
The Real Landscapes of the Great Flood Myths - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/25/water/the-real-landscapes-of-the-great-flood-myths
======
fit2rule
My favourite of all of these branches of the "Pan-pre-culture" theories is
that of Szukalski's Protong, which is the supposed "mother language, before
the cataclysm" which was spoken by the previous generation, wiped out by the
flood .. and which persists today across all ancient art-forms as a kind of
mnemonic proto-language, warning of grave and dire things to come this way,
every 65,000 years .. in fact, Szkulalskis' treatise of this subject is very
approachable.

I am enamoured of Protong in particular, not just because of the nature of
Szukalski himself as an enormous crackpot, but also because the concept of a
sub-meta-proto- language, readable in all ancient art (and thus demonstrating
a common root), is highly fascinating.

Through Szukalski I learned to try to see the 'assembly language' of human
culture as a persistent meme across generations of civilizations, and that in
itself - irresepective of Szukalsksi's other heinous crackpot racist theories
- is a good reason for anyone to check out Protong!

[https://books.google.at/books/about/Behold_The_Protong.html?...](https://books.google.at/books/about/Behold_The_Protong.html?id=mdAIAAAACAAJ&source=kp_cover&hl=en)

(He is a crackpot - the yeti stuff is a load of bollocks. But Protong itself,
in my opinion, has a great deal of merit as an artistic pursuit..)

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autokad
I believe Scandinavian myths about trolls were oral record of human
interaction with neanderthal

~~~
JupiterMoon
I think that the Scandinavians moved into the area on the order of 2000 years
ago (before that the Sami lived there from 11000 years ago). The neanderthal
went extinct in the order of 40000 years ago.

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

Nice idea but it seems improbable

~~~
danieltillett
Neanderthals aren't extinct, they just breed with the later immigrants from
Africa so that all non-Africans are a mix of Neanderthal and African people's.
The interesting thing is the gene flow from Neanderthal's all came from the
male side.

~~~
JupiterMoon
OK given that this is true which it may well be but is a matter of current
research neanderthals ceased at some stage to be a separate group from homo
spapians. The time was well before the Scandinavians appeared.

~~~
danieltillett
Well since the Scandinavians are part Neanderthal there is no point at which
the ceased to be separate, however, at the time that people with a majority
Neanderthal genes ceased to exist Scandinavia was under 2km of ice and so
nobody lived there. There never was a time when anyone, but humans lived
there.

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eric_h
I don't find this at all surprising. Oral histories are, after all, just a
multi-generational game of telephone and many must, necessarily, contain a
kernel of truth.

~~~
dalke
But what is the kernel? Is the Mesopotamian flood myth, which lead to the myth
of Noah's flood, really from the Black Sea deluge? Or from one of the other
proposed sources listed at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth#Claims_of_historici...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth#Claims_of_historicity)
?

What is the kernel in the Zuni creation myth, at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuni_mythology#Creation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuni_mythology#Creation)
? It describes true things, like that trees grow from seeds, but that's a
rather low bar.

~~~
autokad
a huge kernel in fact. a very large portion of what we know today was passed
down by oral language, eventually making it to written language, and
eventually making it into science books.

also, science gets a lot of credit for 'discoveries' it had no part in. most
of the time, science is just proving what everyone already knew. the other
major portion of the time, discoveries were made by tinkerers, which are often
looked down upon by scientists even though they make up a large portion of
break throughs.

granted, our history over 5,000 years ago oral accounts, or myths as you like
to call them, do not do a particularly good job after such a time at telling
us what happened. but quite often, there is a large amount of truth to be
found if you are willing to listen.

~~~
JupiterMoon
This is an interesting theory. Do you have any evidence to back this up?

EDIT I have some cases to counteract your theory:

    
    
        - Flat Earth
    
        - Earth as centre of Universe
    
        - Quantum mechanics
    
        - Relativity
    
        - Thermodynamics
    
        - Newton's laws
    
        - Evolution
    
        - God(s)
    
        - Bible stories in general
    

Basically scientific progress has been a story of overcoming verbal traditions
and received wisdom.

~~~
jorangreef
You might want to read up on the development of the scientific method,
specifically the ordered-universe hypothesis of people like Johannes Kepler
which led to it.

If you're truly serious about science as I think you want to be, you might
also want to revise that list of yours, as it suggests less of an interest in
science itself, and more of scientism and naturalism which are both circular
philosophies in the pop-science Dawkins crusade.

Furthermore, to define scientific progress as "a story of overcoming verbal
traditions" might show that you have something to learn of the study of
ancient history, specifically the accuracy and role of oral tradition in
knowledge. You might also want to read up on the laws of evidence.

