The Edge of Memory

by Patrick Nunn

  48 Less charitably referred to as hobbits (which are imaginary creatures), the details of this extraordinary discovery – extraordinary because it had long been regarded as an orthodoxy that our species was the only one of Homo to have been around in the last 100,000 years or so – were first announced in the journal Nature on 28 October 2004 in three short pieces and an article.

  49 See the 2016 paper in Nature by Sutikna and others.

  50 Details are in Forth’s Beneath the Volcano (1998).

  51 See the most recent book by Forth (2008).

  52 If stories of small people coexisting with larger ones (like us) intrigue you, I recommend the riveting and scientifically rigorous book Pygmonia (McAllister 2010).

  53 This quote comes from an unpublished 1845 manuscript without page numbers entitled An account of some fossil bones found in Darling Downs by F. N. Isaac.

  54 Quotes from Barrett (1946: 29–30).

  55 The first quote in this sentence is from Opit (2001: 45), whose account includes many other accounts of possible or claimed bunyip sightings. The second quote, together with that in the following sentence, comes from the description of Palorchestes azael in the superbly illustrated book by Archer and others (1991: 115). Several scientists have suggested that Aboriginal stories about bunyip and similar creatures might be based on observations thousands of years ago of diprotodontoids like P. azael.

  56 I am troubled by the oft-used argument that because Palorchestes azael became extinct some 40,000 years ago (which it perhaps did not – see the next note) it could not possibly be represented in rock art, especially given the compelling arguments to the contrary (see, for example, the paper by Murray in the 1984 issue of Archaeology in Oceania).

  57 The Riversleigh terrace date of 23,900 (+ 4,100 or - 2,700) years ago was reported in the 1997 Memoirs of the Queensland Museum by Davis and Archer. The Spring Creek date of 19,800 ± 390 years ago is from cave deposits containing megafaunal remains including those of Palorchestes azael (see Tim Flannery’s paper in the 1984 issue of The Australian Zoologist). Popular accounts of this creature often claim that it survived until 11,000 years ago in Australia, but I have been unable to find a reliable source for this claim.

  58 It is easy to forget that because Australia is so vast and most of it is so sparsely populated there is a greater potential here, compared to most other places, for animals regarded as extinct (at least recently) to be discovered alive. For example, science regards the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus), an endemic thylacine, to have become extinct in the 1930s, yet in March 2017, in response to increasing numbers of plausible sightings in far north Queensland, scientists began to look for it there (www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2017/march/fnq-search-for-the-tasmanian-tiger, accessed in March 2017). Naturally, they are keeping coy about precisely where they lay their camera traps.

  59 Just to note that the American cheetah was probably slower than its modern counterpart, better at climbing trees than running. And that the camels, notwithstanding genomic evidence showing their links to African and Asian camels, appear to have been more akin in appearance and habit to modern llamas than modern camels. And that the American horse, once almost ubiquitous in ice-free North America, became extinct about 11,000 years ago – modern horses (including those in North America) are all descended from those that have existed for millions of years in Africa and Eurasia. Why one group became extinct while the other did not remains a puzzle.

  60 The Antarctic Cold Reversal occurred between 12,700 and 14,400 thousand years ago (overlapping the Younger Dryas in the northern hemisphere) and was a significant departure from the long-term postglacial warming trend in which it is embedded. Patagonian megafaunal extinction took a surprisingly short time – no more than 300 years around 12,280 years ago.

  61 The palaeontologist was Richard Owen, and it was in 1859 that he named Australia’s marsupial lion Thylacoleo carnifex. Since this lion was manifestly a marsupial mammal, scientific prejudices about all such diprotodonts being herbivores led to considerable argument about whether Owen’s characterisation of this beast as a carnivore was correct. Later research proved him right.

