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Is an Aboriginal tale of an ancient volcano the oldest story ever told?
sciencemag.org ^ | February 11, 2020 | Colin Barras

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 ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: australia; budjbim; dreamtime; godsgravesglyphs
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.

1 posted on 02/24/2020 4:01:17 PM PST by SunkenCiv
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To: 75thOVI; Abathar; agrace; aimhigh; Alice in Wonderland; AnalogReigns; AndrewC; aragorn; ...
Commercial Photography

2 posted on 02/24/2020 4:02:14 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; 31R1O; ...

3 posted on 02/24/2020 4:02:41 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: SunkenCiv

I would have bet it was my Uncle Bill’s Story about catching Salmon.


4 posted on 02/24/2020 4:05:58 PM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: blueunicorn6

Sorry.....that was the most repeated story.


5 posted on 02/24/2020 4:06:54 PM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: SunkenCiv
Until now, the oldest accepted evidence for human occupation dates back no more than about 13,000 years.

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...

Earliest evidence of humans in Australia

6 posted on 02/24/2020 4:06:58 PM PST by Alas Babylon! (The prisons do not fill themselves. Get moving, Barr!)
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To: blueunicorn6

Funny, that’s the first thought that came to my mind.


7 posted on 02/24/2020 4:15:00 PM PST by NativeSon ( What Would Virginia Do? #WWVD)
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To: SunkenCiv

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.”


8 posted on 02/24/2020 4:18:37 PM PST by chulaivn66 ("...government will follow its natural tendency to despotism.")
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To: SunkenCiv

I guess it just feels like Russian Interference! is the oldest repeated story.


9 posted on 02/24/2020 4:18:50 PM PST by colorado tanker
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To: SunkenCiv

“My wife doesn’t understand me” is the oldest story ever told.


10 posted on 02/24/2020 4:19:02 PM PST by GreenHornet
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To: Alas Babylon!

Yes, the 13,000 year date just relates to this particular region.


11 posted on 02/24/2020 4:19:23 PM PST by naturalman1975 ("America was under attack. Australia was immediately there to help." - John Winston Howard)
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To: NativeSon

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.”


12 posted on 02/24/2020 4:23:01 PM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: SunkenCiv

Bookmark


13 posted on 02/24/2020 4:25:06 PM PST by Southside_Chicago_Republican (The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.)
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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!

14 posted on 02/24/2020 4:26:19 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Alas Babylon!
Thanks Alas Babylon!

15 posted on 02/24/2020 4:26:49 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: SunkenCiv

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.


16 posted on 02/24/2020 5:39:31 PM PST by SoCal Pubbie
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To: Alas Babylon!; SunkenCiv

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...”?


17 posted on 02/24/2020 6:14:37 PM PST by Cronos (Re-elect President Trump 2020!)
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To: SunkenCiv

What is the oldest joke ever told?


18 posted on 02/24/2020 7:47:16 PM PST by Cowboy Bob (Mocking Liberals is not only a right, but the duty of all Americans.)
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To: Cowboy Bob
THe earliest recorded joke is from the Sumerians, AFAIK, it's a version of the chicken crossing the road.

19 posted on 02/25/2020 9:31:34 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: chulaivn66
Thanks chulaivn66.

20 posted on 02/25/2020 9:31:51 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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