oral tradition

mortongr@flash.net
Wed, 21 Jul 1999 21:17:26 +0000

Many peoples have stated that it is improbable for oral tradition to pass a
tradition for millenia upon millenia. Because this impacts how the origin
of the Genesis account was formed, and the question of how long ago those
events in early Genesis could have occurred, any evidence relating to the
efficiency of oral tradition would be welcome. I just ran into an
interesting example of a 62,000 year tradition that had to have been passed
down from generation to generation with no writing. It concerns the burial
practice of the Australian aborigines. Recently the Lake Mungo man was
dated to 62,000 years ago. The Mungo man was found in 1974. His arms were
stretched out on top of him, his fingers interlocked with the palms of his
hands covering his genital area. The importance of this is seen in the
following quote concerning the sex of the skelton.

"Further, many Aboriginal people have commented to AT [Alan
Thorne--grm]that they have no doubt that LM3 was a burial of a man, given
the position of both hand skeletons with their interlocking digits (see
Figure 1). Contemporary traditional burial included the positioning of a
man's body so that the hands are clasping and protecting the penis, which
suggests that such a mortuary practice has a very long prehisotry in
Australia." Alan Thorne, et al, "Australia's Oldest Human Remains: Age of
the Lake Mungo 3 Skeleton," Journal of Human Evolution 36(1999):591-612, p.
610

Now, a mortuary practice among the aborigines must have been passed down
from generation to generation orally. Aborigines never invented writing.
Because of this, it seems to me that oral tradition may be far more
effective than we have suspected heretofore.
glenn

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