far fetched to assume that most tribes experienced a near-catastrophic flooding event at some time of their existence and all of these stories might refer to a different event.

There are actually some examples of myths that clearly refer to verifiable geologic events. I have a book that's full of cases. And one prominent example is the mythology of the Pacific Northwest that seemed to describe an earthquake and tsunami, which was later confirmed to have occurred in 1700 and matched up with Japanese written records from the same time.

Obviously though this is the transmission of an event that occurred just over 300 years ago, which is far less than 1000 years let alone 10,000. The oldest one I can think of is the Klamath people who lived in what is now Southern Oregon had a mythological explanation for the creation of Crater Lake, which was a volcanic event that happened around 7,000 years ago.

 

[Birdjaguar]

There are actually some examples of myths that clearly refer to verifiable geologic events. I have a book that's full of cases. And one prominent example is the mythology of the Pacific Northwest that seemed to describe an earthquake and tsunami, which was later confirmed to have occurred in 1700 and matched up with Japanese written records from the same time.

Obviously though this is the transmission of an event that occurred just over 300 years ago, which is far less than 1000 years let alone 10,000. The oldest one I can think of is the Klamath people who lived in what is now Southern Oregon had a mythological explanation for the creation of Crater Lake, which was a volcanic event that happened around 7,000 years ago.

What is the Klamath explanation?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

To be fair, I'm sure a lot of those creation myths can match up with historical events purely coincidentally. It helps that the myths tend to be highly vague and variable depending on who's doing the telling and when.

 

[Berzerker]

Even if we assume that these oral traditions are based on real events, how would we ever be able to date the events referred to that precede the invention of any calendar? How would we able to tell if a story is 5000, 10000, or 50000 years old? And without an approximate age of such a story, correlation to geological evidence or even other stories seems futile. Humans tend to like to settle near water, so it doesn't seem to be far fetched to assume that most tribes experienced a near-catastrophic flooding event at some time of their existence and all of these stories might refer to a different event.

People were carving the moonth on artifacts more than 30,000 years ago. Why wouldn't a person say they lived so many moons or years? Watching the sun migrate back and forth along the horizon would have provided people with our notion of years and they would have figured out generations occur every 15-25 years, we had several means of keeping track of time without written calendars as we know them today. Just marks on a wall, or bone, or stone would do. Course the oral tradition would become less accurate than marking down the years over the generations, but thats understandable. At some point the myth might change from a number of years to just long ago, but the Tlingit were trying to keep track. And it was the Egyptians who apparently told the Greeks Atlantis existed in 9600 BC.

Some scholars believe the Epic of Gilgamesh - he reigned (?) ~2700 BC - describes a flood that happened in 2900 BC because in the epic, Gilgamesh seeks immortality and finds Zuisurda/Utnapishtim (Noah) who reigned in 2900 BC. It describes a river flood and we've found the deposits, so its possible flood myths do describe local events occurring at different times unrelated to the other, older flood myths. I just have a hard time accepting "The Great Flood" was a river flood in 2900 BC Sumer.

Interesting enough the Rainbow Serpent of Australia and the Midgard Rainbow Bridge of Nordic..... are both curved.... as a tail of a comet on the sky can be !

That reminds me of a picture I saw during a Nova documentary on the Lost Red Paint People back in the 90s. Researchers were digging up evidence of a maritime archaic culture ringing the N Atlantic ~7,500 years ago. The fishing technologies appeared on both sides of the ocean and its possible the culture made use of an ice shelf earlier during the ice age that melted away making the trip more dangerous. But these people were deep sea fishing, they could make the trip between new and old worlds and knew there was land on either side of 'the pond'. But the picture was on a flat stone from Rhode Island showing a star on the left with man to its right with a serpent (squiggly line) in the form of a semicircle with the sun as its focal point to his right, so star - man - 'serpent' in that order with the man between the star and serpent.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Diversity comes from groups splitting and isolation. Differences in beliefs and ideology come from the level of technology.

