Oldest Continuous Culture??

[facthunter]

Quoting what fictitious people said?  That's too subliminal for me.  Nev

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

Quoting what fictitious people said? 

 

But it was a factual person who put those words into the fictitious person's mouth.

 

I used the quote to illustrate that we don't know everything.

 

Over the past few years, I have begun to think that much of what we have been told about Mankind, its history and its skills, has been a lot of rubbish.  The rubbish stems from an Industrial-era belief that all that had gone before in the way of accumulated knowledge had been washed away by the progress made during the Industrial Revolution. Those who propagated that idea were mostly self-appointed, armchair experts who showed a predilection for the fundamentalist interpretations of Christian literature.  Anything other than the products of their beliefs was not worth investigation. That is intellectual White Supremacy, which we are showing signs of rejecting as we search for the grains of truth amongst the ancient beliefs of the rest of Mankind.

[facthunter]

The FACT that none of us know everything should be self evident to anyone of honest disposition. The more you learn the more you realise there is still to learn. If you're fortunate, Understanding may come with knowledge. Without it (understanding and perhaps wisdom). Knowledge alone is not of a lot of value.. We are ALL hedonists. (pleasure seekers) the wisest ones are Patient  and prefer a long term pleasure rather than an immediate one which is more likely to be a hollow gratification of little significance in the   BIG Picture. Nev

[Old Koreelah]

On 20/6/2023 at 5:12 PM, facthunter said:

The more you learn the more you realise there is still to learn.

Crikey you blokes, trying to keep up with this deep and meaningful discussion is hurting my brain!

 

Nev’s truism is certainly understood by the learned.
 

A useful analogy to learning is exploring a cave system for the first time; many pass by an innocuous, almost hidden grotto before someone stops to take a proper look, then squeezes through, finding themselves in a whole new gallery, complete with a new set of openings to yet more worlds. And so it is with science: today’s specialist in an obscure corner of one quite new discipline is quite likely to pioneer a whole new field of inquiry, which itself might solve a few age-old problems.

 

[spacesailor]

Unless that grotto is full of noxious gas .

When I went into " Wellington caves " with the S E S ,they always throw a piece of burning paper into odd places !, if it dies away quickly,  it could be poison gas in there .

spacesailor

[Old Koreelah]

On 21/6/2023 at 8:44 PM, spacesailor said:

Unless that grotto is full of noxious gas .

When I went into " Wellington caves " with the S E S ,they always throw a piece of burning paper into odd places !, if it dies away quickly,  it could be poison gas in there .

spacesailor

Quite true Spacey, but there’s no progress without risk.

 

I’ve encountered that poisonous gas; Carbon dioxide produced when vegetation debris is washed into caves and breaks down. For safety, cavers habitually carry three light sources, the third being a disposable cigarette lighter, which is useful in testing air quality. CO2 is heavier than air, so ends up in the sump of a cave system. In still air at the bottom of Bungonia caves I was able to detect that invisible boundary: lit my lighter and gradually lowered it down through the air. The flame wouldn’t burn inside the CO2 and separated from the lighter by about 200 mm before flickering out.

[facthunter]

CO2 is not poisonous. It excludes oxygen though. Carbogen is O2 and CO2 mixed  and is used medically with some breathing issues.  Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

So what were the canaries in the coal mines used for?

[facthunter]

  Mine explosions and flooding cause deaths too.  The first requires Davey Safety lamps and shaft ventilation.   Nev

[spacesailor]

If the ' budgie ' drops off it's perch,   you have been told ,

GET OUT ! 

Quick as you can .

spacesailor

[onetrack]

The canaries were used to warn of the presence of methane, the most dangerous gas in coal mines. An accumulation of methane will ignite very quickly and cause a massive blast, which is a greater concern than simply being suffocated with a lack of oxygen. However, the canaries also warned of low levels of oxygen.

A mine blast caused by a methane buildup was what led to the introduction of canaries in coal mines.

[old man emu]

I reckon you'd get a fair indication of foul air when your pit pony dropped in the shafts of the skip.

[onetrack]

Not so. The canaries were used because they were much more sensitive to oxygen deprivation than humans (and horses). A horse deprived of oxygen wouldn't give the same level of warning as a canary or the old miners would have simply observed horses having breathing problems.

