How reliable is oral tradition?
Richard F Hall
The book is "Indaba my Children" by Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, Kahn &
Averill, London - and it was featured on the BBC World Service. The
author is an African witchdoctor, who like many others entrusted with
the oral histories, was "told the history of the Tribes, under oath
never to alter, add or to subtract any word" under penalty of "a High
Curse". He broke a tabu by printing the oral histories. The motivation
appears to have been the death of his lover in the Sharpeville
massacre. He swore then by a "Chief's Great Blood Oath" that he would
tell the story of his people from their point of view.
The history of the coming of the Phonecians to the Zambezi River
(dated 7th century B.C. by Western historians) is supported by rock
paintings and relics treasured by African witchdoctors today, as well
as modern historical finds.
The oral history relates that some sailors arrived in a very large
canoe, which was like a terrible serpent, with a row of paddles on
each side. There was a tall pole in the center, with what looked like
a very great skin hanging from a crosspiece. Other details of the
vessel are described. The men looked like pink fish, with hair like
the mane of a lion - some of it black, some the color of autumn
leaves, some the color of cornfields. The men had green and blue and
brown eyes, which had never before been seen. They lowered great metal
vessels into the Zambezi River to scoop water. (The descriptions of
oral history have been used to create fairly detailed drawings, which
closely match the findings of Western archaeology).
One of the criticisms of the Old Testament is the question of the
validity of oral history. It seems incomprehensible that oral history
could remain accurate over hundreds of years or generations. But it
can.
Richard F Hall
http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/chpt19.html
The Old Testament
with revelations of a scientific nature.
Are these revelations of G*D?
Bobby D. Bryant
> One of the criticisms of the Old Testament is the question of the
> validity of oral history. It seems incomprehensible that oral history
> could remain accurate over hundreds of years or generations. But it
> can.
The homeric epics are based on oral tradition... do you believe them too?
--
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
Andrew Criddle
Mutwa's material is a matter of some dispute.
Some have regarded his work as historical fiction in
support of a pro-Zulu "separate development" agenda in
South Africa.
These concerns have been increased by the use of Credo
Mutwa by David Icke in support of his claims of
abductions by alien lizards.
I haven't been able to find a good web cite for these
issues but the following are relevant.
http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/mg/books/9902/990209-south.html
http://www.flavinscorner.com/credo.htm
http://www.caus.org/membercomments/mc121099.shtml
Andrew Criddle
(PS Credo Mutwa is a really great story teller and I would
encourage anyone who enjoys ancient myths and legends to
read "Indaba My Children" and similar works by him. Just
don't be sure that it is genuinely ancient material.)
R. Baldwin
news:pan.2003.09.21....@mail.utexas.edu...
Ditto for the hundreds of different, conflicting Native American oral
traditions.
AC
I think right off the bat, oral traditions can't be taken at face value. As
others have said, do you believe Homer's history?
When considering oral histories, there must be corroborating evidence. I
don't know about the rock paintings (got a link?) but having a few
Mediterranean artifacts can be explained in a far more plausible and mundane
way; namely trade. Why would you automatically assume that the Phoenicians
brought it there.
--
Aaron Clausen
eyelessgame
claimed to have invented the Internet?
Clell Harmon
wrote:
>Well, here's an example of oral tradition accuracy. What politician
>claimed to have invented the Internet?
None. A better question would be what politician was
misquoted as to saying he invented the Internet?
Randall R Schulz
Clell Harmon wrote:
Doesn't that make the point?
Oral tradition is at best as reliable as human memory,
which is to say not very.
(Purple monkey dishwasher!)
Randall Schulz
John Wilkins
Oral tradition *can* be relatively exact. In the book _The Art of
Memory_, Francis Yates describes the ars memoria techniques used in a
society where most folk were not literate and had to store a lot of
information accurately. Of course, like any transmission process, error
creeps in, but don't immediately diss human memory.
--
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly,
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
Randall R Schulz
John Wilkins wrote:
> ...
>
>
> Oral tradition *can* be relatively exact. In the book _The Art of
> Memory_, Francis Yates describes the ars memoria techniques used in
> a society where most folk were not literate and had to store a lot
> of information accurately. Of course, like any transmission
> process, error creeps in, but don't immediately diss human memory.
How long shall I wait?
Note, too, that in digital information systems, we can know with
arbitrary reliability whether stored or transmitted information has
been corrupted. No human technique is going to compare favorably to
that.
Finally, though I have an excellent memory (for a human not privy to
the occult techniques of "ars memoria") and rely heavily on it in my
day-to-day life, I'm not fool enough to trust it to critical
information that would be necessary for my own survival. At least not
beyond a week or so or for certain kinds of things I don't want to
learn how to memorize, such as arbitrary strings of numbers and words
(telephone numbers, credit card numbers, addresses, etc.) I'll be
damned if I'll learn to attach huge amounts of nonsense to seven or
ten digits just so I can keep a phone number in my head and not on
paper.
Randall Schulz
Matt Silberstein
<rrsc...@cris.com>:
http://www.academicpress.com/companions/012643140X/msie/Contents/Chapt80_07.htm
"The largest Holocene eruption in North America, that which
decapitated Mount Mazama about 7500 years ago to form the caldera
holding Crater Lake in the Cascade Range of southern Oregon,
deposited ash over a half million square miles and, without a
doubt, had an impact on the lives of countless prehistoric Native
Americans. Although researchers have not yet been able to
correlate the physical effects of Mazama's eruption on the flora
and fauna of eastern Oregon, native survivors of the volcanic
holocaust apparently were so deeply impressed by it that they
created an exceptionally long-lived oral tradition about the
event. However improbable it seems, oral accounts of the eruption
must have been transmitted through approximately 250
generations!"
Matt Silberstein
<rrsc...@cris.com>:
>
>
>John Wilkins wrote:
>
>> ...
>>
>>
>> Oral tradition *can* be relatively exact. In the book _The Art of
>> Memory_, Francis Yates describes the ars memoria techniques used in
>> a society where most folk were not literate and had to store a lot
>> of information accurately. Of course, like any transmission
>> process, error creeps in, but don't immediately diss human memory.
>
>
>How long shall I wait?
>
>
>Note, too, that in digital information systems, we can know with
>arbitrary reliability whether stored or transmitted information has
>been corrupted. No human technique is going to compare favorably to
>that.
I love that term "arbitrary reliability", it sounds so
scientific. Yes, we can store information to an arbitrary level
of reliability, that still means it will have errors (and errors
you can't detect).
>
>Finally, though I have an excellent memory (for a human not privy to
>the occult techniques of "ars memoria") and rely heavily on it in my
>day-to-day life, I'm not fool enough to trust it to critical
>information that would be necessary for my own survival. At least not
>beyond a week or so or for certain kinds of things I don't want to
>learn how to memorize, such as arbitrary strings of numbers and words
>(telephone numbers, credit card numbers, addresses, etc.) I'll be
>damned if I'll learn to attach huge amounts of nonsense to seven or
>ten digits just so I can keep a phone number in my head and not on
>paper.
So you have some personal hostility toward developing your
memory, at least you realize that memorizing things without a
meaningful context is harder than memorizing things with a
context.
John Wilkins
> John Wilkins wrote:
>
> > ...
> >
> >
> > Oral tradition *can* be relatively exact. In the book _The Art of
> > Memory_, Francis Yates describes the ars memoria techniques used in
> > a society where most folk were not literate and had to store a lot
> > of information accurately. Of course, like any transmission
> > process, error creeps in, but don't immediately diss human memory.
>
>
> How long shall I wait?
Coldplay?
>
>
> Note, too, that in digital information systems, we can know with
> arbitrary reliability whether stored or transmitted information has
> been corrupted. No human technique is going to compare favorably to
> that.
Of course. But like computer calculation, human storage is basically the
same process, but slower and with a higher error rate. Checksums and the
like were developed for this purpose with *human* storage.
>
>
> Finally, though I have an excellent memory (for a human not privy to
> the occult techniques of "ars memoria") and rely heavily on it in my
> day-to-day life, I'm not fool enough to trust it to critical
> information that would be necessary for my own survival. At least not
> beyond a week or so or for certain kinds of things I don't want to
> learn how to memorize, such as arbitrary strings of numbers and words
> (telephone numbers, credit card numbers, addresses, etc.) I'll be
> damned if I'll learn to attach huge amounts of nonsense to seven or
> ten digits just so I can keep a phone number in my head and not on
> paper.
I said *non*-literate folk. Memory goes down in reliability in direct
correlation to literacy. But people in societies that did *not* rely on
writing were capable of prodigious memory feats, like memorising the
entire works of Aristotle.
observa
"Richard F Hall" <real...@seanet.com> wrote in message
news:3f6d6ce6...@news.seanet.com...
I have my doubts about the ability of oral traditions to maintain a high
level of accuracy (when "reporting" events). For example the Maori have a
wide range of mythological stories about how they got here. There is some
commonality (and that, surprising as at may seem, is the most IN-accurate).
Otherwise there is wide diversity and the nature of that diversity is easliy
explained. It almost always is intended to place the descendents of the
speaker in the most favourable light.
