I find it utterly fascinating how long were humans capable of passing the information just by word of mouth. If I understood it correctly, in this case people were wary for 2000 years, so for around 100 generations.
"Some 50 generations later, on March 11, 2011, the Murohama tsunami warning tower — which was supposed to sound an alarm — was silent, toppled by the temblor. Still, without the benefit of an official warning system supported by modern science, the locals relied on the lesson that had been transmitted generation to generation for 1,000 years. “We all know the story about the two tsunami waves that collided at the shrine,” I was told.
Instead of taking refuge on the closest hill, the one with the shrine, they took the time to get to high ground farther away. From the safety of their vantage point they saw two tsunami waves colliding at the hill with the shrine, as they did long ago. Tragically, not everyone made the right choice; I was told of at least one person who died." https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2012-mar-11-la-oe-hol...
Maybe it could be explained by each new generation asking their parents why nobody is dwelling near the coast. Meaning, the information is passed down because it is necessary to explain the current situation. The passed-down explanation may even mutate significantly, as long as it still keeps people away from the coast.
There are many examples of this sort of thing. In Western societies many of the “universal” myths may be correlated to events 10,000+ years ago, yet persist!
All kinds. In the Western world there are 2,000 year old myths that persist to this day and are part of mainstream cultural knowledge. People think you’re crazy if you don’t know them.
True, but we have been a literate society throughout that timespan, and the institution that was responsible for maintaining the knowledge of such myths, the Church, was often the only source of literacy around.
A lot of the ancient secular stuff was forgotten and had to be reconstructed later from written sources.
I specified that because that’s what I know, not to take away from others. (I’m afraid that I’m ignorant of ancient history in East Asia and Oceania)
If you think of the deluges in the Black Sea, Doggerland, the Bahamas (submerged evidence of significant human construction exists), and the Persian Gulf, they all happened while the world was adapting the end of the ice age.
One would imagine that coastal lowlands were great places to live, so human society was likely traumatized throughly by these events. Think about how Greek mythology would fit into the framework of those ancient (to Greeks) cataclysmic events.
The narrative of gods dying for a great good or fighting off more ancient gods are also common themes. Humans may have had a near extinction event 70,000 years ago and some of those themes likely imprinted on us via generations of long forgotten history and religion.
We’re no smarter than our ancient ancestors. We know more and understand some things better, but I think mythology is ultimately evidence of those before us trying to explain events consistent with the framework of what they understood.
You might be interested in the paper I linked to, which gives examples of more direct connections between modern Aboriginal myths and 7,000 year old sea level rise.
At that paper points out, one of the ways that oral traditions might last longer is if "a particular society remains comparatively isolated, not subject to the (repeated) cultural intrusion that might lead to radical alteration or replacement of Indigenous traditions".
Western mythologies are not isolated. In Snorri Sturluson's 13th century telling of the flood after Ymir's death, Bergelmir and his wife escaped by holding on to a hollowed-out tree trunk. Does that reflect pre-Christian Norse traditions, or a syncretization with Christian traditions that in turn drew on older Middle Eastern flood myths?
It's also difficult to determine if the mythology is indeed 7,000 years old, or a more recent mythology. Consider the Cantre'r Gwaelod, "an area of land which, according to legend, was located in an area west of present-day Wales which is now under the waters of Cardigan Bay" (quoting Wikipedia), with oldest records from the 1200s, and similar to the stories of Helig ap Glanawg.
The petrified forest of Ynyslas shows that 4-5,000 years ago the beach was a forest, and that people lived in it.
So, are the stories of Cantre'r Gwaelod the result of oral tradition that passed down for 4,000 years?
Or are they a more modern just-so story that attempts to explain why there are petrified trees on the beach? (Note that the tradition interprets glacial moraines as dikes.)
Or, consider the story of Giant's Causeway. Tradition is that Fionn mac Cumhaill built a path from Ireland to Scotland - both parts of the same lava flow, but with no reason to believe this is a result of an ancient oral tradition from when those land masses were connected.
> some of those themes likely imprinted on us via generations of long forgotten history and religion
] Japan lacks a major flood myth. Japanese scholars in the 19th century such as Hirata Atsutane and Motoori Norinaga used the global flood myths of other cultures to argue for the supremacy of Shinto and promote Japanese nationalism.[22] They claimed that the fact that Japan has no flood myth showed that it was both the centre and highest point on Earth, making it the closest place on Earth to the heavens. As such, this to them demonstrates the veracity of the Japanese creation myth, where Japan comes first and foremost.
