The Great Flood

[Valka D'Ur]

Yes
I think Lyrics of popular songs, that you "just have to know", are a much better example how strong oral tradition can be, than a childrens game designed to prove how bad it can be

Uh-huh. I've run across people who not only don't know the lyrics of the songs that were popular when I was a child (I'm not talking about children's songs), but they say they've never even heard of the group that made the songs popular.

They could and probably did keep track of the time of any events they told stories about - but only for a limited time. "Last winter" is probably a concept most people understood, but "563 moons ago" not only requires someone to keep track of that (that is an awful amount of marks) but also the ability to understand and express the number 563. I doubt that this ability was widespread 1000 years ago.

A thousand years ago was post-Viking discovery of North America. While the Romans tended to reckon time as the whatever year of when so-and-so was Consul in the reign of Emperor Whatsisname (or alternatively from the year in which Rome was founded), there were plenty of people who could count higher than 563.

With a calendar, keeping track of events in an oral tradition is easy. A new bearer of the tradition just has to repeat the date that was passed to him by the old bearer. Without a calendar, you would have to update the tradition with every telling, requiring skill and cultural developments from the keepers of the tradition and I would bet that almost any case of "Your great-great-great grandfather" morphed into "Your ancestor" at some point.

We have calendars now. Recite last night's news, from memory. Bet you can't.

Do people sing Happy Birthday in Canada?

Probably most of us do. Keep in mind that Canada is officially bilingual federally, and multilingual in some of the territories. I wouldn't know what "Happy Birthday" sounds like in Cree or Inuktitut or Ojibway, or in any languages other than English or French.

And then there's the SCA version, which doesn't use the same melody and the verses can go in any order (and there are a lot of verses).

No she didn't because the answer was ambiguous. Does she mean that mentioned stories, and other presumably, are based on smaller floods or does she mean that there no memory train of the massive flood, other than it happened. It cannot be both.

I answered you not once, but TWICE. Have the courtesy to address me if you don't like my replies.

Your question was vague and unclear. And you're presuming that any floods happened at all. I will not enable any fantasies that the story of Noah's Ark happened, period, unless I am presented with extraordinary evidence of the sort that - face it - is extremely unlikely to come from anyone on this forum.

 

[Hygro]

In the 1920s or 1930s a Homeric scholar named Millman Perry made his way Yugoslavia and audio-recorded a bunch of bards and their upward days-long epic poem/song/oral histories. These epic poems followed strict structures that allowed humans to memorize the entire works as well as teach them. It was the sole job of these bards to memorize and perform their pieces. As an added bonus, if the performer erred on a line, the familiar audience would correct him.

These oral traditions are not maintained by talking and do not utilize the weaker speech memory but instead use the much stronger and reliable song memory.

Nearly a century later, some article I haven't found detailed the efforts of some new person who went and found these bards living in remote and unindustrialized parts of former Yugoslavia. Their performances were verbatim the same as what was recorded before, except when a single word were swapped for other words with the same meaning (my best guess at an example would be something like "as" changed to "for" in an appropriate context).

This validated the model that oral traditions were effective vectors for preserving information. That model takes into account the aforementioned: that humans remember songs/poems, with strict organized musical structure, in ways we do not remember speech. Now that a compelling model has been validated in the real world, we can make a much better educated guess that ancient bits of history are sometimes preserved without writing, are definitely worth pursuing, and certainly not to be dismissed categorically.

 

[onejayhawk]

I answered you not once, but TWICE. Have the courtesy to address me if you don't like my replies.

Your question was vague and unclear. And you're presuming that any floods happened at all. I will not enable any fantasies that the story of Noah's Ark happened, period, unless I am presented with extraordinary evidence of the sort that - face it - is extremely unlikely to come from anyone on this forum.

This is new, but one thing is clarified. You are disputing the ark, not the flood. Your prior words were, "This is still not going to convince me that either Noah's flood or Atlantis were real." To be clear, you are opposed to the Noah/ark/Atlantis part of the drama, not the possibility of a worldwide flood event.

J

 

[Berzerker]

good post, Hygro

A thousand years ago was post-Viking discovery of North America. While the Romans tended to reckon time as the whatever year of when so-and-so was Consul in the reign of Emperor Whatsisname (or alternatively from the year in which Rome was founded), there were plenty of people who could count higher than 563.