This is not to say that some facts are retained. But I strongly suspect
they are poorly integrated. For example Homer mixing early phalanx fighting
with individual heroic encounters. Their may have been a time when that
occurred, but certainly not during the volkerwundering that is the
background to the Trojan War. There it was all heroic encounters. Other
"facts" may be remembered. For example the Roman's remembered a time when
they came from the east (Troy - The Aeneid), but such a trip was more likely
carried out by the early Estruscans and the Romans linked to that as giving
them a more clearly supported ancestral link to the gods.
Almost certainly similar connections (Hamurabi's Code and the Gilgamesh Epic
spring to mind) were made by the pre-literate Hebrews. When the Hebrews
adopted an alphabet from the Phoenecians they were almost certainly
convinced that such stories were accurate. And wrote them down as such.
Thereby "setting them in stone" for literalists to believe, and fundies (of
all stripes) to fight over.
Alan Jeffery
>
> Richard F Hall
> http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/chpt19.html
> The Old Testament
> with revelations of a scientific nature.
> Are these revelations of G*D?
>
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.516 / Virus Database: 313 - Release Date: 1/09/2003
Randall R Schulz
Matt Silberstein wrote:
> ...
>
>
>> Note, too, that in digital information systems, we can know with
>> arbitrary reliability whether stored or transmitted information
>> has been corrupted. No human technique is going to compare
>> favorably to that.
>
>
> I love that term "arbitrary reliability", it sounds so scientific.
> Yes, we can store information to an arbitrary level of reliability,
> that still means it will have errors (and errors you can't detect).
Yes. I knew that would draw a remark. Just to be clear, if you tell me
the acceptable probability of undetected error, then I can give you a
redundancy code that ensures that probability. In practice, this is
extrememly effective and human memory cannot possibly compare. Also,
in practice when an error occurs but is not detected by the coding
mechanism, it's usually utterly obvious to someone viewing that
information, so the likelyhood of a truly undetected corruptions is by
all practical measures nil.
>> Finally, though I have an excellent memory (for a human not privy
>> to the occult techniques of "ars memoria") and rely heavily on it
>> in my day-to-day life, I'm not fool enough to trust it to
>> critical information that would be necessary for my own survival.
>> At least not beyond a week or so or for certain kinds of things I
>> don't want to learn how to memorize, such as arbitrary strings of
>> numbers and words (telephone numbers, credit card numbers,
>> addresses, etc.) I'll be damned if I'll learn to attach huge
>> amounts of nonsense to seven or ten digits just so I can keep a
>> phone number in my head and not on paper.
>
>
> So you have some personal hostility toward developing your memory,
> at least you realize that memorizing things without a meaningful
> context is harder than memorizing things with a context.
Give me a break. "Hostility?" Of course not. But I'm not favorably
disposed to attaching voluminous stories to simple strings just so I
don't need to write them down. To me, the tradeoff is obvious and
highly slanted. My memory is too precious to clutter with all the
crap. That's my personal value judgement, nothing more. Call it
hostility if you will, but there is no such emotion active in me
around this matter.
Randall Schulz
Randall R Schulz
Matt Silberstein wrote:
> ...
>
>>Oral tradition is at best as reliable as human memory,
>>which is to say not very.
>
>
> http://www.academicpress.com/companions/012643140X/msie/Contents/Chapt80_07.htm
>
> "..."
Well, unless you want to live like prehistorics, I think we need a
means more precise, reliable, quantitative and voluminous to record
the things on which the survival of 6 billion plus humans relies.
Whether you like it or not, humans are now highly dependent on
technologies that are much too complex for human memory.
Would you entrust the world's literary canon to human memory? What a
loss that would be. Carefully crafted words, lost to "the gist of it."
Randall Schulz
observa
"John Wilkins" <wil...@wehi.edu.au> wrote in message
news:1g1oviw.1beysg2sx1nztN%wil...@wehi.edu.au...
Umm, non literate? Don't you mean the entire works of Homer?
Alan Jeffery
> --
> John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
> For long you live and high you fly,
> and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
> and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
>
observa
> Randall R Schulz <rrsc...@cris.com> wrote:
>
> > Clell Harmon wrote:
> >
> > > On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 22:09:59 +0000 (UTC), aa...@oro.net
> > > (eyelessgame) wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >> Well, here's an example of oral tradition accuracy. What
> > >> politician claimed to have invented the Internet?
> > >
> > >
> > > None. A better question would be what politician was misquoted as
> > > to saying he invented the Internet?
> >
> >
> > Doesn't that make the point?
> >
> > Oral tradition is at best as reliable as human memory,
> > which is to say not very.
> >
> > (Purple monkey dishwasher!)
> >
> >
> > Randall Schulz
>
> Oral tradition *can* be relatively exact. In the book _The Art of
> Memory_, Francis Yates describes the ars memoria techniques used in a
> society where most folk were not literate and had to store a lot of
> information accurately. Of course, like any transmission process, error
> creeps in, but don't immediately diss human memory.
I agree with you. But I think there is a tendency for the original context
to be lost and lots of baggage to be added. For example, was Gilgamesh the
real source of his epic. Perhaps there was a Gilgamesh, but a whole lot of
baggage was added to his story. Just as there was a Troy, but there may not
have been a Trojan War - as supported by a complete failure (so far) to find
Agammenon's palace? In the case of NZ, there may have been a Kupe (an early
explorer) but he almost certainly did not do the things various myths
ascribe to him. Or maybe one of two of them - but which ones?
Alan Jeffery
> --
> John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
> For long you live and high you fly,
> and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
> and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
>
John Wilkins
> "John Wilkins" <wil...@wehi.edu.au> wrote in message
> news:1g1oviw.1beysg2sx1nztN%wil...@wehi.edu.au...
...
> > I said *non*-literate folk. Memory goes down in reliability in direct
> > correlation to literacy. But people in societies that did *not* rely on
> > writing were capable of prodigious memory feats, like memorising the
> > entire works of Aristotle.
>
> Umm, non literate? Don't you mean the entire works of Homer?
The bard tradition was, as I understand it, non-literate. The epics were
committed to memory and followed a formula or several that made it
easier to remember what happened next (is poetry a mnemonic aid?). Such
schemas make it easier to remember stuff - you merely need to memorise
the pattern, and then the changing blanks.
Homer was not written down until a while later, as I recall it, unless
it was written by someone else of the same name...
John Wilkins
> observa <obs...@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>
> > "John Wilkins" <wil...@wehi.edu.au> wrote in message
> > news:1g1oviw.1beysg2sx1nztN%wil...@wehi.edu.au...
> ...
> > > I said *non*-literate folk. Memory goes down in reliability in direct
> > > correlation to literacy. But people in societies that did *not* rely on
> > > writing were capable of prodigious memory feats, like memorising the
> > > entire works of Aristotle.
> >
> > Umm, non literate? Don't you mean the entire works of Homer?
>
> The bard tradition was, as I understand it, non-literate. The epics were
> committed to memory and followed a formula or several that made it
> easier to remember what happened next (is poetry a mnemonic aid?). Such
> schemas make it easier to remember stuff - you merely need to memorise
> the pattern, and then the changing blanks.
>
> Homer was not written down until a while later, as I recall it, unless
> it was written by someone else of the same name...
Following up this post by someone of the same name as me, note this
site:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer
BernardZ
obs...@xtra.co.nz says...
Chariot battles do not seem right either.
> For example the Roman's remembered a time when
> they came from the east (Troy - The Aeneid), but such a trip was more likely
> carried out by the early Estruscans and the Romans linked to that as giving
> them a more clearly supported ancestral link to the gods.
The Romans were literate and yet once a family became eminent they
appear to have made up some of their family history. A bit like
politicians today often do.
>
> Almost certainly similar connections (Hamurabi's Code and the Gilgamesh Epic
> spring to mind) were made by the pre-literate Hebrews. When the Hebrews
> adopted an alphabet from the Phoenecians they were almost certainly
> convinced that such stories were accurate. And wrote them down as such.
> Thereby "setting them in stone" for literalists to believe, and fundies (of
> all stripes) to fight over.
None of these come from a pre-literate time. The records we have of
Hamurabi's Code is in writing. Probably the Gilgamesh Epic was
originally written too.
Also the ancient Hebrews were never pre-literate.
Check these URL's out
http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/5_intro.html
http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/6_home.html
As you can see the history of ancient Hebrew writing goes back to the
period of the Summerian.
Matt Silberstein
<rrsc...@cris.com>:
>
>
>Matt Silberstein wrote:
>
>> ...
>>
>>>Oral tradition is at best as reliable as human memory,
>>>which is to say not very.
>>
>>
>> http://www.academicpress.com/companions/012643140X/msie/Contents/Chapt80_07.htm
>>
>> "..."
I gather that was a snip with an odd mark.
>
>Well, unless you want to live like prehistorics, I think we need a
>means more precise, reliable, quantitative and voluminous to record
>the things on which the survival of 6 billion plus humans relies.
>Whether you like it or not, humans are now highly dependent on
>technologies that are much too complex for human memory.
>
>Would you entrust the world's literary canon to human memory? What a
>loss that would be. Carefully crafted words, lost to "the gist of it."
