

Aboriginal legend backs up research findings on origins of Central AU palm trees - femto
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-03/aboriginal-legend-palm-tree-origin-central-australia-research/6369832

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cjensen
The evidence is: (1) Palm Trees in Central Australia are related to those from
Northern Australia and arrived 30Kyr ago and (2) an Aboriginal tale of gods
carrying the Palm Tree seeds from the North.

The quoted professor concludes from this that Aboriginal oral history has
survived for 30,000 years.

The heck? Consider two explanations off the top of my head:

1\. The Aborigines forgot the actual origin of the Palm seeds. Recently
(<2Kyr), a tale was invented of the seed origin which happens to involve the
seeds being carried from the same cardinal direction.

2\. The Aborigines forgot the actual origin of the Palm seeds. Recently
(<2Kyr), a visitor from the North recognized the Trees, and guessed they were
carried from the North. This story was passed down as fact.

A tale that lasts 30,000 seems like Magic to me. Neither of my top-of-the-head
explanations requires Magic. Do they teach Occam's Razor in Tasmanian Ecology
school?

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femto
It seems quite plausible to me. Think of it in terms of information theory.
Each person is an unreliable channel, but there are hundreds or thousands
operating in parallel. The net result is a reliable information transmission
channel that stretches back many, many years.

As I understand it, the Aborigines have a strict oral tradition, so the
passing down of these stories isn't a casual chat over a meal, but a formal
education, where accuracy is paramount. Under these circumstances, the
reliability of each individual ancestral line goes up, so when they are all
operating in parallel, I'd expect the error rate to be quite low, errors in
each generation being corrected by a majority vote.