  62 This study was reported by Trueman and colleagues in the 2005 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

  63 Utilising amino acid racemization (AAR) and electron spin resonance (ESR) dating techniques, the revision of the Tasmanian megafaunal extinction ages suggests that humans were in fact the main cause of this (see work by Chris Turney and others in the 2008 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America). Another intriguing study, covering all of Australia, reached the same conclusion. At several places around Australia, these researchers analysed sediments from both the ocean floor and onshore cave fills to determine the amount of the dung fungus, Sporormiella, in layers of different ages. Sporormiella is a proxy for herbivore biomass – the more there is, the more large-bodied herbivores (including megafauna) were living in a particular place at a particular time. It was found that Sporormiella levels were high between 45,000 and 150,000 years ago, but that a ‘marked decline’ (p. 1) occurred between 43,100 and 45,000 years ago, which is interpreted as bracketing in time the main period of megafaunal extinction (see van der Kaars, 2017, Nature Communications).

  64 The quotes in this paragraph are from the account of how mihirung paringmal (thunder birds) were once hunted; it comes from pp. 92–93 of the book by Dawson (1881), who gives the phonetic names for these birds as meeheeruung parrinmall. I have paraphrased Dawson’s account, which also dates this tradition to the time ‘long ago when the volcanic hills were in a state of eruption’ (p. 92), something that dates this account of the mihirung to perhaps 5,000–10,000 years ago.

  65 The identification of Genyornis bones by Aboriginal people as mihirung was reported from excavations at Lancefield Swamp, New South Wales (Murray and Vickers-Rich 2004). The painting of a megafaunal bird, possibly Genyornis newtoni, at the Nawarla Gabarnmang site in northern Australia was reported and discussed by Ben Gunn and others (2011, Australian Archaeology) and is shown in the colour plate section.

  66 The view that Genyornis newtoni became extinct around 47,000 years ago contrasts with the view that it may have co-existed with humans in Australia until much more recent times (Gerritsen 2011). The latter study quotes from an 1845 report by George Adney in western Victoria about the time he unearthed some giant bones near Lake Colongulac that the local (Aboriginal) Tjakut speakers stated were the remains of ‘a fearful monster … on two legs with a neck and head like a large emeu [emu] and a breast covered with shaggy hair and killing men by hugging them with his large flappers’ (p. 64), plausibly an account of the mihirung or Genyornis newtoni.

  67 Quote from p. 147 of the paper by Grellet-Tinner and others in the 2016 issue of Quaternary Science Reviews.

  68 A good article on the subject of this case of mistaken identity was published online in The Conversation on 14 January 2016 (http://theconversation.com/a-case-of-mistaken-identity-for-australias-extinct-big-bird-52856).

  Chapter 7 : Have We Underestimated Ourselves?

  1 Research in Kerala showed that the local fishing community trusted its traditional knowledge of coastal risk, especially storm surges and tsunamis, more than the understanding implicit in the strategies imposed by central government (Santha, 2014, Natural Resources Forum). The framing of tsunami precursors in myths and other types of traditional oral knowledge saved numerous lives during tsunami events in Simeulue during the great Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 and in southern Pentecost during a 1999 event (McAdoo, 2006, Earthquake Spectra).

  2 Motifs are ‘the smallest element in a tale having the power to persist in tradition’ (Thompson 1977: 415). Motifs define ‘tale types’, over 2,000 of which have been codified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) Index.

  3 The research on the Little Red Riding Hood tale types was reported by Jamie Tehrani (2013, PLOS One).

&nb
sp; 4 Many thinkers have argued along such lines before now. To René Girard, most myths had an empirical basis, distorted representations of real events that non-literate people encoded and passed on for posterity (Golsan 2002). To Walter Ong, the replacement of vibrant spontaneous orality with colourless literacy was to be lamented; he cautioned that the world of oral knowledge was in danger of being consigned to the rubbish bin of history (Ong 1982).

  5 In his magisterial Eden in the East (1998), Stephen Oppenheimer proposed that memories of the drowning of the Sunda Shelf (where island South-east Asia lies today), perhaps soon after the end of the Last Glacial Maximum about 18,000 years ago, may be preserved in stories of lands being ‘pulled up’ that are found in cultures all around it.

  6 The earliest written accounts of Australian Aboriginal watercraft described them as ‘rafts and canoes made of logs or sewn bark, bark or reed bundles … the uses of these watercraft were restricted historically to be used close to shore or to have been restricted to visiting islands only as far as 25 km and mostly less than 10 km offshore’ (Jane Balme, 2013, Quaternary International, p. 71).

