The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World

by Patrick Nunn

In The Edge of Memory , Patrick Nunn explores the science in folk history. He looks at ancient tales and traditions that may be rooted in scientifically verifiable fact, and can be explored via geological evidence, such as the Biblical Flood.

We all know those stories that have been told in our families for generations. The ones that start "Have I ever told you about your great, great Uncle …?" In some cultures these stories have been passed down for thousands of years, and often reveal significant information about how the surrounding environment has changed and the effect it has had on societies--from stories referring to coastal drowning to the devastation caused by meteorite falls.

Take Australian folklore, for instance. People arrived in Australia more than 60,000 years ago, and the need to survive led to the development of knowledge that was captured orally in stories passed down through the generations. These stories conveyed both practical information and recorded history, and they frequently made reference to a coastline that was very different to the one we recognize today. In at least 21 different communities along the fringe of Australia, flood stories were recorded by European anthropologists, missionaries, and others. They described a lost landscape that is now under as much as 100 feet of ocean. And these folk traditions are backed up by hard science. Geologists are now starting to corroborate the tales through study of climatic data, sediments and land forms; the evidence was there in the stories, but until recently, nobody was listening.

The Edge of Memory is an important book that explores the wider implications for our knowledge of how human society has developed through the millennia.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Prehistory, Science, Indigenous, Language

288 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2018

Reviews

[Boy Blue · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I asked you to remember something for 14,000 years what would you do? You'd probably jot it down as a note on your phone and back it up to the cloud right? Or maybe you'd carve it into stone. But what happens when you die and someone stops paying for your cloud storage? Or they lose the passwords? What happens when the stone gets lost or just erodes over the millennia? About now you're thinking alright smart arse how should I do it. Well Patrick Nunn makes a convincing argument that you should tell stories but not write them down.


Now you're thinking "Have you ever played Chinese Whispers?" Indeed I have but we have examples of oral history that date back thousands of years before the first humans were writing. How is that possible, well unfortunately Patrick Nunn doesn't really tell us or examine why it's possible more just that it has happened. His cursory look at why it's possible involves the need to encode survival information across the generations and cataclysmic events like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis are worth remembering. Tying them into a religious or spiritual underpinning and passing them down in sacred ceremonies is a powerful way to do it.


All of it made me think of this marker 





A Japanese Tsunami marker in Aneyoshi that says 

"High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants. Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point."

This stone was laid in 1896 after two deadly tsunamis back to back killed around 29,000 people.


So when the tsunami struck in 2011 many people knew to flee to high ground. But guess what. They had all built their homes below that marker. 


Fumihiko Imamura, a professor in disaster planning at Tohoku University had this to say.

"It takes about three generations for people to forget. Those that experience the disaster themselves pass it to their children and their grandchildren, but then the memory fades,"

Dr Nunn doesn't address these issues but he would disagree with Professor Imamura. See the problem is that they, like countless others before them, wrote it down and forgot about it. This is most famously argued by Socrates in Plato's Phaedrus

And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.

Dr Nunn's evidence for millennia old stories centre on the drowning stories told by indigenous cultures around Australia. They recognise and match scientific evidence of when the sea level around Australia was 50m lower than it is now. When Tasmania was connected to the mainland, when Port Philip Bay was actually just a lowland area. These are supported by similar drowning stories in Europe from times when the United Kingdom was part of a contiguous European continent. There's dozens of other stories throughout that seem to have been passed through the centuries and millennia about natural disasters that function as warning to future generations.

Unfortunately Nunn gives but a fleeting moment to deal with the most famous of drowning stories, Atlantis (Turns out Plato stitched together that particular lie out of dozens of actual drowned cities). Nunn also completely skips over the biggest geomythological event in human history, Noah and his flood, and all the source myths that it was stolen from.

See Nunn is a brilliant academic and researcher, he just doesn't have the knack for story telling; how ironic. It's a real shame because this book has the most incredible information in it. It's just structured so poorly and is incredibly dry and dusty where with a little bit of Gladwell, Harari, Bregman, dare I say it Ira Glass, it could have been an international bestseller. He's brilliant at explaining scientific theory but he doesn't capture the romance of stories told over thousands of years. The actual formatting of the book is odd as well with new paragraphs barely demarcated and thus feeling quite jarring. What I was most looking for from Nunn though was more of a comparison between written and oral histories and what we could learn from these epic feats of human memory.


Ultimately, we do get right to The Edge Of Memory, which seems to sit somewhere between 10,000 years and 20,000 years. Which frankly is awesome. But that's all there is, no positive future ahead, just a deep mourning. Could you get any more bleak than Nunn's final sentence.

"Today we look at those societies in awe, as examples of how it might have been for all of us."

