I just remembered more examples of oral traditions that lasted a long time, the people of Flores have legends about the little people of the forest who lived long ago. These legends may be speaking of the 'Hobbits' of Flores. New research suggests they're even more archaic than erectus, maybe pithecines. The dates are still in flux but there may have been an overlap with modern humans ~50,000 years ago and they subsequently went extinct just like all the other peoples in our way.
The Zulu have a myth about their ancestors (called 'the artificial ones') waging wars on the 'apemen' and other people around the world have myths about earlier more primitive peoples. One of the Mesoamerican myths speaks of the monkey people who were destroyed for their inability to properly serve the gods. That sounds very much like the Zulu myth and the Sumerian reference to a creature roaming the south who was given the likeness of the gods.
Other myths describe earlier humans who were replaced by 'us', even the Garden story depicts a progression in the first humans. Adam was naked and unashamed seeking a mate from among the other animals and partakes from the tree of knowledge, maybe thats where Arthur C Clarke got his idea for the monolith. Eve's curse is evidence of a tradition going back maybe 200,000 years. Although some research disputes that, its possible the increased pain women suffer in child birth may be partly or mostly the result of agriculture.
Another biblical tradition says the Adam was taken eastward to the Eden. Lying west of the Persian Gulf is Ethiopia and 200,000 year old sapiens. Its possible this tradition was born that long ago when we probably were in one place with one language, and one common mythology. God told us to spread out, that suggests we were created in one location and did just that.
Could you please leave your Adam and Eve fantasies out of things, even just once?
I was asked to provide examples of long-lived traditions and the Bible contains several starting with Adam and Eve.
Ok, 500 years is along time, but made much easier since that tradition began within our historical period. But 500 years is not 10,000 and during that 10,000 there were no modern influences that either aided or encouraged preservation.
Unless they wrote it down it was still an oral tradition, but 500 years aint nothing. If we could speak 200,000 years ago and lived in close proximity back then, we've been maintaining oral traditions a looong time. I'd argue our shared cosmologies go back that far, the sky was the source of that commonality. As we split up and migrated about the world much was forgotten or amended by new experiences, but the sky dont change much.
A couple of things. First I looked for Tlingit myths related to what you posted and could not find anything. Please post a link to the specific myths you mentioned. I found lots of Raven Tales and one non Raven Tale about how they traveled under the ice to find their way to the coast from inland. No mention of being forced to do so, but there may be other versions of the same move. Second, there is no way to figure out when a myth event takes place (ie, how far back in the past) unless some verifiable event can be documented and tied to the mythology. The filling of the Black Sea is an event that people have tried to link to flood myths. How do you defend your notion that the words in a story can be linked to a geologic upland of land 10,000 years ago? that is why I'd like to see the particular stories you say are 10,000 years old.
Thanks.
The Tlingit Flood myth dating it to 14,000 years ago appeared on a PBS docu on killer whales. An old man speaking in his tongue was talking about Orca traditions and out of the blue mentioned the Great Flood happening 14,000 years ago. That docu's gotta be 20 years old by now. I'll look for the migration myth, I posted it in another thread (A Human Paradox?). An update on that one, researchers have found modern human fossils in Israel dating back 175,000 years. Thats so bizarre, we're in Israel that long ago and took another 125-135,000 to reach Europe?
As for the Black Sea flood, it undoubtedly had a profound effect on the people living there, but that flood was the result of rising seas as the ice melted - that was happening to coastal peoples all over (except for the few living on hinges and even they have a flood myth). But we haven't really found a great flood in the melt record. Yes, there were spurts of sea rise but the myths speak of a unique situation, whatever caused the Younger Dryas might be it. A comet breaking up, exploding, impacting, etc... Tsunamis, a deluge of rain, but something that doesn't necessarily show up as a massive sudden rise in sea levels. Something masked by the return to ice age conditions and a drop in sea levels.
edit: the link to the migration myth caught my attention because its being cited in court by coastal Indians backed by archaeological finds. But I cant find it on google, I'm sure I posted it here though, I just dont know what thread.
