ONCE upon a time, Spencer Gulf in southern Australia was a land of lagoons contested by rival animal clans. The birds kept the snakes and lizards from drinking. This upset the kangaroos, one of whom drew a line in the ground with a magical bone, causing the sea to fill in the valley and compelling them to live in peace.
This story has been told by the Narungga people for as long as anyone can recall, part of a rich oral tradition conveying essential moral instruction long before literacy arrived with English colonisation.
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Anthropologist Patrick Nunn believes the tale shows something more. After decades of research, he has connected the Narungga鈥檚 and other groups鈥� stories of 鈥渃oastal drowning鈥� to the end of the last ice age, and has used this extra dimension to determine the length and accuracy of Aboriginal oral memory. Brilliantly reasoned and beautifully written, Nunn鈥檚 The Edge of Memory shows the 鈥渉itherto unsuspected depths鈥� of oral wisdom and the potential of stories to teach us about our past.
Australia is an ideal place to study the farthest reaches of oral memory. As Nunn explains, most Aboriginal peoples were isolated for over 50,000 years. Moreover, the physical difficulty of living in a harsh climate encouraged an 鈥渋mperative of telling a story the correct way鈥�. With survival at stake, there was scant room for error: stories were instructive, often providing information about finding food and water. They also alerted generations to the unexpected, says Nunn. Some are cautionary tales about volcanic activity, others about rapid sea level rise and flooding.
Nunn collected stories similar to the Narungga鈥檚 from 21 locations in Australia that are so spread out he thinks the tales couldn鈥檛 have been passed between the people who lived there. The consistency of description persuades him that global post-glacial sea level rise some 10,000 years ago is the only event that could have provided their collective inspiration. In parts of northern Australia, the coastline was receding by 14 metres every day. The drowning of Spencer Gulf would have been even more dramatic: it is much shallower than the ocean abutting it, so flooding would have been almost instantaneous. Using this, he estimated how long the tales had persisted by mapping out when coastal flooding would have occurred in each region.
鈥淟iteracy spawns arrogance. Have we underestimated ourselves? What might we not realise we remember?鈥�
Nunn was stunned. Spencer Gulf would have flooded between 9330 and 12,460 years ago. And stories about drowning from Cape Chatham, off Australia鈥檚 western coast, must be at least 11,730 years old. He describes his reaction as 鈥減rofound skepticism鈥�. But the data insisted that the stories had persisted over 350 generations.
鈥淟iteracy spawns arrogance,鈥� says Nunn; we communicate our knowledge in writing now, so society mistrusts oral traditions. 鈥淗ave we underestimated ourselves? What else might we not realise we remember?鈥� he asks.
Nunn provides many other examples of oral knowledge. In the Pacific Northwest, the Klamath people have remembered the volcanic origins of Crater Lake for 7600 years. And tales of sunken cities can be found across Europe and the Mediterranean.
There are some issues with Nunn鈥檚 methodology. He insists too vehemently, with too little justification, that 鈥渙ur ancestors were never arbitrarily creative鈥�, and that their stories were purely pragmatic. Straightforwardness might be convenient for him, but there is no good reason why our ancestors couldn鈥檛 have had fun. But he is justly passionate about the value of storytelling, making a strong case for old tales leading to new discoveries about our past.
What The Edge of Memory doesn鈥檛 consider are the effects of entrusting cultural memories to libraries or the internet, where they may be forgotten in the false belief that tech will recall them for us. Literacy may spawn arrogance. Is it also spreading ignorance?
Bloomsbury
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淢emory through the ages鈥�
