It's not just Fitzroy Island. Great Britain was connected to continental Europe back then, too. Unfortunately those civilized Europeans were less adept at remembering than those primitive Aboriginals!
Thanks John. There are a lot of places which were connected, and there may well be stories remembered about others, but Europe hasn't been good at remembering its own history, on the whole.
The Bering Sea was another. It allowed the migration of peoples from Asia to the Americas. As with Australia and Aotearoa, as Nadine points out, indigenous peoples remember, but Europeans ascribe it to myth.
Yes, I'm sure people do have records of that crossing. It's fascinating to think that we became more careless over knowledge when we started to write things down, but it seems as if we did. It's kind of how we don't print out photos any more because we have them digitally, but it's a very fragile medium. I worry about it now and again.
Another great story , Melanie, with an informative perspective.
The ability of First Nations people in Australia to accurately pass down oral history is quite amazing and an incredible testament to their culture and traditions.
The same ancestral knowledge of place exists here in Aotearoa, held thru hapū, passed on through whakakpapa. Like our earliest migration stories, these were for years (and still) written off by colonisers and ethnographers as “myth.” It’s disappointing when scientists from a different knowledge paradigm prove these stories “are accurate” as tho before then it was suspect. Even now, working in this space, I still feel like mātauranga isn’t valid unless and until its proven by western science. That becomes ever more frustrating, when you realise how sophisticated mātauranga is (and how ingenious the methods of retention thru oral storytelling!) It makes me so sad/frustrated to know what was lost and suppressed or supplanted thru colonisation, and the work we still have to do to be taken seriously as “science” Our tūpuna navigated all across the Pacific all the time, for example, these weren’t one way trips. They were migrating for food and security, these too being climatic issues the world is facing globally now. It is utterly mind blowing when we can comprehend what indigenous knowledge systems contained. Ever more reason to support the retention and reclamation of that knowledge !
There are some great examples from New Zealand that I know of in the natural hazard area. My choice of wording might not have been the best, I think that the two knowledge paradigms can give each other context, because they express things in different ways. We absolutely need to find better ways to support the reclamation of that knowledge.
This was fun Melanie. The planet is SO OLD. It is cool that some of us focus on trying to piece together what happened before there were direct and reliable records. We've only been writing with alphabets for at most 5000 years. That coincides with about 1 millionth of the planet history. Oral history and tradition lets us step it back a bit more and this story of the new island is a cool example.
Thanks Mark. It blew my mind when I realised how long life existed on earth without "modern" photosynthesis and also how late multicellular life was in developing.
In my old Substack I wrote a very fun post that equated the evolution of life on the planet to a day. I can't remember the title but it was a blast. My recollection is we don't manage to construct an alphabet until a handful of milliseconds before midnight. I will try to find it if you are interested. All progress is recent :)
Fun metaphor. Most all of history has been a slog. https://markdolan.substack.com/6-ms -- ignore the beginning as the story begins at "What Time Is It?" -- I no longer publish on Substack but explored the recency of progress frequently from different perspectives. I marked your reference, thanks. I now read stuff about once a week.
It is amazing how much time there's been. I'm especially fascinated by how long it took multicellular life to appear. Life spent somewhere between 1.5 and 3 billions years just as single cells before it figured out how to stick cells together and make them cooperate.
Nice work, Melanie. Time scales are critical.
It's not just Fitzroy Island. Great Britain was connected to continental Europe back then, too. Unfortunately those civilized Europeans were less adept at remembering than those primitive Aboriginals!
Thanks John. There are a lot of places which were connected, and there may well be stories remembered about others, but Europe hasn't been good at remembering its own history, on the whole.
The Bering Sea was another. It allowed the migration of peoples from Asia to the Americas. As with Australia and Aotearoa, as Nadine points out, indigenous peoples remember, but Europeans ascribe it to myth.
Yes, I'm sure people do have records of that crossing. It's fascinating to think that we became more careless over knowledge when we started to write things down, but it seems as if we did. It's kind of how we don't print out photos any more because we have them digitally, but it's a very fragile medium. I worry about it now and again.
Another great story , Melanie, with an informative perspective.
The ability of First Nations people in Australia to accurately pass down oral history is quite amazing and an incredible testament to their culture and traditions.
Thanks Don. I found it a fascinating insight into the strength of the culture.
The same ancestral knowledge of place exists here in Aotearoa, held thru hapū, passed on through whakakpapa. Like our earliest migration stories, these were for years (and still) written off by colonisers and ethnographers as “myth.” It’s disappointing when scientists from a different knowledge paradigm prove these stories “are accurate” as tho before then it was suspect. Even now, working in this space, I still feel like mātauranga isn’t valid unless and until its proven by western science. That becomes ever more frustrating, when you realise how sophisticated mātauranga is (and how ingenious the methods of retention thru oral storytelling!) It makes me so sad/frustrated to know what was lost and suppressed or supplanted thru colonisation, and the work we still have to do to be taken seriously as “science” Our tūpuna navigated all across the Pacific all the time, for example, these weren’t one way trips. They were migrating for food and security, these too being climatic issues the world is facing globally now. It is utterly mind blowing when we can comprehend what indigenous knowledge systems contained. Ever more reason to support the retention and reclamation of that knowledge !
There are some great examples from New Zealand that I know of in the natural hazard area. My choice of wording might not have been the best, I think that the two knowledge paradigms can give each other context, because they express things in different ways. We absolutely need to find better ways to support the reclamation of that knowledge.
This was fun Melanie. The planet is SO OLD. It is cool that some of us focus on trying to piece together what happened before there were direct and reliable records. We've only been writing with alphabets for at most 5000 years. That coincides with about 1 millionth of the planet history. Oral history and tradition lets us step it back a bit more and this story of the new island is a cool example.
Thanks Mark. It blew my mind when I realised how long life existed on earth without "modern" photosynthesis and also how late multicellular life was in developing.
In my old Substack I wrote a very fun post that equated the evolution of life on the planet to a day. I can't remember the title but it was a blast. My recollection is we don't manage to construct an alphabet until a handful of milliseconds before midnight. I will try to find it if you are interested. All progress is recent :)
Thanks, Mark! Would be interested in seeing that!
Here's another author, Brian Klaas, using that same metaphor to describe various ages of human history ...
https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/we-are-different-from-all-other-humans
"If the history of humanity were condensed into a single 24-hour day, this is roughly what it would look like:
* The Hunter-Gatherer Age—23 hours and 3 minutes
* The Agrarian Age—55 minutes and 32 seconds
* The Industrial Age—1 minute and 17 seconds
* The Information Age—11 seconds"
Fun metaphor. Most all of history has been a slog. https://markdolan.substack.com/6-ms -- ignore the beginning as the story begins at "What Time Is It?" -- I no longer publish on Substack but explored the recency of progress frequently from different perspectives. I marked your reference, thanks. I now read stuff about once a week.
It is amazing how much time there's been. I'm especially fascinated by how long it took multicellular life to appear. Life spent somewhere between 1.5 and 3 billions years just as single cells before it figured out how to stick cells together and make them cooperate.
We are pretty insignificant in terms of time and it does us good to be reminded of it now and again.
Thank you for this, Melanie. It's very helpful for when I find myself in conversations with people who argue that climate change is not human-caused.
Thanks Heather. I was particularly fascinated to learn that some past climate shifts were connected to living things, just not a single species.