Conference paper
Indigenous Australian stories and sea-level change
Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, pp.82-87
Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL): Indigenous Languages: Value to the Community, 18th (Okinawa, Japan, 17-Sep-2014–20-Sep-2014)
Foundation for Endangered Languages
2014
Abstract
Oral traditions, especially contrasted with written history, are typically portrayed as inaccurate. Commenting on native title claims in the US, Simic (2000) made the specific claim: "As a general rule, unwritten legends that refer to events more than 1,000 years in the past contain little, if any, historical truth". So can preliterate Indigenous languages tell us anything factual about the distant past, or does the transmission of historical facts become inevitably corrupted? Changes in sea levels around the Australian coast are now well established. Marine geographers can now point to specific parts of the Australian coast and know with some confidence what the sea levels were at a particular time before the present. This paper reports on a substantial body of Australian Aboriginal stories that appear to represent genuine and unique observations of post-glacial increases in sea level, at time depths that range from about 13,400-7,500 years BP. This paper makes the case that endangered Indigenous languages can be repositories for factual knowledge across time depths far greater than previously imagined, forcing a rethink of the ways in which such traditions have been dismissed.
Details
- Title
- Indigenous Australian stories and sea-level change
- Authors
- N Reid (Author) - University of New EnglandPatrick Nunn (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts and BusinessM Sharpe (Author) - University of New England
- Contributors
- P Heinrich (Editor)N Ostler (Editor)
- Publication details
- Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, pp.82-87
- Conference details
- Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL): Indigenous Languages: Value to the Community, 18th (Okinawa, Japan, 17-Sep-2014–20-Sep-2014)
- Publisher
- Foundation for Endangered Languages
- Date published
- 2014
- Organisation Unit
- Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre; Australian Centre for Pacific Islands Research; School of Social Sciences - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Law and Society; Sustainability Research Cluster
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99448968202621
- Output Type
- Conference paper
Metrics
20 File views/ downloads
20356 Record Views