[suddenlybananas]

It's interesting how people will think that the Klamath preserved an oral story from 7700 years ago, yet in the historiography of Europe, a 50-100 year gap from the events to the recording of them in text is viewed with deep suspicion. For example, viewing the accounts of the Trojan war as being even remotely accurate beyond "there was a war in the bronze age," is seen as pretty fringe.

[DoktorL]

But there was a war, wasn't there? So why not admit that 8000-year-old myth can have got "the rocks went flying" part right.

Written accounts are still vastly superior to oral tradition of course, their accuracy is on another level. But that doesn't mean there is absolutely nothing to glimpse from old myths.

[perihelions]

> "So why not admit that 8000-year-old myth can have got "the rocks went flying" part right."

Because they're cherry-picked examples fished out of a sea of nonsense. You can't ignore that the body of oral tradition is almost entirely florid fiction, and claim that a few bits and pieces that vaguely resemble reality are evidence that oral tradition preserves information over long timescales. It's methodologically invalid. That kind of analysis gives the same result ("we found an ancient myth that resembles a fact"), independent of whether the proposition, "oral tradition preserves information", is true or false.

It's a classic fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking ("Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position.")

[weregiraffe]

Nobody has oral history from 7700 years ago.

[carlosjobim]

Of course they can, why not? The example in the article is really good and perfectly believable.

People at that time would wander around a lot in their everyday life, and it would be very easy to remember these small stories which are connected to the landscape. A father would tell his son when they were walking past this feature of the landscape, and the son would later tell his son and so on.

Why? Because they didn't have cell phones to scroll on while wandering, or a radio to listen to. And they weren't thinking about their mortgage or about primaries. When you live in a world like this, it is very easy to remember a bunch of unusual stories, and when they're connected to the landscape instead of to people, it is almost a guarantee that they will be passed on for generations.

[IAmBroom]

Because of the game of Telephone.

Humans aren't capable of repeating stories without permutation.

[carlosjobim]

That applies to the written word as well. You can never guarantee that your modern understanding of what a word means is the same as what the original writer meant.

[grebc]

Lol seen the homepage of the ABC? (Australian not American broadcaster).

[ethersteeds]

I assume you're referring to this?https://www.abc.net.au/news/deeptime/

[harvey9]

That's a really interesting site. Thanks for the tip.

[suddenlybananas]

I agree, but the linked article claims otherwise.

[IAmBroom]

An unprovable assertion, I'll note. So: opinion.