# Oldest accurate oral traditions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 5, 2018, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512 "2018-10-05T17:33:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2018, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/21 "2018-10-06T20:02:22Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Also I find it very hard to belive a cultural elete few being able to pass on their special knowledge in an unbroken chain for 10,000 years without occasionally being completely wiped out by the ocasional coup, war, famine, or disease. So those _other_ people get wiped out. The ones that didn’t are the ones still around. Funny how that works. And they could have old (but not that old) oral histories. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2018, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/22 "2018-10-06T20:20:31Z")
The challenges with this being even possible are easily demonstrated simply from lessons learned From the _Telephone Game_. In general a message can and is changed into something completely different when it is passed between even a small number of people. An incredible number of wrongful convictions are often the product of eyewitness testimony also demonstrates another limitation of human memory. I am sure that readers can also think of family stories or friends stories that you have heard enough times to even imagine that you were there. Over a long enough timeline the elements which are still manage accurate become the exceptional rare finds. ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/23 "2018-10-07T00:50:40Z")
How does an anthropologist go about determining which oral traditions are “accurate”? Naively, it seems that if a culture has 500 stories about the Old Times, some of them will coincidentally mention something that matches a thing that we think we know from other sources. So if ‘the People came from the Night Sky cutting the testicles off the Dawn and sprinkling the blood on the Water, and where the drops fell they turned to ice and then the People emerged from the ice and wandered five hundred seasons through heat and cold and light and dark to reach This Place’, how do you compare that to 'in the times of the grandfathers, Trickster fought Death and they fell to earth, cutting the ground so the river ran backwards for a change of the Moon and raising a mound that _is that hill over there, yes the one that was the result of a landslide in 36 BC?_ The latter sure seems to describe a specific event, but there’s probably a story to describe a lot of the features in the landscape. What techniques does the anthropologist use? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/24 "2018-10-07T00:54:16Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > In _The Memory Code_, Lynne Kelly specifically mentions the problem of memories mutating generation-to-generation and shows that _specific countermeasures were devised to protect from that._ For example, by restricting the singing of sacred songs to a priestly caste and making the lyrics and melody memorable, the risk of accidental mutation is greatly reduced. Lynne’s book is not a reliable source for this topic. I have it, read it, and it’s psychobabble nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/25 "2018-10-07T07:20:50Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Lynne’s book is not a reliable source for this topic. I have it, read it, and it’s psychobabble nonsense. Any bit in particular? I’ve read it as well, and certainly the core of her argument, which is based on interpretation of the Australian anthropological and archaeological evidence is not overly contentious. The application to other cultural contexts is interesting and doesn’t push the evidence or her arguments into wackyland. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/26 "2018-10-07T09:06:40Z")
Plausibility (i.e. not setting off the audience’s"alarm bells") is coincidentally exactly what a dishonest author would cultivate. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/27 "2018-10-07T09:51:15Z")
> [@DavidwithanR](#): > > Plausibility (i.e. not setting off the audience’s"alarm bells") is coincidentally exactly what a dishonest author would cultivate. Um… what? You’re saying plausibility is a sign of dishonesty? :smack: Pick any scientific paper, published in any reputable journal (and this book is based on a Ph.D. thesis). Are the conclusions in the scientific paper plausible? Oh, dear! That means we should suspect it of dishonesty. I think the problem some people have with this book is that at first glance it looks suspect. _The Memory Code_ is an unfortunate title, recalling the _Da Vinci Code_. Stonehenge and Easter Island… well, there is any amount of eye-rolling nonsense written about them. However, this is actually a serious and interesting book, by a serious researcher. If you can point to any specific problem with this theory, I’d be interested to hear it. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/28 "2018-10-07T10:03:58Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I was searching for (and failing to find) scholarly attention given to Lynne Kelly’s hypothesis on ancient monuments… Incidentally, this is why looking for scholarly citations and discussions about this book will be fruitless. The citations and discussions by scientists will relate to the published _Ph.D. thesis_, not to the book for the general public. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/29 "2018-10-07T11:47:38Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Incidentally, this is why looking for scholarly citations and discussions about this book will be fruitless. The citations and discussions by scientists will relate to the published _Ph.D. thesis_, not to the book for the general public. I was looking for _anything_ from experts in the areas. Discussions on archelogy related message boards and public archives of mailing lists would do. But I came up blank. (The only times the other book I mentioned comes up is when the author shows up hammering it in with all of the subtlety of a bull in a china cup.) ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/30 "2018-10-07T12:04:00Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I was looking for _anything_ from experts in the areas. Discussions on archelogy related message boards and public archives of mailing lists would do. But I came up blank. (The only times the other book I mentioned comes up is when the author shows up hammering it in with all of the subtlety of a bull in a china cup.) Perhaps the easiest approach would be to ask Lynne herself via PM where her theory has been cited and discussed, and what the professional reaction has been. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/31 "2018-10-07T12:29:39Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Perhaps the easiest approach would be to ask Lynne herself via PM where her theory has been cited and discussed, and what the professional reaction has been. Perhaps I’d prefer an unbiased source. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/32 "2018-10-07T13:04:55Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Perhaps I’d prefer an unbiased source. It’s not a case of bias. Either there are citations, discussions at scientific conferences, etc. or there are not. Perhaps you haven’t dealt with academics very much. I presume you are not interested in the academic endorsements found in the book itself, which must have been made even before it was published: > [@](#): > > ‘As we rediscover the extraordinary endurance of the oral memories of people who do not depend on writing, and as we begin to rediscover that many of those memories include knowledge of distant times, Lynne Kelly has explored how vast, non-written memory systems can work. She explores the notion that memories were or are encoded in spaces that can be marked by natural or built elements and applies that exploration to some of the remarkable physical monuments of the last ten thousand years. She takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the past and around the world and into the minds of people who would not need to publish a book like this. They already knew it. An engaging and exciting read.’ >   – **Iain Davidson, Emeritus Professor** , University of New England > > ‘Dr Kelly has developed an intriguing and highly original account of the purpose of Stonehenge, Avebury and other stone monuments. The depth and breadth of her research, and the experimental experience she has brought to her study, command respect and invite serious attention.’ >   – **Dr Rosamund Cleal** , Museum Curator, Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury, and co-author of _Stonehenge in its Landscape_ > > ‘An astonishing journey into the memory of the world.’ >   – **Associate Professor Grace Karskens** , University of NSW, author of _The Colony_ > > ‘In this insightful book, Kelly takes us on a tour of major archaeological sites and gives us fresh eyes to see how non-literate societies used the landscape, monuments, buildings, spatial arrangements, artefacts, and even sounds as “memory spaces” to encode and transmit detailed information.’ >   – **William Lipe, Professor Emeritus** , Washington State University > > ‘Lynne Kelly takes us on a journey to famous archaeological sites around the world, from Stonehenge to Easter Island, to reveal her groundbreaking ideas about how ancient oral cultures encoded knowledge in stone monuments and sacred spaces.’ >   – **Dr Duane W. Hamacher** , Senior DECRA Fellow in Indigenous Astronomy, Monash Indigenous Centre > > ‘Lynne Kelly has struck upon a unique approach by which to evaluate the transmission of complex information in non-literate societies and cultures around the world. _The Memory Code_ is a landmark treatise.’ >   – **Larry Baker, archaeologist and Executive Director** , Salmon Ruins, New Mexico > > ‘Lynne Kelly’s remarkable insight into how ancient peoples retained their vast repositories of knowledge by encoding information in the very world around them is matched by her infectious enthusiasm for the subject and a gift for storytelling.’ >   – **Dr Tim Dean, Science and Technology Editor** at _The Conversation_ > > ‘This is a timeless masterpiece in ancient oralities, it is a must-read for anyone interested in information technologies, ancient or modern.’ >   – **Associate Professor Sarina Chen** , Department of Communication Studies, University of Northern Iowa ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/33 "2018-10-07T13:28:22Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Perhaps you haven’t dealt with academics very much. I have no reply to that that would not get me a warning. How about instead we drop this topic that I’ve already said was tangental to the purpose of this thread? ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/34 "2018-10-07T14:00:22Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I was looking for _anything_ from experts in the areas. Discussions on archelogy related message boards and public archives of mailing lists would do. But I came up blank. (The only times the other book I mentioned comes up is when the author shows up hammering it in with all of the subtlety of a bull in a china cup.) A quick check on Google Scholar picks up a number of reviews and some citations for the book and PhD in robust and perfectly cromulent archaeological and anthropological journals. The book came out in mid-2016 and the way that archaeological publication works would not generally see much new analytical work appearing citing such a recent work. I agree with Darren G that we should not keep banging on about it, but a core tenet of this discussion is how you set testable conditions to demonstrate that stories now are actual oral memories, rather than doing a Nostradamus 2016 and forcibly retrofitting random statements to historic events. Its not enough to say ‘Oral Story 2018 speak of heap big wave many moons ago’ and behold, here’s evidence of a tsunami 5,000 years ago!! Any claim has to show a correlation, but also a plausible mechanism for how that information does get transmitted. Kelly’s model for how that works is based on Australian indigenous practice and other studies and has that explanatory power. Some elements of her argument are actually quite well-rehearsed in discussions of landscape archaeology, especially by British archaeologists like Richard Bradley. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/35 "2018-10-07T14:27:47Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > Any bit in particular? I read it when it first came out, and was underwhelmed; sorry, can’t remember much detail at the moment, but my overall impression was one of “too many assumptions” and “too many unsubstantiated inferences from coincidences” to take seriously. I have a shelf-full of books, typically self-help ones or ones with psychological themes that seem to share these characteristics, and have been discarded scholarly over time. I feel Lynne’s theories are intriguing and plausible, but not proven. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/36 "2018-10-07T14:50:33Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Do you know what exactly does the oral tradition say? I would question how a band of hunter-gatherers would even know that they were on a land bridge, since it was hundreds of miles across. Also, the crossing would not have been a simple directional migration, since the bands would have had no idea they were entering a new continent. They would have been going back and forth locally, just extending their range eastward bit by bit over a period of centuries, rather than moving steadily in one direction. Okay, I didn’t dig up one specifically about crossing the Bering land bridge, but [here](http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com/2007/oct/0267.html) is one that he thinks is a record of a comet impact 13,000 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/37 "2018-10-07T14:56:43Z")
> [@BobBitchin](#): > > I have to agree. You can’t play telephone with 20 people and get accuracy, how are you gonna have accuracy across tens of thousands of years and millions of people? With a lot of redundancy, mnemotechnics and quality control. Seriously, look up how the Aborigines \*do \*do it, it’s quite fascinating and it goes a long way into busting the whole “history means writing things down” assumption that we Western historians tend to make. An assumption which coincidentally (or “coincidentally”) means that, taken literally, Sub-Saharan Africa has no history whatsoever prior to colonization - which is of course ridiculous. Another similar assumption is “civilization means building things out of stone”. Which, again, is comfortably euro-centric and denies the historical and cultural validity of hundreds of other cultures. We \*try \*to grow out of that kind of euro-centric and implicitly xenophobic mindset in historical academia, but it’s a slow going process. I mean, just the notions of “crossed histories”, “global histories”, “shared histories” - which are all fancy ways of saying “guys, guys, guys, how about we look into what the \*other \*guys wrote and compare it with what we wrote to see what, if anything, lines up ?” is a very recent and at the time (the early 90s) revolutionary methodology. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/38 "2018-10-07T16:25:58Z")
A wonderful case in point, **Darren Garrison**. That account isn’t an account of a meteor impact. It’s conceivable that maybe, it was such an account once, but it’s been warped to the point that it’s not about a meteor impact any more; it’s about two brothers fighting. And really, two brothers fighting is a much more common event than a meteor impact, so if that tale has any factual basis in origin at all, it’s far more likely to be based on two brothers fighting. ---