Thats true... All these civilizations dealt with large numbers. The Vikings have a myth about a future war at the end of time (or whatever) when 800 warriors exit Valhalla to do battle with the Wolf thru 540 doors. Thats 432,000...

Hindu texts describe units of Kala measurements, from microseconds to Trillions of years.[1] According to these texts, time is cyclic, which repeats itself forever.[2

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

The Kali Yuga is 432,000 years.

The Bible says man's days were numbered 120 up to the Flood, the Sumerian 'sar' or divine year - the year to God - was 3,600 years. Thats 432,000 years.

We have calendars now. Recite last night's news, from memory. Bet you can't.

He might be able to if that was his job and he was trained for it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This is new, but one thing is clarified. You are disputing the ark, not the flood. Your prior words were, "This is still not going to convince me that either Noah's flood or Atlantis were real." To be clear, you are opposed to the Noah/ark/Atlantis part of the drama, not the possibility of a worldwide flood event.

J

Read my sig. You don't get to tell me what I think. I get to tell you what I think.

The story of Noah's flood says the entire world was covered in water. I have never been presented with any credible evidence that would make me think that the story of Noah's flood is anything other than nonsense.

I'm not opposed to a worldwide flood event IF THERE IS CREDIBLE EVIDENCE THAT IT HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

No, religious texts and oral traditions are not evidence, let alone credible evidence.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

No she didn't because the answer was ambiguous.

Her answer was clear cut.

 

[onejayhawk]

Read my sig. You don't get to tell me what I think. I get to tell you what I think.

The story of Noah's flood says the entire world was covered in water. I have never been presented with any credible evidence that would make me think that the story of Noah's flood is anything other than nonsense. I'm not opposed to a worldwide flood event IF THERE IS CREDIBLE EVIDENCE THAT IT HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED. No, religious texts and oral traditions are not evidence, let alone credible evidence.

You are quite right. I get to remind you what you said. In this case you referred to the flood.

Scientifically speaking, writings and oral traditions are evidence.

J

 

[Lexicus]

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.

There is one that deals explicitly with the mountain turning into the lake, as Berzerker has pointed out. Most of the rest could simply be referring to generic volcanic activity which has occurred in the area for thousands of years.

The book I have on this subject is called Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins. Geologists have made use of mythological traditions to guide some of their exploration of real scientific problems.

I also found some papers on the subject:
http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/specpubgsl/273/1/1.full.pdf

This is by the same geologist who wrote Legends of the Earth and discusses in a general way some of the connections between geology and myth. It mentions several examples including that of Mt. Mazama (Crater Lake) in Oregon which I brought up earlier. @Birdjaguar it adds the further detail that there have been archaeological finds of Klamath artifacts buried in layers of ash from Mazama's eruption.

This paper is titled ABORIGINAL ORAL TRADITIONS OF AUSTRALIAN IMPACT CRATERS, I haven't read it yet but it's probably pretty cool:
http://www.narit.or.th/en/files/2013JAHHvol16/2013JAHH...16..295H.pdf

Anyway my point with this post is not really to support Berzerker's idea in the OP since I find that to be pretty unlikely (though not necessarily impossible). My point is that dismissing oral traditions and myths entirely as potential sources of scientific knowledge is silly and contradicts a decades-long history of scientists using myths and oral traditions to inform their research into some specific problems.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1707/pp1707.pdf

This is a book I read a while ago about the discovery of the Cascadia fault which includes discussion of some of the native myths that suggested earthquakes and tsunamis in the area before any of the relevant geological evidence was known.

 

[warpus]

It's weird how much validation some people will seek for their faith by highlighting suspect links between something they read online and something that's written in one of their holy texts.

It's supposed to be faith, isn't it? So stick to that and don't yell questionable things from the rooftops and make yourself look so silly. I mean, you can if you want, but who do you think you are convincing? You are preaching to the choir of the already convinced and the rest of us are just rolling our eyes

Start with the evidence and reason through to the conclusion, instead of starting with the conclusion and looking for the evidence. You won't convince anyone by doing things backwards

 

[Synobun]

In the 1920s or 1930s a Homeric scholar named Millman Perry made his way Yugoslavia and audio-recorded a bunch of bards and their upward days-long epic poem/song/oral histories. These epic poems followed strict structures that allowed humans to memorize the entire works as well as teach them. It was the sole job of these bards to memorize and perform their pieces. As an added bonus, if the performer erred on a line, the familiar audience would correct him.