Why were Japanese people not similarly imprinted?
> a near extinction event
Our ancestors then may have had no clue that the rest of humans had died out. There may have been no emotional or cultural imprint to pass on.
Consider if everyone died in the year 1600, except for those on Australia. Our history and loss would not have been reflected in their stories.
Sea level rose continuously from 20,000 until 8000 years ago, 120 m in all. Each of 600 generations experienced its own deluge as the shore moved inland, often hundreds of miles all told.
Local events were often more dramatic, maybe including the Black Sea filling in. Then there was the global Younger Dryas cataclysm 12,000 years ago.
Thing is, while all those global- or continental-scale flooding events did happen, there's only speculation that they are coupled to oral traditions. And stronger speculation that they are linked to more regional floods, eg, from flood-prone Mesopotamia.
We can look at the Great Flood of Gun to see how mythology incorporates more localized floods - sea level rise wouldn't cause flooding of the Yellow River and the Yangtze valleys some 4,000 years ago.
As the paper I cited says:
> While there are a few claims of considerably greater antiquity that are difficult to dismiss—the Klamath memory of the 7630-year-old eruption of Mt Mazama (Deur 2002) is one—most of these are inevitably based on sparse information from which credible arguments are difficult to construct. Most scientists hold a sceptical view of such ‘deep’ oral histories (Henige2009; Owsley and Jantz 2001), a position that is prudent, although there are some who regard it as unduly cautious (Echo-Hawk 2000)
then listing much more concrete examples of how local myths can be tied to global sea level rise, for example:
> Some of these stories recall that the Aboriginal name of Fitzroy Island is gabaɽor ‘lower arm’ of a former main-land promontory that became partly submerged. Another recalls the name of a place halfway between Fitzroy Island and King Beach that is now submerged; its name was Mudaga (the Indindji word for the pencil pine, Athrotaxis cupressoides) after the trees growing there
along with an explanation for why these stories might have persisted:
> the only plausible explanation for the Indindji people of coastal Queensland continuing to tell the story of Mudaga ... for thousands of years after it was no longer visible, is if that story were part of an explicitly taught package of stories inherited through land-owning Indindji patrilines. For the existence of Mudaga, even submerged, constitutes evidence of knowing one’s country, and thus establishing one’s relationship with that country. Without such ritualised framing, the transmission of such stories across perhaps over 100 generations would seem to be implausibly vulnerable to chance link-breaking
The connection between the Gilgamesh floods and global sea-level rise, or the Black Sea, etc., has no comparable evidence.
Of course there will never be definitive evidence connecting sea level rise to universal flood mythology.
It comes down, in the end, to plausibility: people everywhere have always been subject to existential catastrophe, including flood, conflagration, desertification, famine, pandemic, invasion, eviction, genocide, cyclone, earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, bolide strike -- need I go on? Yet, only one of these shows up as formative in all places and nearly all peoples.
There are other ways to interpret universality. One is that a progenitor people carried an origin story with them, over tens of millennia, as they spread out to cover the planet. The universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters (one now lost) can be explained no other way.
The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia.
The end of generation-on-generation flooding that immediately preceded the rise of sedentary agriculture and civilization must have been as profoundly affecting as the flood's previous relentless progress.
There must have been, after 12 millennia, a deeply ingrained expectation that the sea would continue rising indefinitely, the world perhaps ending with the sea finally submerging all land. Building with an expectation not to be soon evicted by water must have seemed audaciously sacrilegious, in many places, for many generations after.
Association of high ground with the gods' favor must have been cemented early.
Peoples accustomed to higher ground would have, instead, continual experience of invasion by people displaced, again finally trailing off.
So, is the null hypothesis that universal flood myths are local memories, with those citing universal older experience having something to prove? Or should the older origin be the baseline, with citations of scattered recent events seeding disconnected, coincidentally matching myths obliged to find support?
The choice is fatuous. Each may be true, in different places. A recent flood event can easily loom larger in memory than legend. Absent a recent flood or tsunami, the universal experience remains.
> The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia
The simpler explanation is that intelligent people saw sea shells on the tops of hills and mountains, and independently concluded that there used to be a great flood which covered the world.
] A flood once covered everything but the summit of Mount Wawom Pebato (seashells on the hills are evidence).