Even with canaries, life as a coal miner was still extremely dangerous - one of my uncles, my mothers brother, was gassed in a Scottish coal mine - and he was the mine manager!

That would have been in the early 1900's, I have never found out the date he died, despite there being very extensive records of coal mine deaths in Scotland and England, even in the 1800's.

[Old Koreelah]

Back to topic, just been listening to Dr.Karl on JJJ. 

This morning they had a fascinating discussion about Indigenous science, with an Astrophysicist who explained the astonishing discovery of yet another Aboriginal myth that has preserved observations made eons ago. 
We already know that traditional stories about volcanic eruptions and sea level changes have survived many thousands of years.

Only recently, with the aid of telescopes, has science verified that Aboriginal myths have been passing on accurate descriptions of the constellation Pleiades as it would have appeared to the naked eye 100,000 years ago.

 

https://careerswithstem.com.au/aboriginal-astronomy-about-the-seven-sisters-worlds-oldest-story/#:~:text=In many Australian Aboriginal cultures,marks the start of winter.

[old man emu]

I recently read this Australian paper https://www.academia.edu/104228641/The_Archaeology_of_Orality_Dating_Tasmanian_Aboriginal_oral_traditions_to_the_Late_Pleistocene

 

which discusses the methods used to correlate two Tasmanian Aboriginal stories with facts proveable with modern scientific knowledge. One story relates to the flooding of the land bridge between Victoria and Tasmania at the end of the last Ice Age, and the other to the presence of a very bright star near the South Celestial Pole which we cannot see now. 

 

The object of the study was not so much as to show that correlation, but to obtain an estimate of how long a story based on actual observation can exist in a society. The results of the modern tools such as hydrographic data and software that can predict the location of stars in the distant past give dates for events that the Aborigines witnesses first hand. 

[facthunter]

SKY was more factual than it is now. Nev

[Old Koreelah]

 

On 7/7/2023 at 10:19 AM, facthunter said:

SKY was more factual than it is now. Nev

Tonight’s doco showed how noxiously anti-fact SKY can get.

“The Dark Emu Story” on ABC outlined the story of his famous book, as seen by many scholars and commentators. His critics were given plenty of airtime and one even sat down to talk with him. They disagree with how he has interpreted the evidence, but it seems the book contains lots of historically verifiable accounts that have sure upset the conservatives.

 

That set off Murdoch’s attack dogs, leading a vicious campaign to discredit his decades of careful research. He’s an old man trying hard to make a positive difference to our country, but these low forms of life nearly broke him.

[nomadpete]

On 07/07/2023 at 8:49 AM, old man emu said:

One story relates to the flooding of the land bridge between Victoria and Tasmania at the end of the last Ice Age, and the other to the presence of a very bright star near the South Celestial Pole which we cannot see now. 

Sounds like a conflation of an old bible yarn.

Looking too hard to join the dots of random fact, to prove a theory.

Coincidence does not equal causation.

 

I do not doubt that Aussie Indigenous used stars to aid navigation.  But where is the evidence to prove these greater postulations?

[Old Koreelah]

30 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

Sounds like a conflation of an old bible yarn.

Looking too hard to join the dots of random fact, to prove a theory.

Coincidence does not equal causation.

So you think these people lived here for thousands of generations, but didn’t notice anything happen?

 

30 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

 

I do not doubt that Aussie Indigenous used stars to aid navigation.  But where is the evidence to prove these greater postulations?

That evidence was there all the time, but arrogant white fellas didn’t look. Presumably, they thought those primitive black fellas could contribute nothing to science.

 

Here are a couple of places to start:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-32701311

 

https://careerswithstem.com.au/aboriginal-astronomy-about-the-seven-sisters-worlds-oldest-story/#gsc.tab=0

 

 

[old man emu]

8 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

Sounds like a conflation of an old bible yarn.

In terms of human knowledge, The Bible is a recent compilation. My opinion of that part of the Bible that we call the Old Testament is a compendium preserving the  historical, practical and spiritual history of the Hebrews. It was mostly written down after about 600 BCE. The historical references such as the Exodus and Exile to Babylon can be confirmed by archeological studies. The practical is contained in the Book of Proverbs. The spiritual occurs throughout, as one would expect from something that is the backbone of a religion.