How odd. We were discussing the reliability of human memory. You
have suddenly decided that we are discussing some entirely
different topic. Tell you what, if you find someone who advocates
we give up writing and other forms of external memory in favor of
internal we can both gang up on them. Meanwhile I am glad I have
the memory in my newsreader so I can see how you changed the
subject.
Randall R Schulz
Matt Silberstein wrote:
> In talk.origins I read this message from Randall R Schulz
> <rrsc...@cris.com>:
>
>
>>
>> Matt Silberstein wrote:
>>
>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>>
>>>> Oral tradition is at best as reliable as human memory, which
>>>> is to say not very.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.academicpress.com/companions/012643140X/msie/Contents/Chapt80_07.htm
>>>
>>>
>>> "..."
>
>
> I gather that was a snip with an odd mark.
I elided the quoted material you included from the page whose link is
still there (the Academic Press link).
>> Well, unless you want to live like prehistorics, I think we need
>> a means more precise, reliable, quantitative and voluminous to
>> record the things on which the survival of 6 billion plus humans
>> relies. Whether you like it or not, humans are now highly
>> dependent on technologies that are much too complex for human
>> memory.
>>
>> Would you entrust the world's literary canon to human memory?
>> What a loss that would be. Carefully crafted words, lost to "the
>> gist of it."
>
>
> How odd. We were discussing the reliability of human memory. You
> have suddenly decided that we are discussing some entirely
> different topic. Tell you what, if you find someone who advocates
> we give up writing and other forms of external memory in favor of
> internal we can both gang up on them. Meanwhile I am glad I have
> the memory in my newsreader so I can see how you changed the
> subject.
As often happens, the topic shifted when in response to my claim that
human memory is not very reliable someone told me I should not
"immediately" disrespect human memory and I subsequently claimed that
machanized memory was superior and was then challenged in that assertion.
I don't call that changing the subject. That's how conversations meander.
What is it with arguing for the sake of arguing on Usenet?
Randall Schulz
Stanley Friesen
They certainly seem to have some historical memories mixed in as leaven
among the myth. Even the Invasion of the Sea Peoples in Egypt is
mentioned in The Odyssey, as a minor incident.
The peace of God be with you.
Stanley Friesen
Lester Zick
Wilkins) wrote:
>observa <obs...@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>
>> "John Wilkins" <wil...@wehi.edu.au> wrote in message
>> news:1g1oviw.1beysg2sx1nztN%wil...@wehi.edu.au...
>...
>> > I said *non*-literate folk. Memory goes down in reliability in direct
>> > correlation to literacy. But people in societies that did *not* rely on
>> > writing were capable of prodigious memory feats, like memorising the
>> > entire works of Aristotle.
>>
>> Umm, non literate? Don't you mean the entire works of Homer?
>
>The bard tradition was, as I understand it, non-literate. The epics were
>committed to memory and followed a formula or several that made it
>easier to remember what happened next (is poetry a mnemonic aid?).
All the elements of style are mnemonic aids or at least aids to
comprehension. Including melody, rhythm, form, meter, repetition, even
appearance. I think the more interesting question is whether and how
they are used to that effect, and whether they were originally or just
happenstantially used to that effect. Obviously they are rarely well
used to that effect except probably in music.
> Such
>schemas make it easier to remember stuff - you merely need to memorise
>the pattern, and then the changing blanks.
>
>Homer was not written down until a while later, as I recall it, unless
>it was written by someone else of the same name...
>--
>John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
>For long you live and high you fly,
>and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
>and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
>
Regards - Lester
Bobby D. Bryant
Yes, there are a number of things in the homeric corpus that surprised
20th Century scholars. But no one concludes from them that gods and
demigods fought each other with spears on the plains around Ilium.
Lester Zick
<bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
Perhaps there is a confusion here between interpretive explanations
and circumstantial history. I think events can be remembered with
great fidelity in terms of sequencing without necessarily being able
to understand what the events were in originative terms, such as where
they came from and what the events signified.
Even today we are plagued by issues concerning analytical significance
in current events. Many ascribe completely unwarranted significance to
otherwise mundane circumstantial sequences of events. It's one of the
banes of history and historical interpretation that we're unable to
state the interpretive significance of any event conclusively.
When it comes to assigning importance to historical sequences we are
dealing with inherently problematic considerations. And we - like the
ancients - can only deal with those considerations in terms of what we
understand may be and cannot be true.
Circumstantial sequences on the other hand can certainly be remembered
very accurately although whether they are in specific cases is another
matter. There are obviously allegorical tales cast in historical terms
using figures from history whose purpose is moral rather than strict
history. I imagine most cultures do this. Certainly the Greeks and
even Shakespeare in more modern times did it. And such allegories can
be interwoven with strict oral history much as the Jews undoubtedly
did in writing down their own biblical history.
Obviously this complicates the interpretation of oral history
enormously and makes it one of disentangling allegorical and
originative components.
Regards - Lester
Steve Watson
> "Richard F Hall" <real...@seanet.com> wrote in message
> news:3f6d6ce6...@news.seanet.com...
> > How reliable is oral history?
[SNIP]
> I have my doubts about the ability of oral traditions to maintain a high
> level of accuracy (when "reporting" events). For example the Maori have a
> wide range of mythological stories about how they got here. There is some
> commonality (and that, surprising as at may seem, is the most IN-accurate).
> Otherwise there is wide diversity and the nature of that diversity is easliy
> explained. It almost always is intended to place the descendents of the
> speaker in the most favourable light. ^^^^^^^^^^^
Yep, when people tell their family history, they always play up how
wonderful their grand-children, great-grand-children and
great-great-grand-children are going to be ;-).
-- Steve
observa
"Steve Watson" <siames...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:67e8470e.03092...@posting.google.com...
remember.
Alan Jeffery
> -- Steve
observa
"BernardZ" <Berna...@OPTUShotmail.com.remove.OPTUS> wrote in message
news:MPG.19d981b7aee24ce0989788@news...
They did not fight from chariots, as, unlike the Egyptians and Hittites,
they did not use bows. They dismounted to fight. That Homer got that right
has been corroborated.
>
> > For example the Roman's remembered a time when
> > they came from the east (Troy - The Aeneid), but such a trip was more
likely
> > carried out by the early Estruscans and the Romans linked to that as
giving
> > them a more clearly supported ancestral link to the gods.
>
> The Romans were literate and yet once a family became eminent they
> appear to have made up some of their family history. A bit like
> politicians today often do.
>
>
> >
> > Almost certainly similar connections (Hamurabi's Code and the Gilgamesh
Epic
> > spring to mind) were made by the pre-literate Hebrews. When the Hebrews
> > adopted an alphabet from the Phoenecians they were almost certainly
> > convinced that such stories were accurate. And wrote them down as such.
> > Thereby "setting them in stone" for literalists to believe, and fundies
(of
> > all stripes) to fight over.
>
> None of these come from a pre-literate time. The records we have of
> Hamurabi's Code is in writing. Probably the Gilgamesh Epic was
> originally written too.
>
> Also the ancient Hebrews were never pre-literate.
Of course the ancient Hebrews were pre-literate at some point. As were the
Sumerians, etc. Everyone's ancestors (there I got it right this time) were,
at some time. And, even in societies that were "literate", until the
introduction of printing (China and Europe) the majority of the population
were illiterate. Most myths are developed by, and added to, within the
illiterate classes. The literate classes adopt them, and elaborate them -
ah la the Roman Catholics and Christmas, etc.
Alan Jeffery
Larry C. Lyons
> Randall R Schulz <rrsc...@cris.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Clell Harmon wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 22:09:59 +0000 (UTC), aa...@oro.net
>>>(eyelessgame) wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Well, here's an example of oral tradition accuracy. What
>>>>politician claimed to have invented the Internet?
>>>
>>>
>>>None. A better question would be what politician was misquoted as
>>>to saying he invented the Internet?
>>
>>
>>Doesn't that make the point?
>>
>>Oral tradition is at best as reliable as human memory,
>>which is to say not very.
>>
>>(Purple monkey dishwasher!)
>>
>>
>>Randall Schulz
>
>
> Oral tradition *can* be relatively exact. In the book _The Art of
> Memory_, Francis Yates describes the ars memoria techniques used in a
> society where most folk were not literate and had to store a lot of
> information accurately. Of course, like any transmission process, error
> creeps in, but don't immediately diss human memory.
In the 1940's and 50's Canadian anthropologists were looking at the oral
traditions of the innuit. One set of stories involved pale people in
very large winged kayaks. The researchers thought that the natives may
have been talking about HBC fur traders or possibly the Franklin
expeditions of the previous century. But later research, and
archeological evidence showed that the innuit were actually talking
about traders from Greenland from around 1000 to 1300 AD. So oral
traditions may be somewhat reliable on the very large scale picture, but
not on the necessary details.
larry
zosdad
> How reliable is oral history?
I heard it was pretty reliable.
Ann Broomhead
> How reliable is oral history?
Sometimes, it's dreadful to non-existant.
In _The Silbury Treasure_, by Michael Danes, he mentions that the only
extant oral claim about Silbury Hill (near Stonehenge, et al.) was
that it was erected ~in the time it takes to seethe a bowl of milk~.
Well, that's not true.