These oral traditions are not maintained by talking and do not utilize the weaker speech memory but instead use the much stronger and reliable song memory.

Nearly a century later, some article I haven't found detailed the efforts of some new person who went and found these bards living in remote and unindustrialized parts of former Yugoslavia. Their performances were verbatim the same as what was recorded before, except when a single word were swapped for other words with the same meaning (my best guess at an example would be something like "as" changed to "for" in an appropriate context).

This validated the model that oral traditions were effective vectors for preserving information. That model takes into account the aforementioned: that humans remember songs/poems, with strict organized musical structure, in ways we do not remember speech. Now that a compelling model has been validated in the real world, we can make a much better educated guess that ancient bits of history are sometimes preserved without writing, are definitely worth pursuing, and certainly not to be dismissed categorically.

Are you sure you want to go with this example? It explicitly proves what I've been saying in this thread. Even a society with a cult-like dedication to its oral tradition couldn't maintain original accuracy within a single century of outside observation. It is very easy to say "oh, the change was just a wording switch, it means the same thing" but not so easy when you're five hundred years deep and these inconsequential changes have snowballed. There are likely people alive in that society that were there when Perry first arrived. Awareness of the 'original' as Perry understood it did not prevent it from changing after 2-3 generations.

I've been very clear in saying that oral tradition is a poor method of propagating information over long periods of time. There is no way to correct for these "verbatim, except this ONE SINGLE WORD" changes. If a society hyper-focused on days-long oral tradition ritual can't prevent these changes within a singular generational cycle, it does not bode well for other societies with less focus and far greater time spans. The oral traditions being referred to in this thread would have needed to deal with enforcing accuracy over the course of generations. An 8,000 year old tradition, for example, would have needed to be propagated through at least 320 generations of people who needed to learn and then retell the tale. That humans are more capable of remembering musical constructs instead of speech constructs wouldn't prevent natural human limitations (memory is not infallible, whether you utilize all the tricks for retention or not), human malice, or extraordinary circumstances (like a society living through a disaster and losing the core of its sages/leaders).

If you have no other options, then sure, oral tradition is your best shot at preserving information. This was never called into question. And hell, it's possible for oral traditions to get things right. That also wasn't called into question. What was called into question was treating millennia-long oral traditions as distinct scientific documents that stand on their own to inform us about the factual, geological past. The resistance is mostly meant for Berzerker who is eager to utilize mythology as his hammer when it comes to science. He takes a story and then tries to prove it, instead of waiting to see if the story is supported by unrelated, objective data. Now because he read an interesting article he has the fuel he needs to make his Adam & Eve ravings as he has been wont to do in at least five separate threads at this point.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You are quite right. I get to remind you what you said. In this case you referred to the flood.

Scientifically speaking, writings and oral traditions are evidence.

J

Nope. Going by your reasoning, I could say that oral traditions are evidence of Ogopogo (freshwater monster said to live in Okanagan Lake in interior British Columbia). There's been a reward out for decades, to the person who provides proof of Ogopogo's existence. That reward has so far gone unclaimed. Stories are not proof. A photo of Ogopogo would help, but at the time when the reward was posted, photo manipulation wasn't as sophisticated as it is today.

Genesis is not evidence of anything other than a creative human imagination. It provides no evidence whatsoever of a worldwide flood, Noah, Noah's family, or the ark. I've been asking for an explanation of how the Antarctic penguins made it through this... how did they know they were supposed to swim to the Middle East, walk across the desert to find Noah, get on the ark, and survive all that time in the wrong environment, with none of their proper food? So far, not one "Noah's Ark is factual" believer has ever been able to answer me in any way that fits the facts of how penguins actually live.

Some have used stories as a starting place to go searching, but the searches don't always turn anything up, or they do turn something up that refutes the story.

Heinrich Schliemann found a city, true. But we still don't know if it was the Troy of the Trojan War, and since he and his wife looted the site instead of making a proper documentation of the artifacts in situ, we may never know. They did a lot of damage and basically made it impossible to prove anything other than there was a city there.