Some people want to appropriate science as some kind of vehicle in their own
personal war against religion, and I don't think you can rationally make it
that. Science has no interest at all in, or ability to study anything beyond
the natural. Read a few quotes from Carl Sagan if you're still not convinced.

~~~
dalke
"Science has no interest at all in, or ability to study anything beyond the
natural."

Science doesn't like being anthropomorphized.

I mean that only partially in jest. You mean "science" here as shorthand for
"people who follow the natural philosophy known as 'science'". I'll call those
people 'scientists', as is the normal practice.

The thing is, there are scientists who investigate putative supernatural
events, such as ESP in its various forms, or supernatural events like stigmata
from a stone sculpture.

This is possible because some supernatural events affect the natural world. If
someone says they can use dowsing to detect a buried bottle of water, then the
success is part of the natural world. If during unblinded tests they can find
the water while during blinded tests they cannot, then it's likely that any
success is not due to a supernatural agent but to to the internal knowledge of
the dowser.

Similarly, some claim that water molecules can be influenced by thought. (Eg,
the film 'What the Bleep Do We Know'.) Such claims can be tested, which puts
them in the natural world.

However, other supernatural events, such as received wisdom, might have no
impact on the natural world. If you say the god Mxyzptlk told you that left-
handed people should not eat soup, then there's nothing that science can do or
say about it.

While if you say that Mxyzptlk told you that William the Conqueror in 1072
liked to smoke Cuban cigars and eat macadamia nuts while watching Game of
Thrones, then science still can't say if Mxyzptlk does or doesn't exist, but
can show that such an event was ahistorical. It is much more likely that
Mxyzptlk doesn't exist, or that Mxyzptlk told you a lie.

Going back to your phrase "Science has no interest at all in, or ability to
study anything beyond the natural". What you say is true. If something has no
impact on the natural word, then there's nothing that science can do or say
about it. But the vast majority of supernatural event also have a natural
component, and those real-world effects are in the domain of science.

Are you limiting yourself to only those events with no real-world effect? Or
do you want to include supernatural events like a global flooding, which would
leave physical traces had it occurred?

~~~
dragonwriter
Science is only applicable to physical phenomena with physical causes due to
consistent natural law; "supernatural" is a term for things that don't meet
that description. At most -- e.g., for physical phenomena with nonphysical
causes, or causes that are not governed by consistent natural law -- a
scientific approach to supernatural will simply identify gaps in the ability
to construct a scientific model no different than if the governing natural law
were not correctly identified out the physical causes were outside our current
ability to detect.

The issue is not the interest of scientist, is the applicability and function
of the method known as "science".

Global flooding isn't inherently a supernatural event, and can be investigated
with science, but science cannot, by its very nature, address any supernatural
cause, ask it can do is produce a natural model of causation.

~~~
dalke
Let us suppose that it is possible to "petition the Lord with prayer", to
quote Morrison. For example, do prayers from strangers help someone recover
from an illness?

We can test two populations, ones who receive stranger prayer, and ones who do
not, and see if one population gets better treatment. We can look at the
epidemiology to see if people from one religion, who practice healing prayer,
have different health outcomes than those who do not. (This is tricky but not
intractable because there is more than one factor at play.)

Thus we have the ability to _detect_ if there is something outside of the
current model. Detecting failures of the current model is part of science,
even when it it cannot produce a better model other than "here there be
dragons." What's at issue is that so far those gaps seem to get smaller and
smaller the more we look into them. Hence the phrase "God of the gaps."

We of course have many examples of thing which were outside of the then-
current understanding of science. The "ultraviolet catastrophe" is a classic
example. The irreconcilability of general relativity and quantum mechanics is
another.

But we did not call that "supernatural", even though when we knew there was a
gap in our understanding.

At this point, global flooding of the sort discussed would have to be a
supernatural event. There is no place for the water to come from or go to.
There is no physical trace of such an event. Therefore, it would either
require planetary engineering of the sort more appropriate for science
fiction, or some sort of magical or divine intervention.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Let us suppose that it is possible to "petition the Lord with prayer", to
> quote Morrison.

That's obviously possible.

What's subject to debate is whether that action in the material universe
produces any change in outcomes in the material universe.

> We can test two populations, ones who receive stranger prayer, and ones who
> do not, and see if one population gets better treatment. We can look at the
> epidemiology to see if people from one religion, who practice healing
> prayer, have different health outcomes than those who do not. (This is
> tricky but not intractable because there is more than one factor at play.)

Sure.

> Thus we have the ability to detect if there is something outside of the
> current model.

Science is all _about_ detecting things outside the current model, creating a
hypothetical models which include those things, validating whether they
explain observed realities better than the current model, and updating models.

OTOH, once it does so, the new model is _still_ , by definition, a
naturalistic model which excludes the supernatural. If intercessory prayer has
an influence on health effects, not only can science detect it -- but by
detecting it can quantify it (even if the necessary model is one of changes in
the probability distribution of outcomes, not a simple direct consistent
change in outcomes) and incorporate it into a naturalistic model.

> At this point, global flooding of the sort discussed would have to be a
> supernatural event. There is no place for the water to come from or go to.

No, it wouldn't. The lack of knowledge of the details of the mechanism or
explanation for something which is nevertheless an element of the best model
does not suddenly make the incompletely-explained thing supernatural;
otherwise, things like the Planck constant are "supernatural".

