The New Science of Geomythology - The study of oral traditions relative to earth changes.

[Dover]

Oral tradition, oral culture and oral lore are messages or testimony transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants. In this way, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledges across generations without a writing system.


We know that there are currently a number of different kinds of 'arks' being established to ensure the
survival of various species of plants and animals. Not so difficult to imagine that Noah was
responding to a similar situation, whether his story is representative of an ancient myth or real event impressed
indelibly into collective memory. Whether natural or manmade, these events seem to occur cyclically, like reading the rings of an ancient tree, embedded in our long experience.

If the story of, say, the events of 9/11 were passed down as oral tradition from generation to generation it would become, in essence, a cultural myth much like the Tower of Babel. I was reminded of the weighty significance of oral traditions during the recent Indonesian tsunami where many native islanders knew, through the continuance of oral tradition rather than recent experience, to flee to higher ground, while many without that knowledge were drawn to the beaches through curiosity by the receeding sea (see links at bottom of this page). I hope there are many studies of these oral traditions going on now to inform our contemporary collective knowledge relative to global warming and earth changes.




Noah's Ark by Edward Hicks, 1846. 300 versions of the Flood myth are known in different cultures.


Gods, floods – and global warming

The new science of geomythology links ancient legends and natural disasters - and supports climate change , writes Steve Jones.

'Global warming is a myth.” Type that into a search engine and you get thousands of hits – but global warming is not a product of the human imagination; or no more so than any other scientific claims for – like them – it depends on its data, the accuracy of which has been affirmed by the inquiry into the leaked East Anglia documents. The subject has, alas, become the home of boring rants by obsessives.

More interesting is the notion that myths themselves may reflect real happenings of long ago. The new science of geomythology sets out to tie such tales to ancient disasters. Often, geology and legend fit remarkably well.

The Greek fire-dragon the Chimaera was slain at her lair but – being immortal – her blazing breath lived on. It can be visited today, on the Turkish coast, where a jet of methane from underground has been burning for millennia. Nearby, are the ruins of Colossus. In AD60 a huge earthquake struck. Its Greek temple was directly over a rift in the Earth, where a stinking spring rose from Hades (the Oracle at Delphi was the same, and the best prophecies came after inhaling the gases). The event was remembered by the local pagans as a visitation from the murderous snake goddess Echidna, but as Christianity spread (helped by Paul’s Epistles to the city) the tale grew up that the Archangel Michael had done the job instead, shaking the ground, raising thunderous voice in protest against heresy and opening a great canyon.

Volcanoes, too, tend to leave a lasting impression. The Hawaiians have suffered repeated – and well-dated – eruptions, each remembered as a battle of a chief with a demigod. They keep precise genealogies of their aristocracy, and each battling ruler did indeed reign at just the time of an explosion – the geological and family records of which date back to 700AD. ..cont'd

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/steve-jones/7887202/Gods-floods-and-global-warming.html






Geomythology is the study of alleged references to geological events in mythology. The term was coined in 1968 by Dorothy Vitaliano, a geologist at Indiana University.

"Geomythology indicates every case in which the origin of myths and legends can be shown to contain references to geological phenomena and aspects, in a broad sense including astronomical ones (comets, eclipses, meteor impacts, etc.). As indicated by Vitaliano (1973) 'primarily, there are two kinds of geologic folklore, that in which some geologic feature or the occurrence of some geologic phenomenon has inspired a folklore explanation, and that which is the garbled explanation of some actual geologic event, usually a natural catastrophe'."<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_and_geology


Weaving Long Ropes
Oral Tradition and Understanding the Great Tide
by Jason T. Younker
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ohq/108.2/younker.html


Native American Oral traditions tell of tsunami's destruction hundreds of years ago
http://www.oregongeology.com/sub/earthquakes/oraltraditions.htm


Glaciers and Climate Change - Perspectives from oral tradition
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:tVmNT3DZ6UAJ:arctic.synergiesprairies.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/article/view/795/821+oral+tradition+and+global+warming&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiElYyCS8xNPcGWxwCqSz0zyUCQhxmgH0W9w2114Cu12I9M5zJRdJosdnOrU63IxjKCch4U-KV9s-QMa_8f5_-BO9f7l6uRSBXxrskUlGFcl4gJ2JOtHRKzSIsym_8THXjFFPiX&sig=AHIEtbS_K82d73vFQpGJGkQiRHMrbrJN4g

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[tanyev]

2. Kick to read later.

[FirstLight]

3. right on

the oral traditions have lots of interesting facts within, it's nice to see all this in one place, thanks!
;)

ps- please post in the ASAH forum?

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

4. This speaks to

modern oral traditions that have become genuine cultural phenomena: urban legends, approaching cataclysms (2012, Y2K, etc.).

[Igel]

5. Pretty much it speaks to things past.

There's also the problem that myths are only taken to speak to things that we suspect happened; we take them to support what we already suspect. "Noah's flood", like Homer's Troy, is purely mythical--until there's something we can hang it on. Then it becomes pseudo-historical, not because we think myth always reflect the past or we believe oral traditions are always true but because we have some sort of independent evidence for a fact that we can relate the myth to.

Noah's flood's been "hooked" to a few incidents. In one or two cases, it's the primary evidence for some hypothesized but unattested event; in other case, it's supporting evidence for something hypothesized.

We know that oral traditions can be horribly mutable and malleable. The problem is there's no a priori way to identify when they've been changed. Whether or not they're reliable depends on whether you assume they're reliable in most cases.

Then again, we never balk at altering and changing any elements of a myth that's needed to reduce it to supporting evidence, to regard elements (or the entirety) as purely metaphorical as our fancy dictates.

How much myths speak to AGW is a question. That we can interpret them to echo changes as the current interglacial started speaks to climate change. But many, if not most, AGW-deniers still accept that there have been ice ages and many say the climate is changing but say man either isn't responsible at all or at least primarily for climage change. (The article, in other words, strikes at a nice overgeneralization in straw-man's garb.)

[Odin2005]

6. I've read that some Australian Aboriginal myths have elements that date back to the Ice Ages

Some Native American myths speak of traveling southward through a narrow area with ice on either side, witch matches the corridor that existed in Canada as the ice sheets melted.

IMO the Garden of Eden story is a folk memory of the desertification of Arabia and the Sahara 6000 years ago, which began the dispersal of the Afro-Asiatic languages (The Semitic languages, Egyptian, Berber, Hausa, and Somali, among others).

[AlienGirl]

8. Some Native American stories talk of the "Great Elk"

A huge creature with thick fur that could travel through any snow; with giant horns like an elk has; but with a *strange, boneless, prehensile fifth limb* protruding from its top half. The "Great Elk" is said to have ripped up vegetation, including trees, with its "arm." The description clearly fits a mammoth: furry and snow-adapted, sporting huge tusks or "horns", and having a trunk! The behavior describes, tearing up and eating vegetation, is typically pachyderm-like.

What fascinates me about this legend is that trunks don't fossilize, and neither does behavior--so the story has to be based on long-ago firsthand accounts of mammoths! This would put the stories at about 10,000 years old!

Tucker

(source: Fossil Legends of the First Americans by Adrienne Mayor)

[Odin2005]

10. Cool, thanks!

[I Have A Dream]

7. Very interesting! Thank you for posting it, Dover!

:hi:

[Delphinus]

9. Thanks! n/t

[semillama]

11. How is this a new science? Archaeologists and ethnologists have been doing this for years.

Here's one example:

http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=11107