ORAL TRADITION
When writing was invented, texts could be stored and information could be transmitted across generations, centuries, and millennia, to a much larger extent than before. But crossgenerational communication did not start with writing. Interesting pieces of information have been «handed down» to us through oral tradition.
Some fascinating examples of information from a distant past that have survived through oral tradition is mentioned by the linguist R. M. W. Dixon in his book about the Australian language Dyirbal, The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. On p. 29, Dixon writes that «beneath the veneer of fantasy, some [Dyirbal] myths may provide accurate histories of events in the distant past of the people», and this is just one example:
Further evidence is contained in the myth of Gi}ugar, a legendary man who came from the south, visiting each mountain, lake and island and giving it a name. The storyteller remarked that in Gi}ugar’s day it was possible to WALK across to the islands (Palm Island, Hinchinbrook Island, and so on). In fact geographers believe that sea level was sufficiently low for it to have been possible to walk to all islands in the Coral Sea at the end of the last ice age, eight to ten thousand years ago.