I think I read somewhere that Aboriginal Australians have oral tradition that mentions rain forests covering much of the continent. I wonder if these are the same (edit: perhaps remnants of, since the fossils are dated in the millions of years) forests that the article mentions.
If anything, really shows how the “traditional” knowledge that I personally did not consider much before may be worth taking a second look at.
Considering that the Aborigines spent tens of thousands of years doing controlled burns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming), it's quite likely the ecosystem and climate changed quite a bit in that time, much like every piece of land humans have touched.
As the article notes, oral tradition has "error correction" built into it as multiple generations overlap and check each other's accuracy of retelling. It's not like a game of "telephone", where the message gets repeated only once.
I recognize that the Aboriginal and other oral traditions preserve information for a long time, but this article is talking about climate from before the end of the Miocene around 5 million years ago. If the stores were about a previous climate it was a much younger climate than this one.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 34.5 ms ] threadIf anything, really shows how the “traditional” knowledge that I personally did not consider much before may be worth taking a second look at.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-16/research-gives-merit-...
As the article notes, oral tradition has "error correction" built into it as multiple generations overlap and check each other's accuracy of retelling. It's not like a game of "telephone", where the message gets repeated only once.
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/38936810/OralTradSeaLe...
https://watermark.silverchair.com/113nunn.pdf?token=AQECAHi2...