Then, it was either Sir James Frazer or Lord Raglan who pointed out
that (It was long ago, and *my* orally competent sense of history is
minimal.) none of the people living in the vicinity of [this old,
important battle] had any memory of it, or story about it, and their
only local legend was about something else entirely.
Soooo.... don't trust the memory of the English. Or, considering
Tonypandy, the Welsh.
Pfusand
That which does not destroy us
has made its last mistake.
-- Unspoken motto of the pantope crew
John Wilkins
> real...@seanet.com (Richard F Hall) wrote:
>
> > How reliable is oral history?
>
> I heard it was pretty reliable.
Which in my tradition settles the matter, and has done since... oh, I
don't know when...
Anyone cited the feuding families in Huck Finn yet?
Floyd Davidson
>>
>> Oral tradition *can* be relatively exact. In the book _The Art of
>> Memory_, Francis Yates describes the ars memoria techniques used in a
>> society where most folk were not literate and had to store a lot of
>> information accurately. Of course, like any transmission process, error
>> creeps in, but don't immediately diss human memory.
>
>In the 1940's and 50's Canadian anthropologists were looking at the oral
>traditions of the innuit. One set of stories involved pale people in
>very large winged kayaks. The researchers thought that the natives may
>have been talking about HBC fur traders or possibly the Franklin
>expeditions of the previous century. But later research, and
>archeological evidence showed that the innuit were actually talking
>about traders from Greenland from around 1000 to 1300 AD. So oral
>traditions may be somewhat reliable on the very large scale picture, but
>not on the necessary details.
>
>larry
Your example brings to mind another one. Anthropologist Ernest Burch
has written a significant essay regarding the significance of oral
history,
http://www.alaskool.org/projects/traditionalife/oralhistory/skeptic_to_believer.htm
It is well worth reading.
"Regrettably, there are rather few people who have any
knowledge of the history of Native societies before
they ceased to exist due to European influence. I am
one of the lucky ones. However, I did not achieve that
status very easily or in a manner of which I am very
proud. Since the way in which I did so is indicative of
both the richness of Native history, on the one hand,
and of the inept manner in which it has been studied,
on the other, I hope it will be instructive to recount
for others some of my experiences."
He goes into detail, and provides a lesson worth learning.
Personally, I've come to understand the significance of an oral
tradition in several ways. One is that it is indeed accurate,
but also that it has integrity of a form which cannot be found
in a written history. Changes in culture and changes in
language are major problems for written histories, as for
example today we see dozens up dozens of Christian churches, all
interpreting the Bible differently because they each attach
different social significance to what it says, and interpret
words in ways not intended when the words were written (and
indeed, the words written may not have been an accurate account
of what was meant at the time anyway).
An oral history tells what happened. It doesn't get hung up on
word meanings, because from generation to generation, the
*story* is what is related, not the words that tell it. In
fact, entirely different words might be used in different
tellings of the same story by the same storyteller, even to the
same audience, at different times of the same day! Each telling
is adjusted to make the *story* accurate in the minds of those
who hear it.
--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) fl...@barrow.com
Stanley Friesen
Well, not anybody rational anyhow. Indeed, even the story of the
wooden horse seems to be a misunderstanding - which points out the real
weakness of oral history: the stories tend to be recast into forms
familiar to the speakers (a forgotten type of siege engine called a
"horse" gets transformed into a *horse*).
The peace of God be with you.
Stanley Friesen
BernardZ
obs...@xtra.co.nz says...
This is not an appropriate forum to discuss this issue. However if it is
true that it implies that oral tradition can be very accurate.
>
> >
> > > For example the Roman's remembered a time when
> > > they came from the east (Troy - The Aeneid), but such a trip was more
> likely
> > > carried out by the early Estruscans and the Romans linked to that as
> giving
> > > them a more clearly supported ancestral link to the gods.
> >
> > The Romans were literate and yet once a family became eminent they
> > appear to have made up some of their family history. A bit like
> > politicians today often do.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Almost certainly similar connections (Hamurabi's Code and the Gilgamesh
> Epic
> > > spring to mind) were made by the pre-literate Hebrews. When the Hebrews
> > > adopted an alphabet from the Phoenecians they were almost certainly
> > > convinced that such stories were accurate. And wrote them down as such.
> > > Thereby "setting them in stone" for literalists to believe, and fundies
> (of
> > > all stripes) to fight over.
> >
> > None of these come from a pre-literate time. The records we have of
> > Hamurabi's Code is in writing. Probably the Gilgamesh Epic was
> > originally written too.
> >
> > Also the ancient Hebrews were never pre-literate.
>
> Of course the ancient Hebrews were pre-literate at some point.
Before they were literate, did the Hebrews exist eg for example the US
culture has always been literate. The people that came to the US were
literate. There was never a time in US culture when their was not
writing.
> As were the
> Sumerians, etc.
There was a time when you could be a Summerian and no one could write in
Sumeria.
> Everyone's ancestors (there I got it right this time) were,
> at some time.
Agreed.
> And, even in societies that were "literate", until the
> introduction of printing (China and Europe) the majority of the population
> were illiterate. Most myths are developed by, and added to, within the
> illiterate classes. The literate classes adopt them, and elaborate them -
> ah la the Roman Catholics and Christmas, etc.
It can but let me note that newspapers today are written by literate
people, does not seems to stop a lot of fables being produced.
j
> ... Don't you mean the entire works of Homer?
You mean like Stephen Powelson ?
http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/old-wildcats/spring94/APRIL13,1994/10_1_m.html
Larry C. Lyons
> Personally, I've come to understand the significance of an oral
> tradition in several ways. One is that it is indeed accurate,
> but also that it has integrity of a form which cannot be found
> in a written history. Changes in culture and changes in
> language are major problems for written histories, as for
> example today we see dozens up dozens of Christian churches, all
> interpreting the Bible differently because they each attach
> different social significance to what it says, and interpret
> words in ways not intended when the words were written (and
> indeed, the words written may not have been an accurate account
> of what was meant at the time anyway).
>
> An oral history tells what happened. It doesn't get hung up on
> word meanings, because from generation to generation, the
> *story* is what is related, not the words that tell it. In
> fact, entirely different words might be used in different
> tellings of the same story by the same storyteller, even to the
> same audience, at different times of the same day! Each telling
> is adjusted to make the *story* accurate in the minds of those
> who hear it.
>
Given what I remember from the eastern Arctic, that makes a lot of sense.
larry
Stanley Friesen
>
>An oral history tells what happened. It doesn't get hung up on
>word meanings, because from generation to generation, the
>*story* is what is related, not the words that tell it. In
>fact, entirely different words might be used in different
>tellings of the same story by the same storyteller, even to the
>same audience, at different times of the same day! Each telling
>is adjusted to make the *story* accurate in the minds of those
>who hear it.
I would maintain that this is in fact the very reason it loses accuracy
- the story is retold in a form comprehensible to the audience, and thus
changes gradually as the culture changes. Since, after the first
generation, there is no way of cross-checking the re-interpretation
against memories of the original events, the result is unavoidable drift
in content.
Ron Okimoto
The Bible is a case in point. There are multiple references in
Genesis to things that were probably common knowledge, but they have
obviously been forgotten. For example we no longer know the names of
the other gods and their half human offspring that were the heros of
old. These things were well enough known that they are only given
passing reference in the Bible. Even written tradition needs to have
the historical context to be preserved to understand it.
Ron Okimoto
Larry C. Lyons
>
> I would maintain that this is in fact the very reason it loses accuracy
> - the story is retold in a form comprehensible to the audience, and thus
> changes gradually as the culture changes. Since, after the first
> generation, there is no way of cross-checking the re-interpretation
> against memories of the original events, the result is unavoidable drift
> in content.
>
It doesn't take generations. As an exercise in the intro psych classes I
taught, I'd have a person whisper in the ear of the person beside him or
her and then the recipient would pass it along. Before too long the
original rather innocuous sentance would be completely transformed into
a very different story. Trimmed shaped and readjusted to fit the
transmitter's prejudices.
larry
Floyd Davidson
But what have you demonstrated? That people, when told what the
objective is (and they *did* all know), will make such a stunt
as funny as possible?? I don't know why you'd be doing that in
a college level course though, because I can remember my 5th
grade teacher doing the same thing!
On the other hand, since you don't have any familiarity with how
oral history is maintained, you might want to research the way
the Iroquois Confederacy kept their Constitution for several
hundreds of years. It demonstrates a very formal approach to
oral history in a way that Western observers, if they get past
the immediate bias, can actually understand relatively easily.
To give a brief description, the Constitution is a stage
performance, put on by professionals who train all of their
lives at their job.
Richard F Hall
<Berna...@OPTUShotmail.com.remove.OPTUS> wrote:
Dear BernardZ:
>
>Also the ancient Hebrews were never pre-literate.
>
>Check these URL's out
>http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/5_intro.html
>http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/6_home.html
>
>As you can see the history of ancient Hebrew writing goes back to the
>period of the Summerian.
It is my impression from Exodus (a record of Jewish history as some
interpret it) that Moses had to teach the Hebrews the Laws in "song".
Also, from your website, " Sumerians and Egyptians all used the same
style of pictographic writing." The Sumerians used a cuneoform
writing and the Egyptians did not.