 

[Kyriakos]

As noted in previous talks on this, in greek mythology there are more than one great floods. Iirc at least 2 (ie possibly 3). Occuring at different periods, etc.

Eg the cataclysm of Deukalion being one of them.

Re Atlantis, it was said to be situated (obviously) in the Atlantic. Moreover the story supposedly was mentioned by egyptian priests. It doesn't have to be meant as an actual story, iirc (ie Socrates might just have been presenting it as a myth, but i don't recall the text(s) now).

A popular, albeit less dramatic, theory is that 'Atlantis' might have been the minoan civ, assuming it was at some point centered on Thera (Santorini) and was wiped out by the volcanic eruption (which would have ruined the northern coast of Crete as well due to the massive tsunami created).

 

[warpus]

A world wide flood is one of the easiest "oh no!" type catastrophes you can think up that would would actually be pretty believable. Floods happen, and most (all?) of the earliest civilizations have their roots in flood plains. Of course people are going to be familiar with floods.

I would be a lot more impressed if all ancient cultures independently thought up the same Santa Claus or something. It's easy enough to say ".. Big flood!" to scare people with, especially if floods are common where you have set up shop.

 

[Berzerker]

An 8,000 year old tradition, for example, would have needed to be propagated through at least 320 generations of people who needed to learn and then retell the tale.

And we have evidence that happened

If you have no other options, then sure, oral tradition is your best shot at preserving information. This was never called into question. And hell, it's possible for oral traditions to get things right. That also wasn't called into question.

Tell that to this guy:

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.

It's a fundamentally weak method of propagating consistent information over a long period of time. Believing that hundreds/thousands of people will collectively endure and guarantee original accuracy over the course of millennia is beyond naive.

Who guaranteed original accuracy? Does "a great flood happened" qualify as original accuracy? Or do you expect us to defend the proposition (yours) every detail has been preserved and we guarantee their original accuracy? We have written records from the Sumerians and scholars still argue about the meanings, word of mouth stories have the benefit of on the spot translations written records may not have.

What was called into question was treating millennia-long oral traditions as distinct scientific documents that stand on their own to inform us about the factual, geological past. The resistance is mostly meant for Berzerker who is eager to utilize mythology as his hammer when it comes to science. He takes a story and then tries to prove it, instead of waiting to see if the story is supported by unrelated, objective data. Now because he read an interesting article he has the fuel he needs to make his Adam & Eve ravings as he has been wont to do in at least five separate threads at this point.

I never said a myth was a stand alone scientific document. And whats this? I took a story and didn't wait to see if its supported by 'unrelated, objective data'? The OP has a link to unrelated, objective data supporting the story. Hell, I never believed in a great flood until I saw unrelated, objective data about what happened when the ice sheets melted. I brought up Adam and Eve as evidence of long lasting oral traditions. Didn't you want evidence of that? Somebody else did... So you're complaining too because it was provided? If people didn't want evidence of oral traditions lasting a long time I wouldn't mention Adam and Eve.

What is vague about the Indian's description of the volcanic eruption forming Crater Lake almost 8,000 years ago?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Re Atlantis, it was said to be situated (obviously) in the Atlantic. Moreover the story supposedly was mentioned by egyptian priests. It doesn't have to be meant as an actual story, iirc (ie Socrates might just have been presenting it as a myth, but i don't recall the text(s) now).

A popular, albeit less dramatic, theory is that 'Atlantis' might have been the minoan civ, assuming it was at some point centered on Thera (Santorini) and was wiped out by the volcanic eruption (which would have ruined the northern coast of Crete as well due to the massive tsunami created).

That seems a more reasonable interpretation, but are there facts to fit this hypothesis?

 

[Synobun]

@Berzerker: That reply is mostly incoherent. My favourite part was where you tried to use my words against me while failing to recognize that they directly support each other.

My second favourite part was where you said you never believed in a great flood, even though you've made several threads and even hijacked other threads on CFC about your obsessive need to spread mythology as fact about that very subject.

Lastly, I directly addressed the potential of getting vague details right in oral traditions in an earlier post. Getting a detail right isn't hard to do -- you can do it in a blatantly fictitious story too -- and that a detail was right doesn't mean the oral tradition itself is right in its entirety. Even if the premise remains intact (the story began being told after the factual event), the details surrounding it are likely to be fictitious, incorrect, or exaggerated.

