jenifer daniels ♎ :verified:from reddit /TIL: #TIL a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries
TIL that lots of folks don't know what oral history is (in the subreddit comments). yikes
Skribbler Tha Griot🤨🤔🧐🧐🧐
But…but how…how did they think ancient stories were passed down before paper was invented? Did they think cave paintings were just ancient emojis? I’m truly baffled right now.
Chris Hanson@ScribblerRVA @jentrification @_L1vY_ They have an *extremely* uninformed view of history and humans’ place in our world; they almost certainly couldn’t even get within the order of magnitude if asked to estimate how long things our species has existed or had written language.
Shari Emerson@eschaton @ScribblerRVA @jentrification @_L1vY_
More ppl clearly need to see Bill Wurtz's EPIC "History of the Entire World, I Guess"
my brain got a whole upgraded data set on how long China-as-China, and way more context for India and the middle East, from that 20 minute video. (terrific way to uncover knowledge gaps you want to fill in!)
But - anthropology needs to try harder to understand oral-history societies. We're missing out.