Richard F Hall
Louann Miller
<Larry...@someoneElse.Invalid> wrote:
>It doesn't take generations. As an exercise in the intro psych classes I
>taught, I'd have a person whisper in the ear of the person beside him or
>her and then the recipient would pass it along. Before too long the
>original rather innocuous sentance would be completely transformed into
>a very different story. Trimmed shaped and readjusted to fit the
>transmitter's prejudices.
aka "we played Telephone in class."
Larry C. Lyons
> "Larry C. Lyons" <Larry...@someoneElse.Invalid> wrote:
>
>>Stanley Friesen wrote:
>>
>>>I would maintain that this is in fact the very reason it loses accuracy
>>>- the story is retold in a form comprehensible to the audience, and thus
>>>changes gradually as the culture changes. Since, after the first
>>>generation, there is no way of cross-checking the re-interpretation
>>>against memories of the original events, the result is unavoidable drift
>>>in content.
>>>
>>
>>It doesn't take generations. As an exercise in the intro psych classes I
>>taught, I'd have a person whisper in the ear of the person beside him or
>>her and then the recipient would pass it along. Before too long the
>>original rather innocuous sentance would be completely transformed into
>>a very different story. Trimmed shaped and readjusted to fit the
>>transmitter's prejudices.
>
>
> But what have you demonstrated? That people, when told what the
> objective is (and they *did* all know), will make such a stunt
> as funny as possible?? I don't know why you'd be doing that in
> a college level course though, because I can remember my 5th
> grade teacher doing the same thing!
No, they were just asked to pass it along without any embellishment. Its
a basic phenonmenon discussed in intro psych classes and sophomore
social psychology classes. In other words very basic stuff.
Noelie S. Alito
news:pei8nv8r291mlliji...@4ax.com...
[Disclaimer: "The plural of anecdote is not data."]
Besides the normal classroom game, I once participated in
a Telephone competition where teams had to see how
accurately they could pass a message (saying it once, so
nobody else nearby could hear, etc.). The winning team
still ended up with a partially munged message.
Noelie
--
"Rhyming with 'goalie' for over 43 years."
Floyd Davidson
Very basic stuff... which everyone has been aware of since the
5th grade. Hence you can claim that you changed the rules for
any given instance in which the game was played, but we all
*know* what the pay off is, and we play to those rules.
On the other hand, instead of that game, you _could_ demonstrate
that even small children can be taught ways to recite
information _very_ exactly, without making mistakes. I talked
on the telephone with my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter a couple
days ago, and she showed me exactly how accurate oral history
can be. I don't think I've ever heard a child that young recite
"ABC's" accurately before. She did it perfectly. And of course
I personally recite parts of it to myself on occasion too...
when I'm looking for something in a dictionary and need to
remember just where 'O' is in relation to 'M', 'N' and 'P' for
example. I believe that most adults who grew up in the US can
recite it *accurately*.
The order of our alphabet has probably gone unchanged as long as
it has, just because we teach it to our children _before_ they
learn to read and write. Even though our culture is based on
written history for most things, we still rely on oral history
for some...
Bob Pease
"Floyd Davidson" <fl...@barrow.com> wrote in message
news:87wubva...@barrow.com...
> "Larry C. Lyons" <Larry...@someoneElse.Invalid> wrote:
> >Floyd Davidson wrote:
> >> "Larry C. Lyons" <Larry...@someoneElse.Invalid> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>It doesn't take generations. As an exercise in the intro psych classes
I
> >>>taught, I'd have a person whisper in the ear of the person beside him
or
> >>>her and then the recipient would pass it along. Before too long the
> >>>original rather innocuous sentance would be completely transformed into
> >>>a very different story. Trimmed shaped and readjusted to fit the
> >>>transmitter's prejudices.
> >>
> >>
> >> But what have you demonstrated? That people, when told what the
> >> objective is (and they *did* all know), will make such a stunt
> >> as funny as possible?? I don't know why you'd be doing that in
> >> a college level course though, because I can remember my 5th
> >> grade teacher doing the same thing!
> >
> >No, they were just asked to pass it along without any embellishment. Its
> >a basic phenonmenon discussed in intro psych classes and sophomore
> >social psychology classes. In other words very basic stuff.
>
> Very basic stuff... which everyone has been aware of since the
> 5th grade. Hence you can claim that you changed the rules for
> any given instance in which the game was played, but we all
> *know* what the pay off is, and we play to those rules.
>
>
yup,
If the College class is goingto play"telephone" and everybody has five bucks
on the table and the messages are y monitored, watch how the accuracy
improves.
If someone is playing scalawag, then the class gets to know where the
message got garbled.
Bob Pease
Stanley Friesen
This isn't really a fair comparison with a trained story teller and
long-term apprentice. Oral traditions are often passed down in a
special line (priests or bards, or whatnot), not by the general
population. This changes the dynamic somewhat.
Floyd Davidson
Nice illustration, but it doesn't demonstrate what you seem to
think. You've used the limitations of a tin can and string
telephone system to prove it is impossible to talk to grandma
across the continent over a telephone. Except, we all know that
it can and is done every day, so lets find where the flaw is
in your example.
What you actually did demonstrate is that your communications
channel did not have enough entropy to allow an accurate
transfer of the encoded data from the input to the output
without distortion. However, you cannot stretch that to mean
that *all* communications channels will suffer the same
distortion. For that matter, it doesn't even demonstrate that
it can't be done with that particular channel!
There are different ways to encode data for transmission, and
some forms are more susceptible to noise (random changes,
external to the channel, that may or may not happen) or
distortion (a known type of change that happens to all data
transmitted through this particular channel).
Since we are playing "telephone", let me further the comparison
in that direction...
Your example is very similar to an analog transmission path for
a telephone system. It is called a Gaussian bandwidth limited
channel (GBLC), with additive noise. "Additive noise" means
whatever the changes are made at each point along the way, at no
point is it possible to remove any of the previous changes. Not
all communications channels have those characteristics, but you
have chosen one that does.
Hence if any of the words used in your message are not
discernable to any of the chain of people you transmit it
through, those words are guaranteed going to be lost every time.
That is distortion resulting from the limited bandwidth.
Putting one person in the chain who speaks very little English
(but has a PhD in psychology and speaks 3 Asian languages
fluently) would severely limit the "bandwidth" of that channel.
It restricts the English vocabulary greatly, and all words used
that are outside the range reproducable by that one person will
likely be changed at the output. (Other problems, for example,
might be someone with a speach or hearing impediment.)
Noise is different. If you have a very handsome man and a very
beautiful lady, both quite naked, who may or may not walk up and
hug each person as they are passing the message, that creats
"noise". The stammering and stuttering added to the message, is
noise (as opposed to distortion).
Clearly, if you expect accurate output, the communications
channel you've chosen requires great care in how the data
entered at the input is encoded. What you have demonstrated is
that you were not careful (or, more likely, you purposely did
encode data in a way that would *not* pass accurately).
On the other hand, I can take the same channel you've used, make
a few measurements to see what kind of distortion and bandwidth
it offers, and then devise an encoding scheme that will pass the
data accurately, virtually *every* time. Perhaps slowly, but
here we are interested in *accuracy*.
For example, just as the telephone industry no longer uses
analog voice channels for long distance communications, we too
could switch this one to digital. All we have to do is one at
at time, spell each word, except we pass not just one letter of
the alphabet, we pass a five letter sequence from the alphabet,
with the middle letter as our data. In fact, we *sing*, from
the "now we know our ABC's" song, those 5 letters. (We'll make
up some sort of code for the first and last two letters, a, b, y
and z.) Noise is no longer additive, because at each transfer
from one person to another, as much as maybe 3/4ths of the
actual data passed can be lost, and the next person can still
precisely reconstruct the message and pass the entire symbol
correctly to the next person, minus any noise or distortion.
Bingo, you have so much entropy in that comm channel that it
will almost never be wrong. (The biggest problem will be that
it gets so boring everyone falls asleep.)
However, oral history does not use the same channel that you and
I have just played with. It has an entirely different channel,
with much greater bandwidth, and hence the entropy encoded into
our message can be extreme. And since our data rate is so slow,
we can use extremely complex encoding rules too!
If you went to grammar school in the US, it is a very good bet
that you can recite the Pledge of Allegance accurately every
time. You can almost certainly recognize, and repeat at least
parts of the song "America the Beautiful". And if you have the
required talent, you might be able to recite significant parts
from Shakespeare's MacBeth.
And I would say that finding people who can learn to recite,
word for word, the words of any single character in MacBeth,
would create a channel worthy of passing an oral history. And
the accuracy would be extremely high.
For a more complete understanding of this topic, I would suggest
that rather than studying the Telephone Game, one might try
reading a bit of Claude E. Shannon,
<http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/paper.html>
Claude E. Shannon, "A mathematical theory of communication,"
Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, pp. 379-423 and 623-656,
July and October, 1948.
>Noelie
>--
>"Rhyming with 'goalie' for over 43 years."
Your signature is a great example of information encoding!
John Wilkins
> "Noelie S. Alito" <noe...@deadspam.com> wrote:
...
> >Noelie
> >--
> >"Rhyming with 'goalie' for over 43 years."
>
> Your signature is a great example of information encoding!
