A Micmac story teller from Canada, who's tribe is well over fourty thousand years old!

it's incredible what I learned from him on the server about Micmac indian culture and he is also the #1 Antler, and stone sculptor in Canada.

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/1419/

Just had to share.

One of our DMs is an Indie Rock Superstar.

Another is a Shepherd.

And fat.

40,000 years old?

There is something---highly infeasible about that. It may be that human history has only been recorded for 5,000 years; making such dating, well, impossible.

Are you sure he didn't say four thousand instead of forty? Archaeological data has New World human habitation pegged at around twelve thousand before present.

Actually there is archaeological evidence to support that Australian aboriginal culture extends to about 40000 years ago, which still blows my mind.

40,000 years of oral tradition, and archaeological evidence.

Thomas_Not_very_wise 40,000 years of oral tradition, and archaeological evidence.

And how does one PROVE 40,000 years of oral tradition?

The best science and archaeological linguists can do is guestimate and they'll be the first to tell you that a claim of 40,000 years is clap-trap. Especially when there is no (to very, very little) evidence of tribes in the America's 40,000 years ago. I think someone is trying to impress you.

Now the Micmac tribe is perhaps 10,000 years old according to archaeological evidence. Their language is at best a thousand or two years old, the language it was derived from Proto-Alquonquin is slightly older, and the language that their's is descended from, Algic, is estimated to have been spoken 3000-4000 years ago in California and slightly north.

Notice how rapidly the language is changing even as the tribe moves slowly eastward from CA to Ontario and the Great Lakes? Language adapts very quickly, and can change within even a few generations or faster with a people who are moving and constantly meeting strangers and picking up loan words through trade and inter-marriage.

Most the facts your friend gave you just won't bear up under scrutiny and a half-hour of solid research in a library. This is not unusual with tribal artists, or tribal peoples at all. There is a desire to make their culture seem grander than it already is, children in tribes are taught this stuff by over-eager uncles and aunts, but it is the creation of wishful thinking and not evidence 90% of the time.

Ommadawn Actually there is archaeological evidence to support that Australian aboriginal culture extends to about 40000 years ago, which still blows my mind.

If you're replying to my post specifically: I said "New World habitation", as in the Americas. Australia's been touched by the feet of Homo for quite some time.

Oh, also, that should be twelve, not twenty thousand in my last post. Oops! I should get more sleep!

http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/barstow/calico.html

For those of you that argue science never contradicts itself. I have been to this site, the actual dig, not the website, and they use the scientific method as intensely as any others, and there dates are a wee bit older then 40,000 years. Have a look for yourself. The first link is to the BLM site, the second is run by the actual scientists that run the dig site.

http://www.calicodig.org/

I'm sorry, Oroborous, but I have to take the word of the Canadian potter from 38000BC over anyone who uses the word "Guestimate".

Oroborous

Thomas_Not_very_wise 40,000 years of oral tradition, and archaeological evidence.

And how does one PROVE 40,000 years of oral tradition?

The best science and archaeological linguists can do is guestimate and they'll be the first to tell you that a claim of 40,000 years is clap-trap. Especially when there is no (to very, very little) evidence of tribes in the America's 40,000 years ago. I think someone is trying to impress you.

Now the Micmac tribe is perhaps 10,000 years old according to archaeological evidence. Their language is at best a thousand or two years old, the language it was derived from Proto-Alquonquin is slightly older, and the language that their's is descended from, Algic, is estimated to have been spoken 3000-4000 years ago in California and slightly north.

Notice how rapidly the language is changing even as the tribe moves slowly eastward from CA to Ontario and the Great Lakes? Language adapts very quickly, and can change within even a few generations or faster with a people who are moving and constantly meeting strangers and picking up loan words through trade and inter-marriage.

Most the facts your friend gave you just won't bear up under scrutiny and a half-hour of solid research in a library. This is not unusual with tribal artists, or tribal peoples at all. There is a desire to make their culture seem grander than it already is, children in tribes are taught this stuff by over-eager uncles and aunts, but it is the creation of wishful thinking and not evidence 90% of the time.

I wonder what it must be like, being part of a class you are teaching...

...something like a large tractor trampling many helpless children, then spewing out a large plume of smog and going like, "HAR HAR HAR".

efuincarnate http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/barstow/calico.html

For those of you that argue science never contradicts itself. I have been to this site, the actual dig, not the website, and they use the scientific method as intensely as any others, and there dates are a wee bit older then 40,000 years. Have a look for yourself. The first link is to the BLM site, the second is run by the actual scientists that run the dig site.

http://www.calicodig.org/

Of course scientists contradict each other. Usually because some of them are wrong =P

Oroborous

Thomas_Not_very_wise 40,000 years of oral tradition, and archaeological evidence.