**Author:** ![Folacin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/folacin/32/3195_2.png) [@Folacin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folacin)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/39 "2018-10-07T19:33:13Z")
> [@BobBitchin](#): > > I have to agree. You can’t play telephone with 20 people and get accuracy, how are you gonna have accuracy across tens of thousands of years and millions of people? > [@rat\_avatar](#): > > The challenges with this being even possible are easily demonstrated simply from lessons learned From the _Telephone Game_… I know others have talked about this, but the comparison isn’t to the classical game of telephone. This is telephone where you whisper something to me, and then I repeat it back to you. If I get it wrong, you try again until I get it right. The I tell the next person, and the same thing happens - we talk until he has the message I gave him correct (and possibly the person who told me also vets it (grandparent and parent instructing the child)). Now, over 10,000 (or even 1,000 or 100 years) changes are probably going to creep in (but the same thing happens in written records (think of the classic “celebrate/celibate” joke)). But for things the culture values highly, I’d think you could expect some pretty high accuracy. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2018, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512/40 "2018-10-07T20:30:19Z")
> [@Folacin](#): > > I know others have talked about this, but the comparison isn’t to the classical game of telephone. > > This is telephone where you whisper something to me, and then I repeat it back to you. If I get it wrong, you try again until I get it right. The I tell the next person, and the same thing happens - we talk until he has the message I gave him correct (and possibly the person who told me also vets it (grandparent and parent instructing the child)). > > Now, over 10,000 (or even 1,000 or 100 years) changes are probably going to creep in (but the same thing happens in written records (think of the classic “celebrate/celibate” joke)). But for things the culture values highly, I’d think you could expect some pretty high accuracy. While various methods like meter and rhyming do help mitigate this issue, and the scribes that copied even written work were imperfect until technology recently removed that aspect even the biggest champions in the field don’t seem to have a problem pointing out that this is still an issue. > [@](#): > > David Henige has, for instance, shown clearly that king lists can become telescoped or artificially lengthened, names of usurpers can become omitted deliberately, rulers imposed by a foreign suzerain can become expunged from the record, entire epochs can be compressed into generations or reigns of a single ruler, genealogies can be manipulated or even created to fit political realities of the time [a phenomenon, by the way, not unfamiliar to historians of European royal houses], several contemporaneous contenders for a throne can be shown as successive rulers, and founders of dynasties can be given excessively long reigns. [http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0006/000687/068747eo.pdf](http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0006/000687/068747eo.pdf) While I am not making any claim that it is of no value I think that music could be argued to be similar, particularly some folk forms which were culturally important and often historically restricted due to cultural limitations on dancing and religion. “Spontaneous dancing” is still illegal in Sweden and the allowed forms are a good proxy for above. The Swedish Slängpolska for example, has a time signature that is simply unprintable under the southern developed sheet music and which has a swing which is simply not possible on non-bowed instruments. There was a great variation regionally that developed before the rise of the automobile and fast transportation and the nyckelharpa becoming disfavored over the cheaper industrial accordion changed the songs significantly due to the limitations of the instrument. Despite having very strict and highly practiced beats, notes and flow this changed as not having a bow to stroke in a W pattern reduced the songs to 3/4 time which is harder to keep and thus were expanded to counts that lost the entire flow. Ask even a modern 1st chair top level orchestra player if they can even keep track of the time in a Slängpolska. They will simply not know this type of bow movement as the best teaching example I can find here demonstrates and will get lost. [https://youtu.be/1YzV5aYtl5I?t=903](https://youtu.be/1YzV5aYtl5I?t=903) @~15:15 This is context and timing that was lost over less than a generation of fashion, despite far harder rules than spoken metrical feet. Similar changes happened with the rise of the recording industry which was typically more urban based and while the changes weren’t really good or bad, resulted in significant changes to recordings of “folk music” which would have been unacceptable by the rural individuals who were passing them down. Shifts in language, politics and style can result in changes just as mistakes or miss-understandings can. The extremely poor written accounts by culturally ignorant Europeans that were collected during the initial contacts with the new world is an extreme example here too. The fact that so many attempts to solve this issue in oral traditions like heavily rhythmic speech or mnemonics were developed to reduce this drift demonstrates that it was a common concern and problem. I fully admit that they would have helped reduce drift, but as the authority would still have been the parriarch the drift could still happen. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-accurate-oral-traditions/822512.md?page=3)