It's a garbled transmission of one I used to have, and one she used to
have...
BernardZ
says...
> On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 10:57:07 +0000 (UTC), BernardZ
> <Berna...@OPTUShotmail.com.remove.OPTUS> wrote:
>
> Dear BernardZ:
> >
> >Also the ancient Hebrews were never pre-literate.
> >
> >Check these URL's out
> >http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/5_intro.html
> >http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/6_home.html
> >
> >As you can see the history of ancient Hebrew writing goes back to the
> >period of the Summerian.
>
> It is my impression from Exodus (a record of Jewish history as some
> interpret it) that Moses had to teach the Hebrews the Laws in "song".
Exodus is quite clear that Moses wrote it down eg
Exo 24:4 And Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah
Exo 34:28 ....And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant,
the ten commandments.
Noelie S. Alito
Ok, but if they catch us beating this analogy to death, I'm going
to plea bargain to get the lighter sentence....
> Your example is very similar to an analog transmission path for
> a telephone system. It is called a Gaussian bandwidth limited
> channel (GBLC), with additive noise. "Additive noise" means
> whatever the changes are made at each point along the way, at no
> point is it possible to remove any of the previous changes. Not
> all communications channels have those characteristics, but you
> have chosen one that does.
It's worse than that: The transmission contains both coherent
(message-related) and incoherent (message independent) noise.
Our internal processors have little problem filtering out incoherent
noise (like "snow" on TV), but are distracted by and give weight
to alternate interpretations of coherent noise (like "ghosts" on TV).
Hence, hearers are more likely to give weight to interpretations
based on the familiarity with the word or phrase. (Ever hear
John Fogerty sing about the "bathroom on the right"? ;-)
> Hence if any of the words used in your message are not
> discernable to any of the chain of people you transmit it
> through, those words are guaranteed going to be lost every time.
> That is distortion resulting from the limited bandwidth.
> Putting one person in the chain who speaks very little English
> (but has a PhD in psychology and speaks 3 Asian languages
> fluently) would severely limit the "bandwidth" of that channel.
> It restricts the English vocabulary greatly, and all words used
> that are outside the range reproducable by that one person will
> likely be changed at the output. (Other problems, for example,
> might be someone with a speach or hearing impediment.)
>
> Noise is different. If you have a very handsome man and a very
> beautiful lady, both quite naked, who may or may not walk up and
> hug each person as they are passing the message, that creats
> "noise".
(As in, large parts of the cerebral cortex shuts down during
the transmission window....)
> The stammering and stuttering added to the message, is
> noise (as opposed to distortion).
>
> Clearly, if you expect accurate output, the communications
> channel you've chosen requires great care in how the data
> entered at the input is encoded. What you have demonstrated is
> that you were not careful (or, more likely, you purposely did
> encode data in a way that would *not* pass accurately).
>
> On the other hand, I can take the same channel you've used, make
> a few measurements to see what kind of distortion and bandwidth
> it offers, and then devise an encoding scheme that will pass the
> data accurately, virtually *every* time. Perhaps slowly, but
> here we are interested in *accuracy*.
It would have to be a system that can survive pathological situations
that crop up from time to time in every human culture: Untimely deaths
of many of the best "transmitters", occasional long-term fundamental
threats to survival (persistent drought, flood resistance, bouts of disease),
contact with other cultures (whether friendly or not), political interest in
changing the interpretation of the old lore (a biggee, IMHO), etc.
> For example, just as the telephone industry no longer uses
> analog voice channels for long distance communications, we too
> could switch this one to digital. All we have to do is one at
> at time, spell each word, except we pass not just one letter of
> the alphabet, we pass a five letter sequence from the alphabet,
> with the middle letter as our data. In fact, we *sing*, from
> the "now we know our ABC's" song, those 5 letters. (We'll make
> up some sort of code for the first and last two letters, a, b, y
> and z.) Noise is no longer additive, because at each transfer
> from one person to another, as much as maybe 3/4ths of the
> actual data passed can be lost, and the next person can still
> precisely reconstruct the message and pass the entire symbol
> correctly to the next person, minus any noise or distortion.
Well, the English language uses the letters "ay", "dee" and
"elleminnow". ;-)
If we're going to model human/generational communication,
we have to deal with loss of context. For example, even
when the message is passed along in written form (let's even
pretend no errors are introduced by copyists), over the
generations the cultural assignment of meaning and context
can still diverge radically from the original context of the
message--something taken for granted at the time. Consider
Chaucer's English, the various re-interpretations of biblical
writings, or the understanding of Latin.
If the _meaning_ is to keep up with contemporary usage/context,
then there must be interpretive modifications along the way, which
introduces conceptual error. Alternatively, if only the phonemes
(or even strict wording) are preserved, then latter-day recipients
won't understand the message without training in archaic context.
> Bingo, you have so much entropy in that comm channel that it
> will almost never be wrong. (The biggest problem will be that
> it gets so boring everyone falls asleep.)
Because the "message" is no longer relevant without the original
taken-for-granted context?
> However, oral history does not use the same channel that you and
> I have just played with. It has an entirely different channel,
> with much greater bandwidth, and hence the entropy encoded into
> our message can be extreme. And since our data rate is so slow,
> we can use extremely complex encoding rules too!
Well, the French have put a lot of effort into preserving their own
language, and tout le monde français just goes off and uses slang,
jargon and foreign-based words anyway--usage tends to be dynamic
in real life.
> If you went to grammar school in the US, it is a very good bet
> that you can recite the Pledge of Allegance accurately every
> time. You can almost certainly recognize, and repeat at least
> parts of the song "America the Beautiful". And if you have the
> required talent, you might be able to recite significant parts
> from Shakespeare's MacBeth.
Yes, well everyone in the village may know what martlet,
wassail and spongy officers means, but how do you ensure
that that remains the case?
> And I would say that finding people who can learn to recite,
> word for word, the words of any single character in MacBeth,
> would create a channel worthy of passing an oral history. And
> the accuracy would be extremely high.
Out of the pool one must find someone both willing and able,
and assign enough importance to it that it outranks other
practical demands that day-to-day life entails.
> For a more complete understanding of this topic, I would suggest
> that rather than studying the Telephone Game, one might try
> reading a bit of Claude E. Shannon,
>
> <http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/paper.html>
>
> Claude E. Shannon, "A mathematical theory of communication,"
> Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, pp. 379-423 and 623-656,
> July and October, 1948.
No! No! Not *Shannon*! Aieeeeeeeeeee!
<running footsteps fade into distance>
> >"Rhyming with 'goalie' for over 43 years."
>
> Your signature is a great example of information encoding!
0x54 0x68 0x6E 0x78 0x21
Noelie
--
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had
happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall
be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.
It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
--Mark Twain
Ferrous Patella
<noe...@deadspam.com>:
> (Ever hear
> John Fogerty sing about the "bathroom on the right"? ;-)
I have sung the gospel song "Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear".
--
Ferrous Patella
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not
only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt
May 7, 1918
Walter Bushell
> news:bl8758$9absh$1...@ID-117948.news.uni-berlin.de by "Noelie S. Alito"
> <noe...@deadspam.com>:
>
> > (Ever hear
> > John Fogerty sing about the "bathroom on the right"? ;-)
>
> I have sung the gospel song "Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear".
Ah, yes. I remember Glady, he was a mainstay of Chicago in the 1950's. I
didn't know about his unfortuante vision problem, though.
--
The last temptation is the highest treason:
To do the right thing for the wrong reason. --T..S. Eliot
Walter
R. Baldwin
news:1g22bqw.zu3j40wjopf8N%pr...@panix.com...
> Ferrous Patella <mail1...@pop.net> wrote:
>
> > news:bl8758$9absh$1...@ID-117948.news.uni-berlin.de by "Noelie S.
Alito"
> > <noe...@deadspam.com>:
> >
> > > (Ever hear
> > > John Fogerty sing about the "bathroom on the right"? ;-)
> >
> > I have sung the gospel song "Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear".
>
> Ah, yes. I remember Glady, he was a mainstay of Chicago in the
1950's. I
> didn't know about his unfortuante vision problem, though.
There's also "and the voice I hear, falling on my ear..."
Richard F Hall
<Berna...@OPTUShotmail.com.remove.OPTUS> wrote:
>In article <3f741806...@news.seanet.com>, real...@seanet.com
>says...
>> On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 10:57:07 +0000 (UTC), BernardZ
>> <Berna...@OPTUShotmail.com.remove.OPTUS> wrote:
>>
>> Dear BernardZ:
>> >
>> >Also the ancient Hebrews were never pre-literate.
>> >
>> >Check these URL's out
>> >http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/5_intro.html
>> >http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/6_home.html
>> >
>> >As you can see the history of ancient Hebrew writing goes back to the
>> >period of the Summerian.
>>
>> It is my impression from Exodus (a record of Jewish history as some
>> interpret it) that Moses had to teach the Hebrews the Laws in "song".
>
>Exodus is quite clear that Moses wrote it down eg
>
>Exo 24:4 And Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah
>
>Exo 34:28 ....And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant,
>the ten commandments.
Most likely Moses wrote these things in common Egyptian. Moses was
educated as an Egyptian. The Levites were the keepers of the ark.
