
Some ancient narratives contain remarkably reliable records of real events - JoachimOfFiore
https://www.sapiens.org/language/oral-tradition/
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noetic_techy
Going to go out on a personal opinion limb here, but I think we dismiss far
too much in archaeology and ancient recorded history, even with the evidence
all around us. I predict one day there will be a great revival in archaeology
as we start to cast off our erroneous assumptions about native peoples stories
of their history.

A few Examples that have really stuck in my mind:

The recorded history of the Egyptians says their dynasties go back FAR longer
than is accepted by modern Egyptology, yet we dismiss it. The water erosion on
the sphynx, as well as the change in flow of the Nile away from some of thier
earlier cities, backs up their claim. Techniques to "carbon date" stone have
been dismissed largely because they tell us some structures are much older
than we think. Not possible therefore the science must be wrong... but what if
its the other way around?

Plato describes Atlantis in great detail, which was passed down to him from
his elders. We actually know of a site that matches his description exactly in
Mauritania, deep in the Sahara, which would have been an island 12 thousand
years ago when seas were higher. It has all the exact dimensions he described
correct and geography correct, has the same stone color as he described their
buildings, has the springs on the central island, is beyond the straits of
Gibraltar, and has plenty of artifacts strewn everywhere, yet we still dismiss
it as a tall tale and no one will dig there:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richat_Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richat_Structure)

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to take this stuff seriously. More
than likely they were just a civilization advanced for their time (maybe Roman
era advanced) but something happened to them. The Richat is likely a natural
volcanic anomaly that they simply built on.

Plenty more where that came from that challenge our recorded history:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang_Megalithic_Site](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang_Megalithic_Site)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gornaya_Shoria_megaliths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gornaya_Shoria_megaliths)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobekli_Tepe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobekli_Tepe)

And to top it all off, I think most likely the Younger Dryas Impact Event
described by Randal Carlson (great Joe Rogan Podcast about this out there) is
the "Flood" event recorded by multiple cultures and responsible for wiping out
traces of civilization past 12,000 years ago. This 12,000 year number recurs
over an over when we talk about these sites that defy the narrative that it
all started in Mesopotamia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis)

Again, personal opinion here, but it sure as hell all lines up.

~~~
stupidcar
You definitely have to be a conspiracy theorist to buy any of the myriad
contemporary Atlantis myths and the veracity of Plato's claims. The history
podcast Our Fake History has an excellent three episode arc about Atlantis,
including Plato's account.

[https://ourfakehistory.com/index.php/season-2/](https://ourfakehistory.com/index.php/season-2/)

The upshot is that his account does _not_ match up with any real world
location, unless you are willing to engage in cherry-picking and an extremely
generous interpretation of various things, and there is no credible explain of
how he alone could have gained such detailed knowledge of a civilisation that
existed thousands of years before his birth. One which no other historical
writer mentioned.

In reality, Plato's description of "Atlantis" was considered as plainly
allegorical by his contemporaries and subsequent scholars. A situation that
continued for hundreds of years, and only began to change in the relatively
recent past, with the rise of pseudo-history and conspiracy theorists.

~~~
noetic_techy
Would you have said the same of Troy right up until they found it a few years
ago?

Can you point me to where in those podcast they discredit that the Richat
structure in Africa does not fit the description of Atlantis?

This documentary is pretty sober and not at all fanciful, lays out how the
Richat matches Plato's description exactly:

[https://visitingatlantis.com/](https://visitingatlantis.com/)

You absolutely don't need to buy into the fanciful myths of Atlantis to
speculate that is probably was an ancient bronze age city located at the
Richat.

