Geology of the Great lakes

[Maty]

I was watching a documentary on the Great Lakes, and was interested by the comment that they were created by a huge flood in pre-historic times. The story of this flood was preserved in native American legend. In fact their legends said that there was a waterfall even greater than Niagara that was submerged by the rising waters. A geologist went looking on the lake bed for aforesaid waterfall using ground mapping radar - and found it pretty much where it was supposed to be.

 

Now the point is that this flood happened 14,000 years back. It may be that the waterfall was a co-incidence, or that the documentary over-egged things a bit (I've found nothing else on this so far). But if it is true it shows that an oral tradition can carry basic facts for almost 1.5 millenna. And yet many people doubt that the Romans had any idea what happened at their city's foundation just 350 years or so before written records - i.e. for a period forty times shorter.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Yes, and even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

 

EDIT--Let me be less cryptic: But what does this imply about the accuracy of 'historical memory'? Memory for events, even those witnessed first hand, are notoriously susceptible to suggestion, omission, conflation, interference, bias, misattribution, and (sometimes) persistence. Given these Seven Sins of Memory, it is possible that historical memories are accurate, but we should look out for evidence of well-known memory failings too.

 

In the case of the history of the early Roman republic, there is probably evidence of all seven sins. The first one that comes to mind is interference from other historical events. I mean, it's possible that Romans expelled the kings in just that same magical year that the tyrant Hippias was expelled from Athens (thereby setting the stage for the birth of democracy), but it's an awfully big coincidence, isn't it?

Edited December 7, 2009 by M. Porcius Cato

[sylla]

Must agree with MPC here; to begin with, it's quite likely that the native American ancestors were still not in the Great Lakes area 14,000 years ago...

 

Floodings are not uncommon, either in legends or in the real world; besides, there's no need to find a real-life equivalent for any single myth.

 

It's easy to verify that the reliability of the transmission of the oral tradition is rather poor in comparison with written records.

 

The literary interference from the Hellenic (especially Athenian) history with the Roman oral tradition for the fall of ther semi-legendary monarchy goes even farther; the tale of Lucretia seems suspiciously similar to the downfall of the Peisistratid tyranny, precipitated by the assassination of Hipparchus after his failed homosexual attempt for Harmodius.

Edited December 7, 2009 by sylla