] Proof of their deeds may be seen in seashells embedded in high rocks
] An unusually high tide caused a global flood. Shellfish and such things in the mountains are evidence of it
] The shells and bones of many shellfish, fish, seals, and whales were also left high above sea level, where they may be found today.
] The sky fell and hit the water, causing high breakers that flooded all the land. That is why one can find shells and redwood logs on the highest ridges
] When the flood subsided, it left the lakes Titicaca and Poopo, and it left seashells on the Altiplano at elevations of 3660 m.
] The flood destroyed all animals left on earth, including the Prince of animals [some say it was a mammoth], whose bones can still be found.
And the Norse flood myth may be from Christian influence.
Any theory of a progenitor people must explain why some it persisted in some cultures but not others.
> The universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters (one now lost) can be explained no other way.
???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matariki - Matariki is the Māori name for the cluster of stars known to Western astronomers as the Pleiades in the constellation Taurus. Matariki is a shortened version of Ngā mata o te ariki o Tāwhirimātea, or "the eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E1%B9%9Bttik%C4%81 - "The star cluster Kṛttikā ... corresponds to the open star cluster called Pleiades in western astronomy ... In Indian astronomy and Jyotiṣa (Hindu astrology) the name literally translates to "the cutters". ... The six Krittikas who raised the Hindu God Kartikeya are Śiva, Sambhūti, Prīti, Sannati, Anasūya and Kṣamā."
> The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia.
There are gods in a lot of mythologies too.
> There must have been, after 12 millennia, a deeply ingrained expectation that the sea would continue rising indefinitely
Yet most of those flood stories have the waters rise then fall, and for a short period -- or before humans ever existed.
And in the Great Flood of Gun-Yu, humans end up controlling the flood - a far cry from a universal mythos of ever-rising waters.
> is the null hypothesis that universal flood myths are local memories
The null hypothesis is that there is no universal flood myth.
From the linked Wikipedia page: "African cultures preserving an oral tradition of a flood include the Kwaya, Mbuti, Maasai, Mandin, and Yoruba peoples."
So, false.
And, obviously there would be local myths of the Pleiades. But the Sisters show up on all continents. That is the fact that needs accounting for.
Dragonwriter is correct: neither universal nor regional flooding is the null hypothesis.
I said most cultures in Africa don't have a flood myth, not that no cultures in Africa have a flood myth. The Wikipedia entry you quoted starts "Although the continent has relatively few flood legends".
There are many more than five cultures in Africa. Any suggestion of a universal common source must explain why those other cultures don't have a flood myth. Including Japan.
We can compare different flood myths and see there's no universal similarity between them except "there was a flood."
And we can see all sorts of other similarities between different cultures, like the presence of gods and supernatural forces, and not draw the conclusion that gods and supernatural forces existed.
We can look at Australian Aboriginal flood myths, which have the strongest evidence for being the result of sea-level rise from 7,000 years ago, and see that your 'simpler explanation' doesn't fit the data.
And I can see that your statement about the "universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters" is not correct.
There's still no evidence for the universal progenitor culture experience, while there is counter-evidence, including from Australian oral traditions which may date to the same period.
Our modern society has vastly better data, unimaginable completeness in scale, scope, detail, and accuracy.
Yet we are consistently making insanely worse decisions than the ones that returned 2000 years after the disaster.
That hundred-generation perspective makes the Native American's 'Consider the Seventh Generation' ethos seem myopic.
Worse yet is our society's obsession on quarterly profits and this month's competitive positioning — makes the attention span of a cloud of coked-up gnats seem positively sagacious
>>And of course, people returned to the shoreline eventually, as people in tsunami zones around the world inevitably do and apparently always have done. "Knowledge of these giant events and their consequences seems to wane over the passage of time, a common occurrence throughout the Pacific region . . . Most of the hazard assessments for coastal northern Chile are based on historical data that goes back just a few centuries, but the fault system in the region runs on a much larger temporal scale. Data about ancient quakes and tsunamis like the one that reshaped society here 3,800 years ago could offer a longer-term perspective to hazard planners."
I'm doubtful. While individuals may respond to stories, cultures and settlement grow vegetatively. Communities would have grown back, and to my untutored mind in less than a century.
Unless the ecosystem was upset, which it was. Small camps that returned after the tsunami show a narrower diet, which is a red flag? I imagine folks didn't return because the food chain was disrupted, and they couldn't return.
Its not too unfathomable. Indigenous people are around today and they pass on lore to their youth the same way. Also looks like they use paint to make drawings. Probably recorded some of their history too.
