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Posted on 02/24/2020 4:01:17 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Long ago, four giant beings arrived in southeast Australia. Three strode out to other parts of the continent, but one crouched in place. His body transformed into a volcano called Budj Bim, and his teeth became the lava the volcano spat out.
Now, scientists say this tale -- told by the Aboriginal Gunditjmara people of the area -- may have some basis in fact. About 37,000 years ago, Budj Bim and another nearby volcano formed through a rapid series of eruptions, new evidence reveals, suggesting the legend may be the oldest story still being told today...
It's not clear how long the Gunditjmara have lived in the southwest corner of what is now the Australian state of Victoria. Until now, the oldest accepted evidence for human occupation dates back no more than about 13,000 years.
But geologist Erin Matchan at the University of Melbourne says that in the 1940s, archaeologists reported finding a stone ax near the region's ancient Tower Hill volcano. The ax shows humans lived there before the eruption because it was found buried beneath the volcanic rocks.
Now, Matchan and her colleagues have dated those rocks and those of Budj Bim, 40 kilometers to the northwest. The dating method -- which relies on the well-established technique of measuring the radioactive decay of potassium-40 into argon-40 over time -- suggests both volcanoes formed about 37,000 years ago. What's more, Matchan says both seem to be of a style that can grow from nothing to peaks tens of meters high in a matter of days to months.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
The article Could Budj Bim in western Victoria be Australia's 20th World Heritage site? [The Age] was linked at 1527 in the GGG 'blog topic.
I would have bet it was my Uncle Bill’s Story about catching Salmon.
Sorry.....that was the most repeated story.
I hope they mean just that corner of Australia, because the oldest known human evidence in Australia is 60-50,000 years ago.
That is earlier than Homo Sapiens Sapiens arriving in Europe. Of course, Homo Neanderthalis was already there...
Funny, that’s the first thought that came to my mind.
Additional reading justifying the presumption of human occupation at the time of the eruptions.
http://www.worngundidj.org.au/?q=tower-hill/about-reserve
“Archaeological surveys of the area have uncovered axe heads and other artefacts in the volcanic ash layers and local Aboriginal people would undoubtedly have witnessed the eruptions. The area was a rich source of food and shelter for different clans of the Gunditjmara Nation including the Koroit-gunditj and Peek Whurrong people.”
I guess it just feels like Russian Interference! is the oldest repeated story.
“My wife doesn’t understand me” is the oldest story ever told.
Yes, the 13,000 year date just relates to this particular region.
Yep.
Uncle Bill told the Salmon fishing story everywhere he went.
And he went to a lot of places.
Most of them served beer.
The more beer he drank, the bigger the Salmon got. Salmon the size of aircraft carriers.
“I swear, a Navy airplane tried to land on his back when I got him up to the surface.”
Bookmark
Abstract: More than 85 percent of Australian terrestrial genera with a body mass exceeding 44 kilograms became extinct in the Late Pleistocene. Although most were marsupials, the list includes the large, flightless mihirung Genyornis newtoni. More than 700 dates on Genyornis eggshells from three different climate regions document the continuous presence of Genyornis from more than 100,000 years ago until their sudden disappearance 50,000 years ago, about the same time that humans arrived in Australia. Simultaneous extinction of Genyornis at all sites during an interval of modest climate change implies that human impact, not climate, was responsible. [1/8/99 Pleistocene Extinction of Genyornis newtoni: Human Impact on Australian Megafauna (Gifford H. Miller, John W. Magee, Beverly J. Johnson, Marilyn L. Fogel, Nigel A. Spooner, Malcolm T. McCulloch, Linda K. Ayliffe, Science, Volume 283, Number 5399 Issue of 8 Jan 1999, pp. 205 - 208 )]In Horus, a journal published by the late David Griffard, vol II no 1 (1985), Barry Fell was interviewed. Alas, DG went down in a private plane after the seventh issue. Among other things:
In the middle of Australia there is a group of three or four meteorite craters called the Henley craters. They're like the Arizona meteorite crater -- not so big, but there are several of them -- and, like in Arizona, the land was scattered with pieces of iron meteorite. I think the [inaudible] dating very slow growing desert plants. They believe that the date is about 5000 years ago -- the formation of the craters. The Aboriginal name for this area is the "Place Where The Sun Walked on the Earth" -- they must have seen it!
Thanks Alas Babylon!
There was an older story about Og, the troglodyte, going down to the lake to get a woman. He wound up with Bertha Butt. She was one of the Butt sisters you know.
Makes you wonder - did they have epic tales of crossing over, handed from generation to generation? Or, most likely, was it just “oh, today we go another 10 miles down the coast...”?
What is the oldest joke ever told?
THe earliest recorded joke is from the Sumerians, AFAIK, it's a version of the chicken crossing the road.
Thanks chulaivn66.
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