And how does one PROVE 40,000 years of oral tradition?

The best science and archaeological linguists can do is guestimate and they'll be the first to tell you that a claim of 40,000 years is clap-trap. Especially when there is no (to very, very little) evidence of tribes in the America's 40,000 years ago. I think someone is trying to impress you.

Now the Micmac tribe is perhaps 10,000 years old according to archaeological evidence. Their language is at best a thousand or two years old, the language it was derived from Proto-Alquonquin is slightly older, and the language that their's is descended from, Algic, is estimated to have been spoken 3000-4000 years ago in California and slightly north.

Notice how rapidly the language is changing even as the tribe moves slowly eastward from CA to Ontario and the Great Lakes? Language adapts very quickly, and can change within even a few generations or faster with a people who are moving and constantly meeting strangers and picking up loan words through trade and inter-marriage.

Most the facts your friend gave you just won't bear up under scrutiny and a half-hour of solid research in a library. This is not unusual with tribal artists, or tribal peoples at all. There is a desire to make their culture seem grander than it already is, children in tribes are taught this stuff by over-eager uncles and aunts, but it is the creation of wishful thinking and not evidence 90% of the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORSzfw8FE-o

i am moth

Oroborous

Thomas_Not_very_wise 40,000 years of oral tradition, and archaeological evidence.

And how does one PROVE 40,000 years of oral tradition?

The best science and archaeological linguists can do is guestimate and they'll be the first to tell you that a claim of 40,000 years is clap-trap. Especially when there is no (to very, very little) evidence of tribes in the America's 40,000 years ago. I think someone is trying to impress you.

Now the Micmac tribe is perhaps 10,000 years old according to archaeological evidence. Their language is at best a thousand or two years old, the language it was derived from Proto-Alquonquin is slightly older, and the language that their's is descended from, Algic, is estimated to have been spoken 3000-4000 years ago in California and slightly north.

Notice how rapidly the language is changing even as the tribe moves slowly eastward from CA to Ontario and the Great Lakes? Language adapts very quickly, and can change within even a few generations or faster with a people who are moving and constantly meeting strangers and picking up loan words through trade and inter-marriage.

Most the facts your friend gave you just won't bear up under scrutiny and a half-hour of solid research in a library. This is not unusual with tribal artists, or tribal peoples at all. There is a desire to make their culture seem grander than it already is, children in tribes are taught this stuff by over-eager uncles and aunts, but it is the creation of wishful thinking and not evidence 90% of the time.

I wonder what it must be like, being part of a class you are teaching...

...something like a large tractor trampling many helpless children, then spewing out a large plume of smog and going like, "HAR HAR HAR".

No, actually, they all tend to say-"I've never learned so much, this is very interesting. Before your class, I thought I could just spew out mindless garbage and opinion to sound intelligent, and now I've learned how to use fact and evidence to support my arguments." The helpless children fail out quickly because they weren't ready for college. They go back to the playground where they tell jokes and make fun of how unprepared they were for the juggernaut of the intellectual world.

I blame the enshrinement of stupidity that is growing in America and the Western world in general. The New York Times had a good article on it recently. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html?fta=y

*Claps* Well done Oro, I have the same opinion, but I couldn't have explained it nearly as deftly. Bravo.

i am moth wrote: Oroborous wrote: Thomas_Not_very_wise wrote: 40,000 years of oral tradition, and archaeological evidence.

And how does one PROVE 40,000 years of oral tradition?

The best science and archaeological linguists can do is guestimate and they'll be the first to tell you that a claim of 40,000 years is clap-trap. Especially when there is no (to very, very little) evidence of tribes in the America's 40,000 years ago. I think someone is trying to impress you.

Now the Micmac tribe is perhaps 10,000 years old according to archaeological evidence. Their language is at best a thousand or two years old, the language it was derived from Proto-Alquonquin is slightly older, and the language that their's is descended from, Algic, is estimated to have been spoken 3000-4000 years ago in California and slightly north.

Notice how rapidly the language is changing even as the tribe moves slowly eastward from CA to Ontario and the Great Lakes? Language adapts very quickly, and can change within even a few generations or faster with a people who are moving and constantly meeting strangers and picking up loan words through trade and inter-marriage.