 

As I argue elsewhere, it seems that sometime after the end of the last Ice Age, the concept of gods in human form supplanted animism for the people of the Middle East. These gods often meted out punishments upon the humans for failing to follow the gods' rules. It made it easy to adapt natural disasters into the gods as rule enforcers.

 

Where did the Flood story come from? There are two or three sources: major flooding of the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers, the Black Sea deluge (about 5600 BC) or tsunamis from the eruption of Santorini (about 1600 BC). The Tigris and Euphrates flood every year due to snow melting in the Anatolian mountains. It is possible that between the end of the Ice Age about 12000 BC and the rise of city civilisations around 5000 BC there could have been a Little Ice Age which resulted in excessive snow accumulation in the mountains which melted when the Little Ice Age ended.

 

How does that align with Aboriginal verbal history of the flooding of the ancient continental coastal plains? The dating of those stories indicates that they are based on the sea level rises following the end of the last Ice Age. These "flood" stories appear only to exist amongst the coastal Aborigines. During the last Ice Age there was no glaciation on the continent, apart from the area of the Southern Alps. Therefore inland floods would not occur at that time.

[old man emu]

6 minutes ago, Old Koreelah said:

That evidence was there all the time, but arrogant white fellas didn’t look.

We are starting to find it now and we are finding out how the Aborigines applied the knowledge gained from their observations. The writer of this book, https://www.thefirstastronomers.com/ is an academic working at the University of Melbourne. He has published a number of peer-reviewed papers dealing with Aboriginal astronomy, analysing it using modern astronomy and geological tools.

 

This paper https://www.academia.edu/104228641/The_Archaeology_of_Orality_Dating_Tasmanian_Aboriginal_oral_traditions_to_the_Late_Pleistocene?email_work_card=view-paper is relevant to our discussion of the Flood story of the Middle East.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I find the idea of a primitive people ( no light pollution ) to have ideas on astronomy to be very obvious. But there are stories about the creation-times which are such obvious nonsense that the question arises....  can we cherry-pick through all this stuff to find a grain that is true?   The answer is clearly yes to this, but I don't think it therefore follows that they had or have any insights worth pursuing.  I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this matter, but I really doubt that they really knew anything.

Regarding the pleiades, they apparently consist of 2 groups of stars which are going in different directions, so their appearance will change with time.

[Bruce Tuncks]

PS  The australian aborigines didn't have a monopoly on nonsense "creation" stories, the bible is also full of this stuff.

( Ever worry if your Jabiru might fly into the firmament? Well it's just a bit of nonsense from bronze-age goat-herders that got into the bible )

[Old Koreelah]

1 hour ago, old man emu said:

In terms of human knowledge, The Bible is a recent compilation. My opinion of that part of the Bible that we call the Old Testament is a compendium preserving the  historical, practical and spiritual history of the Hebrews. It was mostly written down after about 600 BCE. The historical references such as the Exodus and Exile to Babylon can be confirmed by archeological studies…

What archaeological evidence is there for Exodus? I’ve read that there’s nothing about Hebrews or a slaves revolt in Egyptian records.
 

All nations seem to create myths to justify invading other peoples’ land; Australians were raised on the fallacy that this land was empty and not owned by anyone. The Yanks justified repeatedly breaking treaties with the natives and their genocidal wars as “manifest destiny”. The Hebrews claimed god had promised them a land flowing with milk and honey…

 

Until people stop believing religious zealots, there will never be peace; this is just one map being used to justify killing and maiming innocents:

 

 

 

[octave]

11 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Regarding the pleiades, they apparently consist of 2 groups of stars which are going in different directions, so their appearance will change with time.

Not sure about that.

 

Pleiades

 

When I was a teenager I was obsessed with astronomy and had a reasonable telescope. the Pleiades were great to look at.

 

Fun fact. Back in the seventies, our family car was an early Subaru. Does this look familiar?  Yes, Peiiades is called Subaru in Japan and is the symbol far Subaru cars.