When i started this blog, no one was really connecting the dots on the total impact on the sea level produced by the end of the Northern Ice Age in 12900 BP. Yet this tells us that they have all now woken up and they are now looking for cultural evidence which is great.
The only caution i would add is that the actual rise was fast enough but did have at least one serious surge caused by Lake Agassiz. Our risk is that we may still have remnant ice to remove out there that we would not wish to lose. Yet global reforestation will end all that soon enough. That will bring back Bronze Age conditions and recharge the atmosphere with ample moisture to load those important mountain glaciers.
Here it turns out that Australia is unique in terms of fully recollecting these serious inundations. Ohterwise we have rumors from elsewhere at best. Cettainly Lyonese and Doggerland come to mind and the understanding that the English channel was once land. similar partial traditions must exist elsewhere wherever we have population by the sea.
It was all mostly over by 6000 years ago and slow moving for the previous two thousand years.
Ancient Aboriginal stories preserve history of a rise in sea level
January 12 2015, 2.28pm EST
http://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preserve-history-of-a-rise-in-sea-level-36010
In the beginning, as far back as we remember, our home islands were not islands at all as they are today. They were part of a peninsula that jutted out from the mainland and we roamed freely throughout the land without having to get in a boat like we do today. Then Garnguur, the seagull woman, took her raft and dragged it back and forth across the neck of the peninsula letting the sea pour in and making our homes into islands.
So goes an Aboriginal story, paraphrased,
about the origin of the Wellesley Islands in the southern Gulf of
Carpentaria, a story with parallels along every part of the coast of
Australia. Along the south coast, stories written down early in colonial
times told when these areas were dry, a time when people hunted
kangaroo and emu there, before the water rose and flooded them, never
again to recede.
In a recent paper
we presented at an indigenous language conference in Japan, we analysed
18 stories from around Australia’s coast. All tell tales of coastal
flooding. We argue that these stories (and probably many others) recall
coastal inundation as sea levels reached their present level at least
6,000-7,000 years ago.
The end of the ice ages
Around Australia, we know that at the coldest time of the last ice
age about 20,000 years ago, sea level stood about 120 metres below its
present level.
When the last ice age began to end, a few thousand years later, huge
masses of ice that had built up on the land, particularly in the
northern hemisphere, began melting. Water poured into the world’s
oceans, raising their levels in ways that are now well understood.
By about 13,000 years ago, sea level had risen to around 70 metres
below its present level. One thousand years later, it had risen to about
50 metres below present.
These dates give us a ballpark for how old stories of flooding may be. Could they have reached us from 13,000 years ago?
Tracing tales
Several decades ago, linguists working with Aboriginal groups along
the Queensland coastal margin recorded stories about a time when the
ancestors of these people lived at the coast “where the Great Barrier
Reef now stands”.
One version
of the story collected from the Yidindji people of the Cairns area
recalls a time when Fitzroy Island was part of the mainland and offshore
Green Island was four times larger. The story describes several named
landmarks with remembered historical-cultural associations that are now
underwater.
We can be almost certain that the people of this area did occupy the
coast “where the Great Barrier Reef now stands” during the last ice age
for it would have comprised broad floodplains and undulating hills with a
range of subsistence possibilities, bordered in most parts by steep
cliffs plunging down to the narrow shore.
The question is whether the details in these stories recall this time
for, if they do, then the story might date from as much as 13,000 years
ago. A more conservative interpretation, based on a sea level just 30
metres lower than today, would place the age of this story at around
10,000 years ago.
Similar stories
come from Spencer Gulf in southern Australia. Those from the Narrangga
people of Yorke Peninsula recall the time when there was no Spencer
Gulf, only “marshy country reaching into the interior” lying just above
the ocean surface and dotted with “freshwater lagoons” where birds and
other animals flocked.
One day the sea came in, perhaps through the breaching of a natural
barrier, and the area has since been submerged. If these stories refer
to flooding across the outermost lip of Spencer Gulf, which today lies
around 50 metres below present sea level, then they may have originated
12,000 years ago. Even if they refer to inundation of the central part
of the Gulf, they are likely to be more than 9,000 years old.
Ancient stories
How sea levels changed after the ice ages around Australia is now well known.
So if these stories are accepted as authentic and based on observations
of coastal flooding, it is clear that they must be of extraordinary
antiquity.
Click to enlarge
How do we know that these stories are authentic? We suggest that
because they all say essentially the same thing, it is more likely that
they are based on observation. All tell of the ocean rising over areas
that had previously been dry. None tell stories running the other way –
of seas falling to expose land.
The huge distances separating the places from which the stories were
collected – as well as their unique, local contexts – makes it unlikely
that they derived from a common source that was invented.
For such reasons, we regard the common element in these stories about
sea level inundating coastal lowlands, sometimes creating islands, as
based on observations of such an event and preserved through oral
traditions.
This conclusion in turn raises many interesting questions.
Is Australia unique?
The rise of sea level since the last ice age from 120 metres below
present occurred not just around Australia but around the world,
inundating significant parts of all continents.
We might expect to find comparable collections of sea-level rise
stories from all parts of the globe, but we do not. Perhaps they exist,
but have been dismissed on account of an improbable antiquity by
scholars adhering to the more orthodox view that oral traditions rarely
survive more than a millennium.
Another possibility is that Australia is genuinely unique in having
such a canon of stories. That invites questions about why and how
Australian Aboriginal cultures may have achieved transmission of
information about real events from such deep time.
The isolation of Australia is likely to be part of the answer. But it
could also be due to the practice and nature of contemporary Aboriginal
storytelling. This is characterised by a conservative and explicit
approach to “the law”, value given to preserving information, and
kin-based systems for tracking knowledge accuracy.
This could have built the inter-generational scaffolding needed to
transmit stories over vast periods, possibly making these stories unique
in the world.
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