So what great leaps of technology occurred when Christianity became a thing, and later on, when Islam became a thing?

I'll admit that cultural diffusion (a term used in cultural geography) happens faster when people have better, more reliable methods of transportation - easier to "spread the word" and share ideas and knowledge. Were there any great leaps in transportation methods between 33 CE and the 4th century? What about in the 7th century?

Today we have tossed aside for the most part the beliefs that even gave a time reference to begin with.

It's much easier to fool the people when they don't have a reliable way to check if the religious authorities are telling the truth. That doesn't mean the beliefs are tossed away by everyone - just those who don't care that they're being told the equivalent of bedtime stories with no logic or even internal consistency.

I would contend that without God the passage of time has no meaning at all.

Whut?

Time would exist no matter if there were any self-aware beings to experience it at all. People with no awareness of God/god(s) still experience the passage of time, even if they're one of the cultures that don't worry much about it.

Wow... A comet causing a flood and an ice age. Maybe thats why Noah could be warned to build a boat, God knew the comet would hit the Earth and prepared him for the coming flood. According to the Sumerian myth the gods didn't cause it, but they (Enlil) did want to keep it a secret from humans.

You keep assuming "God" is real and that Noah was real. The story of Noah's Ark was based on much older stories.

edit: I'm not sure if the Sumerian gods caused the flood

How about IF the flood happened, it was due to entirely natural causes? Like gravity, geology, geography, physics, chemistry, and meteorology keep chugging along whether anyone at the time understands them or not.

 

[Lexicus]

What is the Klamath explanation?

http://www.craterlakeinstitute.com/online-library/historic-resource-study/4d.htm

 

[Birdjaguar]

http://www.craterlakeinstitute.com/online-library/historic-resource-study/4d.htm

Thanks. Both myths were interesting to read. I will note that neither tie the creation of Crater lake to a volcanic eruption. That tells me that even if the myth is many years old, it is not actually tied to the historical event that formed the lake. The myth just uses the lakes setting.

 

[Berzerker]

Thanks. Both myths were interesting to read. I will note that neither tie the creation of Crater lake to a volcanic eruption. That tells me that even if the myth is many years old, it is not actually tied to the historical event that formed the lake. The myth just uses the lakes setting.

from the link:

A long time ago, he [Chief Lalek] said, the spirits that live in the mountains and in the water, in the earth and in the sky, used to come and talk with the Klamath people. One time the chief of the spirits that lived deep in the mountain where the lake is now became angry with the people on the earth. Muttering with wrath he came up from his home, stood upon the summit of the mountain, and vowed that he would destroy the earth with the Curse of Fire. Hearing him, the chief of the sky spirits came down and stood on the summit of Mount Shasta. From their mountaintops the two powerful spirit chiefs began a furious battle, in which all the spirits of earth and sky took part.


Mountains shook and crumbled. Fire pouring forth from the mouth of the chief of the below-world spirits swept through the forests and reached the lodges of the people. Red-hot rocks and burning ashes fell for miles and miles. The people rushed into Klamath Lake and there prayed to the chief of the sky spirits to save them from the Curse of Fire. To appease the angry below-world spirits, two old shamans of the tribes offered themselves as a living sacrifice, and their sacrifice was accepted. One last time the mountain-that-used-to-be broke open and all the earth trembled. The below-world spirits were driven back into their home and the top of the mountain crashed down upon them.

Then came the spirit of storms. Rains that fell for many years wiped out the fires and partly filled the hole that was made when the mountaintop collapsed. Never again were the Klamath people visited by the chief of the below-world spirits, but through this story they were warned to keep away from the old mountain and the new lake. [24]

 

[Hygro]

The argument that oral traditions stand the test of time is rather silly, anyways. Weren't any of you forced to play Telephone as a child?

This is the shared experience that hurts modern peoples' intuitions about the robustness of oral traditions.