Most the facts your friend gave you just won't bear up under scrutiny and a half-hour of solid research in a library. This is not unusual with tribal artists, or tribal peoples at all. There is a desire to make their culture seem grander than it already is, children in tribes are taught this stuff by over-eager uncles and aunts, but it is the creation of wishful thinking and not evidence 90% of the time.

I wonder what it must be like, being part of a class you are teaching...

...something like a large tractor trampling many helpless children, then spewing out a large plume of smog and going like, "HAR HAR HAR".

No, actually, they all tend to say-"I've never learned so much, this is very interesting. Before your class, I thought I could just spew out mindless garbage and opinion to sound intelligent, and now I've learned how to use fact and evidence to support my arguments." The helpless children fail out quickly because they weren't ready for college. They go back to the playground where they tell jokes and make fun of how unprepared they were for the juggernaut of the intellectual world.

I blame the enshrinement of stupidity that is growing in America and the Western world in general. The New York Times had a good article on it recently. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html?fta=y

Carbon dating.

They found a knife in the possession of a Micmac tribes man, which has been carbon dated to about 38,000 years old, he claims it to have been in his family forever.

The knife is made of Mammoth ivory.

Thomas_Not_very_wise Carbon dating.

They found a knife in the possession of a Micmac tribes man, which has been carbon dated to about 38,000 years old, he claims it to have been in his family forever.

The knife is made of Mammoth ivory.

Pgs

EDIT: From the IRC, it becomes clear Pgs is an Abbrv only present in science forums. It is Please give source. Aka: A link is worth a thousand words.

Either way, that's not scientific.

I have a ring that is carbon dated to 430 BCE in Egypt.

I could claim its been in my family forever too.

Which means I'm what? Descended from Egyptian Pharaohs?

You could be you should trace your ancestors far enough back, Orbourous Pharaoh, that's a scary thought

Once more jumping in where I'm not wanted, carbon dating is, IMO, bull crap.

On a small side not, please imagine a six foot seven man, weighing around 280 pounds says "Bull crap" in a thick scottish accent. You will find your day a lot more pleasantly humorous.

Anyways, the reasoning behind my opinion, at least as far as I can remember this late, is that carbon dating relies on measuring the amount of carbon in an object. This assumes that we know how much carbon was in the object in the beginning, and we don't. We know only how much there is now, and we have extrapolated (another sidenote: when I say "We" I'm actually talking about those weird men in white coats with wild hair") the amounts to some number which I will honestly say I know nothing about. Now then. The problem is, we were not, in point of fact, there fourty thousand, million, or billion years ago to measure the amount of carbon in the bone of a dinosaur. Now, this is the part where you all stop listening to me. You see (again, this is IMO. don't want to get banned like I did from... oh yeah, I'm not supposed to talk about that) there was this thing called the Fall. Eve ate the apple and so on. Anyhow, before said Fall, life was a heck of a lot cooler. Stuff was made differently, animals behaved better, and it's entirely possible that carbon was a good deal different. Then we had a flood, and dinosaurs died (again, only one of many theories) and so on.

Okay, off on a tangent, and I'm just going to post this and hope something meaningful comes of it.

Just for discussions sake, how long ago do you claim, or have you been told, this fall actually take place? 5,000 years, 5 million?? Please do elaborate...

Ah, I love it when people ask questions. There are multiple theories, even among Christian circles. My own father believes that the Earth existed for a great deal of time, and he's a Baptist minister.

However, my own belief is either ten thousand years ago, or five. That would be the age of the Earth, so date the fall a short time after that.

Again, purely out of curiousity, how, if not carbon dateing, which we can take at face value from your first post, for the sake of this discussion, is faulty, are you arriving at those time frames?

dragonfire9000 Ah, I love it when people ask questions. There are multiple theories, even among Christian circles. My own father believes that the Earth existed for a great deal of time, and he's a Baptist minister.

However, my own belief is either ten thousand years ago, or five. That would be the age of the Earth, so date the fall a short time after that.

Except that doesn't work.

Since 1) we know how much carbon was in things to begin with. 2) it doesn't jive with literally dozens of bits of evidence. Like how long it takes things to naturally petrify, how long it takes the X/Y chromosome to break down, the simply fact that some plants are far too old for that kind of estimate and frankly the fact that such a belief is not at all based on any facts.

This is fast taking a nosedive into the waters of religious debate. Locked.

Ommadawn Actually there is archaeological evidence to support that Australian aboriginal culture extends to about 40000 years ago, which still blows my mind.

I just have to say, despite the lock. . . how the frack is it that after 40.000 years they still live in caves?!

DruQks. Please.

We have moderation for a reason. Have you no sense of decorum?