[Leigh Franks · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his latest literary work, Professor Patrick Nunn celebrates un-written histories of societies past and present in a single volume reviewing the emerging science of geomythology. Modern scholars are only now agreeing that some stories that have been handed down through hundreds of generations, are undoubtedly the oldest stories of actual events ever recounted. Oral traditions have been the only form of transferring knowledge for most of the eternity of human existence.

As we turn the pages of this book, we embark on a journey that spans more than 10,000 years with Nunn as our guide. We are led through the unfamiliar and complex world of human oral history. As you read these pages you are using one of humanities greatest innovations: the written word. We have been writing for only five or six thousand years but have been busy communicating as we roamed this planet, perhaps arriving at least 65,000 years ago in Australia. Nunn leads us to ‘The Edge of Memory’ in seven enthralling chapters with the first chapter setting the scene as the colourful narrative follows a mid-19th century gold prospector in the northwest of the Unites States who stumbles across the vast Crater Lake on the Mt Mazama volcano in the Cascades. This first European sighting of a sacred indigenous place is part of the recent pattern that defines the aggressive expansion of Western ‘pioneers’ into territory already occupied.

The second chapter describes the geological formation of Australia, and the factors that define the island-continent as being uniquely isolated, along with its earliest inhabitants. The cyclic climatic changes that baffled European settlers and rendered early pioneering farms desolate, dictated the mobile nature of the First Australians, as they followed the rains being ‘conservative rather than innovative’.

For the next three chapters this book focuses on the impact of sea level change in Australia, and its impact on ancient Aboriginal society. This book will surely be remembered for a land-mark study that brilliantly tied sea-bed bathymetry (mapping), global patterns of sea level change and the disappearance of ‘country’ as experienced (sometimes catastrophically) by Australian Aboriginals. The oral traditions recounting Australian stories of ancient ‘drowning’ of familiar country in antiquity, gauge the age of these ancient stories, that span hundreds of generations. Nunn uses science to inform us when peninsulas became islands and wetlands became bays defining the age range of stories that spoke about a different country, now under the waves.

Professor Nunn continues guiding us, revealing the oceanic science on a global scale that underlies our understanding of our unwritten histories, knowing no bounds in unravelling this story. The penultimate chapter is a smorgasbord of fascinating geological, oceanic and cosmic occurrences that truly inform us of the restless planet we occupy: mega-tsunamis, meteor impacts, earthquakes and disappearing islands that seem at first incomprehensible, but are masterfully explained. Our ability as humans to remember these awe-inspiring or terrifying events is well illustrated. Could you imagine an island, perhaps occupied my humans for millennia, inhabited by plants and animals for millions of years, suddenly slip beneath the waves without warning as if it never existed? Nunn explains the reality of this phenomenon and its implications in a staggeringly descriptive narrative.

The final chapter arrives at our destination with enlightening insights into myths and looks back at the vast span of time when all we had as humans was our voices and our memory; no literature to record in indelible detail all of our thoughts and memories.

Some have said they couldn’t put this book down. So profound are some of the concepts and insights, that these words need savouring, appreciating. Nunn is helping extend our awareness of the true scale of our retention as intellectual beings, as it were, to the edge of memory.

[Judy Monchuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting a book on Indigenous storytelling and its place in a broader world. I think.
To be honest, I can't remember why exactly I placed this on hold at the library. But The Edge of Memory was an interesting read: a fusion of Australian geography, indigenous myths, oral storytelling, history, climate change and speculation. Drawing specifically on the drowning stories from Australia's Aboriginal peoples passed down over thousands of years, oceanic geography scientist Patrick Nunn explores whether these tales and traditions may be rooted in scientifically verifiable fact. He uses long-changing sea levels, glacial timelines and volcanic eruptions to back up his case. It's an intriguing premise and there are places where Nunn makes his point well: largely Australia.
I wish there was more about aboriginal stories in other parts of the world, but perhaps that's another book waiting to be written.

[Douglas Summers-Stay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patrick Nunn has collected oral traditions-- mainly about rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age and geological natural disasters, but also about extinct animals-- from around the world. We can see when the last tsunami, eruption, or sea-level change happened by direct evidence, and so get an estimate of how long these stories have been passed down. And the answer he arrives at is, a VERY long time. Nunn proposes that oral transmission has frequently kept a memory alive of things that happened over 10,000 years ago. I'm willing to grant that it may be possible, but I feel like he doesn't give sufficient consideration of the alternatives. Maybe people who see artifacts when the tide goes out naturally make up stories of when the land was not flooded? Maybe everyone, everywhere, has stories of gods that live on mountains and throw fire because those are big, scary things and we only take note when there happens to be a volcano nearby? Maybe Australian indigenous people are making up stories about the cave paintings they see, rather than passing down a true story about them? Suppose the story was told from a 65-year-old grandmother to a 15-year-old child each time. That means that to get through 10,000 years, you would have to preserve the story through 200 retellings. It's not impossible, but I know a little about how fairy tales have been transmitted, and while a few plot points persist, the oldest known version of the Cinderella story is pretty different from the Disney version. Anyway, I felt like I needed stronger evidence for the claims and stronger evidence against the alternatives to be convinced. It also makes me wonder what it tells us about the oral transmission of Genesis and Exodus. The story of the Flood, especially-- Suppose ancient people built most their settlements right along the seacoasts to catch shellfish or whatever. Then when the glaciers melted, every village in the world would have been flooded. There really was a world-wide flood. It was just really slow motion in most places.