  Further Reading

  Chapter 1: Recalling the Past

  Atwater, B. F. et al. 2005. The Orphan Tsunami of 1700 – Japanese Clues to a Parent Earthquake in North America. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

  Barber, E. W. & P. T. Barber. 2004. When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  Beaglehole, E. & P. Beaglehole. 1938. Ethnology of Pukapuka. Vol. 150, Bulletin. Honolulu: BP Bishop Museum.

  Bronowski, J. 1974. The Ascent of Man. Boston: Little, Brown.

  Clark, E. 1953. Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  Kelly, L. 2016. The Memory Code. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

  Kingdon, J. 1996. Self-made Man: Human Evolution From Eden to Extinction. Chichester: Wiley.

  Ong, W. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge.

  Piccardi, L. & W. B. Masse, eds. 2007. Myth and Geology. London: Geological Society of London.

  Ricci, E. 1969. I Peligni Superequani la Sicinnide e le Origini di Secinaro. Sulmona: Italia Editoriale.

  van den Berg, R. 2002. Nyoongar People of Australia: Perspectives on Racism and Multiculturalism. Leiden: Brill.

  Vitaliano, D. 1973. Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  Chapter 2: Words that Matter in a Harsh Land

  Berndt, R. M. & C. H. Berndt. 1996. The World of the First Australians. Aboriginal Traditional Life: Past and Present. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.

  Blewett, R. S., ed. 2012. Shaping a Nation: A Geology of Australia. Canberra: Geoscience Australia and ANU E Press.

  Carnegie, D. W. 1898. Spinifex and Sand. London: Arthur Pearson.

  Cook, J. 1893. Captain Cook’s Journal During his First Voyage Round the World Made In H.M. Bark ‘Endeavour’ 1768–71 (A Literal Transcription of the Original MSS). London: Elliot Stock.

  Flannery, T. F. 1994. The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People. Chatswood: Reed.

  Gammage, B. 2011. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

  Giles, E. 1889. Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration, Being A Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions Into and Through Central South Australia, and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876. London: Sampson Low.

  Gill, A. M. et al., eds. 1981. Fire and the Australia Biota. Canberra: Australian Academy of Science.

  Haygarth, H. W. 1861. Recollections of Bush Life in Australia. London: John Murray.

  Meeham, B. & N. White, eds. 1990. Hunter-Gatherer Demography, Past and Present. Sydney: University of Sydney.

  Mitchell, T. 1848. Journal of an Expedition Into the Interior of Tropical Australia In Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria. London: Longman, Brown, Green.

  Mulvaney, D. J. & J. Kamminga. 1999. Prehistory of Australia. Crows Nest, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin.

  Parkinson, S. 1773. A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty’s Ship the Endeavour. London: Printed privately for Stansfield Parkinson.

  Sturt, C. 1834. Two Expeditions Into the Interior of Southern Australia During the Years 1828, 1829, 1830, and 1831. 2nd edn. Vol. 1. London: Smith, Elder.

  Thomson, D. 1975. Bindibu Country. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson.

  van Gennep, A. 1906. Mythes et Légendes d’Australie. Paris: Guilmoto.

  Chapter 3: Australian Aboriginal Memories of Coastal Drowning

  Berndt, C. H. & R. M. Berndt. 1994. The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions/Bear & Co.

  Berndt, R. M. & C. H. Berndt. 1996. The World of the First Australians. Aboriginal Traditional Life: Past and Present. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.

  Cane, S. 2002. Pila Nguru: The Spinifex People. North Fremantle, Western Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press.

  Cooper, H. M. 1955. The Unknown Coast: A Supplement. Adelaide: Advertiser Printing Office.

  Dawson, J. 1881. Australian Aborigines: The Languages and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australia. Melbourne: George Robertson.

  Dixon, R. M. 1972. The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. Vol. 40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Dixon, R. M. 1980. The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Dixon, R. M. W. 1977. A Grammar of Yidiny, Cambridge Studies in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Dixon, R. M. W. 1991. Words of Our Country: Stories, Place Names and Vocabulary in Yidiny, the Aboriginal Language of the Cairns-Yarrabah Region. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

  Falkiner, S. & A. Oldfield. 2000. Lizard Island: The Journal of Mary Watson. Crows Nest, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin.

