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drhagen | 1 year ago

Using 12000-year-old stories to support the thesis that oral history is more durable than written history is only logical if we have reason to believe that written history also existed then. I believe the consensus is that writing was invented about 5000-6000 years ago.

Still, finding that a non-zero fraction of oral history survives on the order of tens of millennia is very cool.

discuss

order

jajko|1 year ago

We only know about oral story/stories that survived, no idea how many got lost forever since last knowing person died very long time ago. With writing/stone tablets, there is still some hope for the future to find more.

Also, all history since evolution of man before stone tablets and similar was oral, and we have very very little that persisted till now with 0 chance of new discoveries. Much more persisted in written form, and its coming from much shorter timespan. Also, massive room for accidental or intentional distortion and even eventual complete loss of original content in oral history.

I'd say most modern religions fall into this, they literally copy&pasted each other with rather small changes (which were then thrown out of proportions by fanatical followers), typical most famous one is zoroastroanism -> judaism -> christianity -> islam -> bahai and of course each node has tons of sects which mix with the others also on other levels in various ways. And each claims they are the only valid eternal truth and word of God... with at best mild tolerance towards every other offshoot.

Its funny in worst way possible to meet religious fanatics from any of those, rational debate is simply impossible and they only look for quick mental exits from any sort of critical thinking and introspection. I am firmly convinced that reading properly original stuff that that ended up as the book we call Bible would make quite a few people these days leave the religion.

For me its not even comparable.

LordN00b|1 year ago

I think it's we've only found writing from 5000-6000 because the storage medium is not as durable.

tialaramex|1 year ago

Is your thesis that writing was invented much earlier than presently believed but also it was only used to make marks that were easily destroyed and never incrementally improved so it would seem like they had no prior experience ?

card_zero|1 year ago

Rocks?

lelanthran|1 year ago

> Using 12000-year-old stories to support the thesis that oral history is more durable than written history is only logical if we have reason to believe that written history also existed then.

It becomes even less logical when you consider that the oral "history" has probably changed multiple times in that 12000 years.

How on earth do you verify that a 12000 year old story that you hear today is the same story that was initially told 12000 years ago?

drewcoo|1 year ago

Cave paintings from 35-ish millennia ago probably count as writing.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journey-oldest-cave-p...