The Levites, the only tribe with Egyptian names suggesting they were a
mixture of Egyptian and Hebrew. Why were they the keepers of the only
liturature produced by this group? Because they knew common Egyptian?
But this is just the most obvious interpretation.. If you want to
believe that some written language had been in mysterious hibernation
then I can't argue with you. Is it offensive that Moses could have
written in common Egyptian (rather than hieroglyphic, Moses was very
anti-Egyptian when it came to religious beliefs.. no after-life,
etc.).
Bennett Standeven
>
> Hamurabi's Code is in writing. Probably the Gilgamesh Epic was
> originally written too.
>
>
> Check these URL's out
> http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/5_intro.html
> http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/6_home.html
>
> As you can see the history of ancient Hebrew writing goes back to the
> period of the Summerian.
>
These sites seem a little flaky to me. As near as I can recall, the
first "Hebrew" alphabets (usually called "Proto-Sinaitic" or
"Proto-Sinai") date to around 1500 BC; it is thought they were
inspired by Egyptian writing (which was quite old even then.) It is
correct that the Hebrew/Phonician and Greek alphabets are descended
from this script, however.
BernardZ
says...
Their is no common Egyptian it is all hieroglyphic.
Also why would be offensive?
Many Europeans scholars even in 1600s were writing in Latin and Greek
not their local languages.
It is only recently that most European leaders speak the language of
their subjects.
Klaus Hellnick
"Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote in message
news:pan.2003.09.22....@mail.utexas.edu...
> On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:22:58 +0000, Stanley Friesen wrote:
>
> > "Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>> One of the criticisms of the Old Testament is the question of the
> >>> validity of oral history. It seems incomprehensible that oral history
> >>> could remain accurate over hundreds of years or generations. But it
> >>> can.
> >>
> >> too?
> >
> > They certainly seem to have some historical memories mixed in as leaven
> > among the myth. Even the Invasion of the Sea Peoples in Egypt is
> > you.
>
> Yes, there are a number of things in the homeric corpus that surprised
> 20th Century scholars. But no one concludes from them that gods and
> demigods fought each other with spears on the plains around Ilium.
>
> Bobby Bryant
> Austin, Texas
>
Well most of the fighting was with roving gangs of teenagers using pointed
sticks and rocks. A few people were fortunate enough to have leather items
and even 1 or 2 items of bronze. The ultimate weapon was a shortbow eith
bronze arrowheads and the ultimate armor was leather with plates of tin sewn
in. The "armies" seemed to be loose groups of a dozen or so. Everyone should
read Homer for a glimpse of what life really used to be like, the deities
not taken literally, of course.
Richard F Hall
<bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 09:16:32 +0000, Richard F Hall wrote:
>
>> One of the criticisms of the Old Testament is the question of the
>> validity of oral history. It seems incomprehensible that oral history
>> could remain accurate over hundreds of years or generations. But it
>> can.
>
>The homeric epics are based on oral tradition... do you believe them too?
>
Dear Bobby:
The point is not the veracity of the Bible based on today's standards,
but the validity of oral tradition.
regards,
Realistic Idealism
http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/idealism.html
Bobby D. Bryant
> On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:02:46 +0000 (UTC), "Bobby D. Bryant"
> <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 09:16:32 +0000, Richard F Hall wrote:
>>
>>> One of the criticisms of the Old Testament is the question of the
>>> validity of oral history. It seems incomprehensible that oral history
>>> could remain accurate over hundreds of years or generations. But it
>>> can.
>>
>> The homeric epics are based on oral tradition... do you believe them
>> too?
>>
> Dear Bobby:
>
> The point is not the veracity of the Bible based on today's standards,
> but the validity of oral tradition.
I didn't mention the bible; I mentioned Homer as an example of the
unreliability of oral tradition.
us...@example.com
>On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:02:46 +0000 (UTC), "Bobby D. Bryant"
><bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 09:16:32 +0000, Richard F Hall wrote:
>>
>>> One of the criticisms of the Old Testament is the question of the
>>> validity of oral history. It seems incomprehensible that oral history
>>> could remain accurate over hundreds of years or generations. But it
>>> can.
>>
>>The homeric epics are based on oral tradition... do you believe them too?
>>
>Dear Bobby:
>
>The point is not the veracity of the Bible based on today's standards,
>but the validity of oral tradition.
Oral tradition is not reliable, as any "pass-it-along" game will quickly
prove.
Richard F Hall
<bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 12:09:56 +0000, Richard F Hall wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:02:46 +0000 (UTC), "Bobby D. Bryant"
>> <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 09:16:32 +0000, Richard F Hall wrote:
>>>
>>>> One of the criticisms of the Old Testament is the question of the
>>>> validity of oral history. It seems incomprehensible that oral history
>>>> could remain accurate over hundreds of years or generations. But it
>>>> can.
>>>
>>> The homeric epics are based on oral tradition... do you believe them
>>> too?
When you say, "too".. I interpret that to mean, "do you believe them
[The Homeric epics] too [as well as the Bible.. ]".
>>>
>> Dear Bobby:
>>
>> The point is not the veracity of the Bible based on today's standards,
>> but the validity of oral tradition.
>
>I didn't mention the bible;
You did not type the word Bible, but when you typed "too" I thought
you inferred "the Bible". What else could you be referring to?
>I mentioned Homer as an example of the
>unreliability of oral tradition.
In regard to the Bible, for instance, the Pentateuch was possibly
written circa 1200 BC originally.. the question is, could it have
been committed to oral tradition [as is claimed] and rewritten [which
is known to be true] in Babylon in 600BC? The question is NOT if the
Homeric Epic or the Pentateuch is true, here.
>
Richard Hall
http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/chpt19.html
The Old Testament with some new light
Richard F Hall
Dear Trebor:
Oral tradition is hardly a "pass-it-along" game. I'm sure you have
learned songs. As you and your friends listen to rap music, I'm sure
you have all picked up the lyrics and repeated them quite accurately
even after a week or so has gone by. Now consider if that "song" were
considered "Holy" and you were motivated enough to learn a song that
was many many verses long.. even longer than the Gettysburg Address,
for instance.
Imagine, if you can, a song that is considered "holy" and an integral
part of the life experience of a society as a "cherished" entity with
meaning and usefulness on a day to day basis. It's recitation would
have evolved to become a requirement even for the passage into
adulthood where the song would be required to be memorized and
repeated in front of a full compliment of adults who would scrutinize
it's accuracy.
This is not a game.. it is carried out today just as I have described
it here. In societies that have a love of learning and exercising
one's mind that is lost to most of us raised in a world where
excellence is feared for the shadow that it casts on the rest of us.
Richard Hall
Realistic Idealism, learn at your own pace.
Bobby D. Bryant
Actually, when you look at Milman Parry's ballyhoo'd transcriptions of
Yugoslav oral epic the first thing you notice is that it never comes out
the same way twice, even on such important issues as the major characters'
relation to each other.
You also notice that the singer often paints himself into a corner
plot-wise within about a column of transcribed text, and has to stop and
start over.
IMO there is a big _modern_ myth about the reliability of oral tradition,
usually invoked to validate someone's cultural tradition as (a) authentic
and (b) more venerable than it actually is.
David Jensen
<3fa79e09...@supernews.seanet.com>:
>On Sun, 2 Nov 2003 15:25:51 +0000 (UTC), "Bobby D. Bryant"
><bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 12:09:56 +0000, Richard F Hall wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:02:46 +0000 (UTC), "Bobby D. Bryant"
>>> <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 09:16:32 +0000, Richard F Hall wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> One of the criticisms of the Old Testament is the question of the
>>>>> validity of oral history. It seems incomprehensible that oral history
>>>>> could remain accurate over hundreds of years or generations. But it
>>>>> can.
>>>>
>>>> The homeric epics are based on oral tradition... do you believe them
>>>> too?
>When you say, "too".. I interpret that to mean, "do you believe them
>[The Homeric epics] too [as well as the Bible.. ]".
>>>>
>>> Dear Bobby:
>>>
>>> The point is not the veracity of the Bible based on today's standards,
>>> but the validity of oral tradition.
>>
>>I didn't mention the bible;
>You did not type the word Bible, but when you typed "too" I thought
>you inferred "the Bible". What else could you be referring to?
>>I mentioned Homer as an example of the
>>unreliability of oral tradition.
>In regard to the Bible, for instance, the Pentateuch was possibly
>written circa 1200 BC originally..
Written? Do we have any evidence that this was _written_ around 3200
years ago?
Lester Zick
F Hall) in sci.philosophy.meta wrote:
>On Sun, 2 Nov 2003 22:15:39 +0000 (UTC), "tre...@sirius.com.no.more"
><us...@example.com> wrote:
>
>>real...@seanet.com (Richard F Hall) wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:02:46 +0000 (UTC), "Bobby D. Bryant"
>>><bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 09:16:32 +0000, Richard F Hall wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> One of the criticisms of the Old Testament is the question of the
>>>>> validity of oral history. It seems incomprehensible that oral history
>>>>> could remain accurate over hundreds of years or generations. But it
>>>>> can.
>>>>
>>>>The homeric epics are based on oral tradition... do you believe them too?