  Fison, L. & A. W. Howitt. 1880. Kamilaroi and Kurnai. Melbourne: George Robertson.

  Flinders, M. 1814. A Voyage to Terra Australis; undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803, in His Majesty’s ship The Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland Schooner. 2 vols. London: G and W Nicol.

  Flood, J. 2006. The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People. Crows Nest, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin.

  Gribble, E. R. B. 1932. The Australian Aboriginal. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

  Hiatt, L. R. 1978. Australian Aboriginal Concepts. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

  Isaacs, J. 1980. Australian Dreaming: 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History. Sydney: Lansdowne Press.

  Krichauff, S. 2011. Nharrungga Wargunni Bugi-Buggillu: A Journey Through Narungga History. Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press.

  Kuhn, D. & C. Freeman, eds. 2012. Georges River Estuary Handbook. Georges River, New South Wales: Georges River Combined Councils Committee.

  Lampert, R. J. 1981. The Great Kartan Mystery. Vol. 5. Terra Australis. Canberra: Australian National University.

  Massola, A. 1968. Bunjil’s Cave: Myths, Legends and Superstitions of the Aborigines of South-east Australia. Melbourne: Lansdowne.

  McCrae, H., ed. 1934. Georgiana’s Journal: Melbourne a Hundred Years Ago [Diary of Georgiana McCrae]. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

  Meyer, H. E. A. 1846. Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay Tribes, South Australia. Adelaide: Dehane.

  Moore, G. F. 1884. Diary of Ten Years Eventful Life of an Early Settler in Western Australia; and also A Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language of the Aborigines. London: Walbrook (facsimile edition 1978 by University of Western Australia Press).

  Morris, J. 2001. The Tiwi: From Isolation to Cultural Change. Darwin: NTU Press.

  Mulvaney, J. & N. Green. 1992. Commandant of Solitude: The
Journals of Captain Collet Barker, 1828–1831. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press.

  Niall, B. 1994. Georgiana: A Biography of Georgiana McCrae, Painter, Diarist, Pioneer. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

  Noonuccal, O. 1990. Australian Legends and Landscapes. Sydney: Random House.

  Nunn, P. D. 2007. Climate, Environment and Society in the Pacific During the Last Millennium. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

  Nunn, P. D. 2009. Vanished Islands and Hidden Continents of the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

  Osborne, C. R. 1974. The Tiwi Language. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (Australian Aboriginal Series 55, Linguistic Series 21).

  Parker, K. L. 1959. Australian Legendary Tales. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

  Piccardi, L. & W. B. Masse, eds. 2007. Myth and Geology. London: Geological Society of London.

  Reed, A. W. 1965. Myths and Legends of Australia. Sydney: Reed.

  Reed, A. W. 1993. Aboriginal Myths, Legends and Fables. Chatswood, New South Wales: Reed.

  Roberts, A. & C. P. Mountford. 1989. The Dawn of Time: Australian Aboriginal Myths. Blackwood, South Australia: Art Australia.

  Robinson, G. A. 2008. Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829–1834. 2nd edn. Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery and Quintus Publishing.

  Rogers, H. 1957. The Early History of the Mornington Peninsula. Mornington, Melbourne: Mornington Leader.

  Roughsey, D. 1971. Moon and Rainbow: The Autobiography of an Aboriginal. Sydney: Reed.

  Russell, A. 1934. A Tramp-Royal in Wild Australia. London: Cape.

  Ryan, L. 2012. Tasmanian Aborigines: A History Since 1803. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

  Smith, J. 1880. Booandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: A Sketch of their Habits, Customs, Legends and Language. Adelaide: Government Printer.

  Smith, W. R. 1930. Myths and Legends of the Australian Aboriginals. London: Harrap.

  Taplin, G. 1873. The Narrinyeri: An Account of the Tribes of South Australian Aborigines Inhabiting the Country Around the Lakes Alexandrina, Albert and Coorong, and the Lower Part of the River Murray. Adelaide: Government Printer.