 

[Berzerker]

Re Atlantis, it was said to be situated (obviously) in the Atlantic. Moreover the story supposedly was mentioned by egyptian priests. It doesn't have to be meant as an actual story, iirc (ie Socrates might just have been presenting it as a myth, but i don't recall the text(s) now).

A popular, albeit less dramatic, theory is that 'Atlantis' might have been the minoan civ, assuming it was at some point centered on Thera (Santorini) and was wiped out by the volcanic eruption (which would have ruined the northern coast of Crete as well due to the massive tsunami created).

Crete wasn't much into conquering other people, according to the myth the Atlanteans were at war with ancient Greeks. Now I think Thera blew up ~1628 BC and thats about when 'the sea peoples' were invading the Eastern Mediterranean. Where they came from is of interest but somewhere to the west. I thought the Atlantis myth went from Egypt to Salon to Plato, I guess I'm wrong about Plato being the conduit. Anyway, Salon apparently got it in 590 BC and was told the events happened 9,000 years earlier. The Thera theory suggests the 9,000 was meant as 900 years making Atlantis' destruction 1490 BC. Its possible, but the Egyptians and Greeks would not have confused Crete with the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar).

 

[Lexicus]

That also wasn't called into question. What was called into question was treating millennia-long oral traditions as distinct scientific documents that stand on their own to inform us about the factual, geological past.

Well, we don't really even need to go there. The OP doesn't present us with any kind of millennia-long oral tradition to treat as historically accurate. It rather speculates that such traditions may exist and may go back to an event which is only speculated to have occurred.

The OP has a link to unrelated, objective data supporting the story.

The link in the OP contains zero evidence to support your speculation of an impact-driven tsunami event giving rise to flood myths around the world.

My second favourite part was where you said you never believed in a great flood, even though you've made several threads and even hijacked other threads on CFC about your obsessive need to spread mythology as fact about that very subject.

Minor correction, he says he never believed in a great flood until he saw information that he interpreted as evidence for it. I suspect that this is not exactly accurate, because he's presented zero independent scientific evidence of any worldwide flood in the threads you mention, but no way to know for sure.

EDIT: am currently reading the paper I posted above on Australian aborigine folklore surrounding impact craters in Australia. It is pretty interesting, though so far there aren't any clear examples of oral traditions preserving the memory of impacts that occurred in prehistoric times. There is discussion of the possibility that oral traditions around these craters may have been influenced by Western science, in fact.

 

[Berzerker]

@Berzerker: That reply is mostly incoherent. My favourite part was where you tried to use my words against me while failing to recognize that they directly support each other.

How does

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.

support

If you have no other options, then sure, oral tradition is your best shot at preserving information. This was never called into question. And hell, it's possible for oral traditions to get things right. That also wasn't called into question.

?

You've gone from dismissing oral traditions to they might get things right.

My second favourite part was where you said you never believed in a great flood, even though you've made several threads and even hijacked other threads on CFC about your obsessive need to spread mythology as fact about that very subject.

I said I never believed in the great flood until I saw unrelated, objective evidence. I didn't say I just saw that evidence recently, I saw it years ago. Before I saw it I was skeptical too. And what threads did I hijack? I got in trouble from you for starting my own threads and you were advising me to hijack other threads instead of starting them, remember? What was my explanation for starting the thread you closed? I didn't want to hijack someone else's thread.

Lastly, I directly addressed the potential of getting vague details right in oral traditions in an earlier post. Getting a detail right isn't hard to do -- you can do it in a blatantly fictitious story too -- and that a detail was right doesn't mean the oral tradition itself is right in its entirety. Even if the premise remains intact (the story began being told after the factual event), the details surrounding it are likely to be fictitious, incorrect, or exaggerated.

I never said an oral tradition is right in its entirety.

 

[Synobun]

How does

support

?

A correct premise isn't useful in the modern era, because at that point actual scientific data will reveal and tell you more than anything an oral tradition ever (accurately) could. Regardless of how right (or wrong) an oral tradition ends up being, it requires scientific data to be relevant.

If you believe an oral tradition and aspects of it get proven right afterwards, you were accidentally correct.