>>>>
>>>Dear Bobby:
>>>
>>>The point is not the veracity of the Bible based on today's standards,
>>>but the validity of oral tradition.
>>
>>Oral tradition is not reliable, as any "pass-it-along" game will quickly
>>prove.
I'm inclined to agree with Rich on this. Oral history is much more
accurate than pass-it-along games would indicate. Which suggests that
it is much more than a game and much more capable of portraying events
with chronological accuracy than most people appreciate. Europeans
were frankly amazed when Schliemann's ideas on the literal
interpretation of the Homeric epics proved accurate because they were
thought at the time to be nothing more than fables.
>>
>Dear Trebor:
>
>Oral tradition is hardly a "pass-it-along" game. I'm sure you have
>learned songs. As you and your friends listen to rap music, I'm sure
>you have all picked up the lyrics and repeated them quite accurately
>even after a week or so has gone by. Now consider if that "song" were
>considered "Holy" and you were motivated enough to learn a song that
>was many many verses long.. even longer than the Gettysburg Address,
>for instance.
>
>Imagine, if you can, a song that is considered "holy" and an integral
>part of the life experience of a society as a "cherished" entity with
>meaning and usefulness on a day to day basis. It's recitation would
>have evolved to become a requirement even for the passage into
>adulthood where the song would be required to be memorized and
>repeated in front of a full compliment of adults who would scrutinize
>it's accuracy.
>
>This is not a game.. it is carried out today just as I have described
>it here. In societies that have a love of learning and exercising
>one's mind that is lost to most of us raised in a world where
>excellence is feared for the shadow that it casts on the rest of us.
>
>Richard Hall
>Realistic Idealism, learn at your own pace.
>
Regards - Lester
David Jensen
<3fa7c722...@netnews.att.net>:
How much of Homer is historically based? The location? The war? The
participants? The story itself?
...
us...@example.com
>On Sun, 2 Nov 2003 22:15:39 +0000 (UTC), "tre...@sirius.com.no.more"
><us...@example.com> wrote:
>>>The point is not the veracity of the Bible based on today's standards,
>>>but the validity of oral tradition.
>>
>>Oral tradition is not reliable, as any "pass-it-along" game will quickly
>>prove.
>Oral tradition is hardly a "pass-it-along" game. I'm sure you have
>learned songs. As you and your friends listen to rap music, I'm sure
>you have all picked up the lyrics and repeated them quite accurately
>even after a week or so has gone by.
A week is hardly the centuries we're talking about. Besides, NOT quite
so accurately. There are dozens of examples of very popular pop tunes
that say one thing, but people think they say another. I'm a little too
old for rap, but I remember Jimi Hendrix singin, "S'cuse me while I kiss
this guy."
>Now consider if that "song" were considered "Holy" and you were
>motivated enough to learn a song that was many many verses long..
Now consider that humans are not only fallible but also have ulterior
motives. And we don't even have to consider bad intentions; changes can
be introduced with the best of intentions.
>Imagine, if you can, a song that is considered "holy" and an integral
>part of the life experience of a society as a "cherished" entity with
>meaning and usefulness on a day to day basis.
Sure, I can imagine that. And I can also imagine a series of changes,
some small, some big, some accidental, some quite purposeful, being
introduced into said holy song. This would especially apply as the
language changed.
>This is not a game.. it is carried out today just as I have described
>it here. In societies that have a love of learning and exercising
>one's mind that is lost to most of us raised in a world where
>excellence is feared for the shadow that it casts on the rest of us.
There is on record no society as inquisitive (nor, I might say, as
competitive (which requires excellence)) as ours. Sure, teenagers watch
endless hours of TV, but in those past societies that you romanticize,
most people passed great parts of their days just sittin' and starin'.
Lester Zick
Hard to tell, at least by me. We know that there are certain fallacies
of interpretive origin. But where those end and chronology actually
begins is more difficult to assess unless you're an expert.
The surprize is that there was anything. Based on the book Gods,
Graves, and Scholars, no one of the time expected any historical
correspondence whatsoever except Schliemann and perhaps a few
academics. Apparently not even the residents of the area itself. So I
think we have to conclude that oral traditions were taken very
seriously in oral cultures and reflected the only way a tribe had to
consider itself in historical perspective. And I suspect that the
pass-it-along problem for oral traditions really only later became an
issue as written history supplanted the oral.
>
>...
>
Regards - Lester
Bobby D. Bryant
Yes, it was a surprise to 20th Century scholars, but it probably shouldn't
have been. During the classical era everyone knew darn well where Ilium
was, and as recently as ~500 CE a traveller supposedly discovered that the
local Christian bishop was still maintaining the rituals at Achilles'
[purported] tomb. So it's no big surprise that at the dawn of written
history in the region there were strong traditions associated with the
site.
The question is whether those traditions preserved anything interesting
other than a few incidental trivia. Sure there are signs of a siege...
but what ancient city _didn't_ undergo a sacking or two during their
history? Is the story based on some particular siege, or is it a yarn
spun from whole cloth? There's really no way to tell.
There's simply no justification for claiming that the Homeric corpus
preserved much of anything accurately over a long period of oral
tradition.
Lester Zick
I have to admit that I haven't read this entire thread so I don't
really have much idea of the genesis of interest in the subject or
where it's going. However laying that aside for the moment and just
examining the basic issue I think we can resolve certain problems
between written and oral history in general.
Now I haven't read Gods, Graves, and Scholars by C.W. Ceram in forty
plus years so I can't claim any kind of expertise on the subject of
Homeric epics or their chronological accuracy. But as I recall
Schliemann undertook what was regarded as a fantasy expedition to find
Troy according to Homer and found the site although the level he
selected for the city was incorrect. So this has to lend credence to
to the Homeric legends as some form of history. As I understand it no
one at least in Europe took the tales for anything but fables made out
of whole cloth and I think that Schliemann's discoveries put that idea
to rest. And I don't consider simply dismissing the general idea of
oral history as illustrated in the Homeric epics an adequate
alternative to recognizing their substance. The only issue I can see
is the question of how much there is of historical substance and how
to distinguish it.
However leaving the Homeric epics aside let's assume we have two
potential kinds of history - oral and written. And we're interested in
essaying the validity and utility of oral history in oral cultures and
written history in writing cultures. Now it is apparent to me and I
would argue that the only real difference between these alternatives
as techniques is not so much accuracy as the ability to cross examine
old documents in the case of written history - an ability obviously
lacking in exclusively oral cultures.
Now if you were to ask me whether the scribes and authors of each kind
of history were more or less diligent than those of the other kind, I
would have to reply no, that as serious history I would have to
consider that each type of historian took his own project very
seriously and reproduced what he was taught or told quite assiduously.
But despite this we can expect in both types of history some errors of
transliteration, some errors of interpretation, and some poetic,
polemical, and frankly propagandistic interpolations. After all the
victor gets to write the history and there have been many victors and
conquests throughout history and most with seriously conflicting
motivations. So the only real issue as between the two types of
history in my estimation concern rates of transliteration errors and
the elimination of interpolated incorporations.
This is a problem for both kinds of history. We don't have any special
reason to expect written history to be any more accurate in terms of
its origin than oral history. All kinds of historical fables and
inventions are faithfully transcribed whether written or oral - for
example the pious fraud known as the Donation of Constantine. So the
critical issue really boils down to the ability to assess errors and
to clean up the history.
And written history is unquestionably superior in this regard. But I
think this is the only respect in which it is innately superior apart
from the quantity of information capable of being stored and retrieved
scanned and so on. However, I would also like to add one further
caveat here. In Roots Alex Hailey tells of having gone to Africa and
hearing the oral history of his ancestor's tribe in which the ancestor
himself was mentioned and his abduction by slavers. Which suggests to
me that there is considerable chronological significance in what oral
cultures take as their own history. So in effect we also have some
ability to cross examine contemporaneous oral history with written
history in assessing its accuracy over the centuries.
Regards - Lester
Bobby D. Bryant
> I'm inclined to agree with Rich on this. Oral history is much more
> accurate than pass-it-along games would indicate. Which suggests that
> it is much more than a game and much more capable of portraying events
> with chronological accuracy than most people appreciate. Europeans
> were frankly amazed when Schliemann's ideas on the literal
> interpretation of the Homeric epics proved accurate because they were
> thought at the time to be nothing more than fables.
The problem is that Homeric epic preserves only the merest scraps of
historical reality, mixes the realities of different historical periods
indiscriminately, and uses it all as nothing more than a backdrop to what
would be called a swords-and-sorcery fantasy if written today.
Yeah, it's cool that Homer mentioned a boar's tusk helmet that had long
gone out of style and wasn't rediscovered until the 20th Century, and
cooler still that it the corpus contains a phrase that apparently goes all
the way back to a language ancestral to both Greek and Sanskrit, but don't
let the "hits" obscure the "misses".
This gets into the same problem that comes up when people observe that the
bible contains mention of some archaeologically validated trivium and
people want to induce from that fact that _everything_ it says is accurate.
There is absolutely no reason to suppose that the Homeric corpus was
repeated verbatim, or even almost verbatim, over a period of centuries.
Lester Zick
All this was covered several months ago in a reply post to the thread.
Regards - Lester