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https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/18665
Title: | Indigenous Australian Stories and Sea-Level Change | Contributor(s): | Reid, Nicholas J (author) ; Nunn, Patrick (author); Sharpe, Margaret (author) | Publication Date: | 2014 | Handle Link: | https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/18665 | 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. | Publication Type: | Conference Publication | Conference Details: | FEL XVIII 2014: 18th Foundation for Endangered Languages Conference, Okinawa, Japan, 17th - 20th September, 2014 | Source of Publication: | Indigenous Languages: Their Value to the Community. Proceedings of the 18th FEL Conference, p. 82-87 | Publisher: | Foundation for Endangered Languages | Place of Publication: | Bath, United Kingdom | Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: | 210301 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History 210101 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Archaeology 050201 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Environmental Knowledge |
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: | 450103 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural history 450101 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander archaeology 450303 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander environmental conservation |
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: | 950302 Conserving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage 950201 Communication Across Languages and Culture 950503 Understanding Australias Past |
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: | 130201 Communication across languages and culture 130703 Understanding Australia’s past |
HERDC Category Description: | E2 Non-Refereed Scholarly Conference Publication |
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Appears in Collections: | Conference Publication School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences |
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