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ajbetteridge
It always amazes me why historians and researchers start with the assumption
that any tale from the past is fanciful until proven otherwise. We have little
to no proof that our very distant ancestors sat around making up stories for
the fun of it and then passing them on to future generations, when they'd
surely be more likely to pass on useful information that keeps the tribe
alive. Yes there will be embelishments, but we seem to treat everything from
before the last couple if hundred years as total lies.

~~~
irrational
What I was taught is that ancient peoples did not look at history the way we
look at it. When I open a book by a modern historian, I assume the book will
be about things that actually happened, how they actually happened, why they
actually happened, the correct order in which they actually happened, etc. I
expect the historian will tell me when there is ambiguity or uncertainty.

Ancient historians would think this is nonsense. The point of writing history
is not the events themselves, it is not to get down on paper what actually
happened. What kind of idiot would want something like that? No, the point of
writing history is to share a message. Often they would draw parallels between
two events to explain something. Now they might need to greatly fudge,
exaggerate, change the order, etc. of those two events in order to make
everything to fit, but that is fine. The actual events that happened is not
important, it is the truth (i.e., the point the historian is trying to get
across) that is what is important. The events themselves are not the message,
the message is served by the telling of the events, even if the telling is not
100% accurate (as we would see it).

~~~
snapdangle
When the only means of preserving your history is to speak it truthfully,
that's what you do.

~~~
irrational
That might be the main difference. They would have considered the idea of
"preserving your history" to be not worth considering. It didn't seem to be
something they valued (at least in the sense we understand it).

~~~
snapdangle
That's entirely the cultural bias of treating other humans as savage and
primitive and not listening to a word they say.

~~~
irrational
They were hardly primitive, they just valued things differently than we do.
Having a different value system doesn't make them savages.

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hprotagonist
Much younger than the examples in the article, but rather a lot of Beowulf
seems to describe real events. I think the Finnburgh Episode, told as a story
inside the story, even gets the names right of the actual people involved.

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ZanyProgrammer
Ancient writers who estimated population size (sizes of
cities/regions/armies/soldiers list in battle) are almost always wrong and
almost certainly impossible to have been real. I’m often amazed at is
credulous modern people are though when it comes to those ancient estimates
(unless it bolsters a modern prejudice).

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cwmma
Some of these seem like, leaps, e.g. is knowledge passed down for 15 millennia
really the most likely explanation compared to say, meanings of words changing
(like the name of the island used to refer to a promontory on the island
before changing in meaning to refer to the island itself)

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empath75
Even if the general narrative were completely false in a story, some level of
‘realism’ is an almost absolute requirement for a story to be enjoyed and
retold.

Just yesterday, I told my two year old a story about how he was playing in the
playground with his best friend T-Rex, collecting acorns, and a family of
talking squirrels came down and asked if they could have some, then they
invited them up to their treehouse to play.

An absurd story, to be sure, but also — the playground was real, acorns are
real, squirrels are real, the fact that my son likes to collect acorns is
real. There’s lots of true information available in even deeply silly stories.

~~~
BerislavLopac
Wait -- talking squirrels are real? I knew it!

~~~
turtlecloud
Maybe analogous to the talking snake in the story of Adam and Eve. Some guy
prob got kicked out of a nice place for sleeping with a lady he wasn’t suppose
to lol.

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jbattle
These stories are fascinating and I don't doubt there are seeds of very
ancient facts preserved for thousands of years in oral traditions.

That said, if we don't have a reliable way of picking these facts out from the
rest of the oral tradition, how useful is this knowledge? Its not like we can
go through the rest of the dreamtime corpus and select out other long-lost
facts.

Which also raises the question - given a big enough oral tradition (assuming
for the moment the stories are ALL made up) - what are the chances of finding
stories that inadvertently line up with reality?

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fhood
Would be cool if they provided other examples. The Aboriginal's of australia
have the strongest and oldest oral tradition of any culture that I am aware
of, so it would be nice to see some other, less obvious, examples.

~~~
NickBusey
From the third paragraph of the article: Another such oral history surrounds
the Klamath people of Oregon, in the western U.S.

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anotheryou
really good related article:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20161006142042/https://www.scient...](http://web.archive.org/web/20161006142042/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-
trace-society-s-myths-to-primordial-origins/)

"Analyzing how stories change in the retelling down through the generations
sheds light on the history of human migration going as far back as the
Paleolithic period"

archive.org because of the paywall