[The Inquisitive Biologist · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Edge of Memory is a fascinating and compulsively readable introduction to the past events that are hidden in our stories and myths. See my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2018...

[Angelique Simonsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite interesting. my love of the written word makes it so hard to imagine the feats of memory needed.

[Stephen Coates · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first chapter of his autobiographical “Meetings with Remarkable Men” G. I. Gurdjieff describes his father, a professional storyteller who retold stories he’d learned from his father who’d learned them from his father etc. and one of those stories G. I. recognised years later as being the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, a tale dated to about 2,100 BCE but only rediscovered and introduced to the West in about 1870, long after G. I.’s father had been telling the tale. This was an example of how, in pre-literate societies, knowledge was preserved by human memory and faithfully transmitted orally for 10s, even 100s of generations, that I expected this book to cover. In part, it did, starting with an account, attributing the events to gods, of the volcanic eruption that resulted in Crater Lake in the American state of Oregon, and dated by modern geological techniques to about 7,600 years ago, the memory of which was still with the native Americans of the locale.

The book went on to recount a large number of oral legends of sudden sea-level rise which flooded areas of previously dry land and that included references to hills, islands and the like which match geological features on the ocean floor in the said localities. The number of such legends which correspond to geological features is astounding. Although some other legendary accounts of sea level rise were cited, most of the accounts were those told by Australian Aborigines recorded by Europeans who made contact with them as Australia was settled although curiously omitted was an account of Aborigines in what was to become Melbourne relating that there had been a waterfall where Port Philip Bay meets the Southern Ocean cited by Geoffrey Blainey in his “A Shorter History of Australia”. The book then went on to correlate the determined level of sea level rise with that calculated by geologists to date the events described in the said legends which were thus determined to be in the order of 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.

All well and good, but the problem I had with this book was its focus. Ostensibly a book about the preservation and reliable oral transmission of knowledge in pre-literate societies, the focus of the book then shifted to legendary accounts of lost past sudden rises of sea level and of these accounts, it was largely focussed on accounts recounted by Australian Aboriginies. A lot of detailed and interesting material was presented, but it would appear that the author had a difficulty deciding what was to be the focus of the book which shifted at least twice as it was put together. Serious editing would have turned a book presenting great material into a great book.

[Emma Hastings · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Edge of Memory (2018), Patrick Nunn argues that humans have preserved within their oral traditions memories of past events that occurred more than 7,000 years ago. Despite the seeming outlandishness of the claim—how could humans pass down specific information accurately for hundreds of generations when most of us barely know who are great-grandparents even are?—there is a narrow area of his evidence that seems convincing. Nunn’s strongest argument is that Aboriginal Australians, living in an oral culture in which accurate knowledge of the natural world was crucial for survival, have passed down memories of dramatic sea level rise that occurred about 7,000 – 13,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. Many of the Aboriginal stories that Nunn collects refer to specific areas of the Australian coast such as Spencer Gulf and the Wellesley Islands, recounting a time when water rushed in or rose to permanently drown coastal areas and create gulfs and islands where contiguous land once existed, in a manner that could match what scientists have determined actually happened in those locations. As wild as this sounds, many indigenous Australian peoples employ a complex system of cross-checking within families to ensure that stories are passed down accurately over the generations.

However, when Nunn strays from Aboriginal Australian tales of rising sea levels, the plausibility of his argument plummets. The myths he relates from other areas of the world are far too vague to relate to specific historical events, with the exception of the Klamath story of the eruption that created Crater Lake 7,600 years ago. In fact, one occasionally wonders why Nunn shoehorned in these other areas of the world when his argument so clearly holds the most merit in the specific and unique geographic and demographic conditions in Australia. I almost put the book down in an early chapter when Nunn suggests that the story of Prometheus chained to the mountains and having his liver torn out by an eagle could recall a volcanic eruption, because Prometheus’s agonized screaming would resemble the sounds of an eruption, and eruption clouds sometimes look like eagles. What troubles me the most is how this interpretation of the Prometheus myth discounts the deeper, non-literal meanings of this myth, about the contentious relationship between humans and gods and the origins of sacrifice. The book is conspicuously missing the voices of any contemporary Aboriginal Australian people, leaving readers to wonder if these myths hold other, more important meanings to the people who tell them, meanings that could contradict the claim that these stories record historical events. If anyone is aware of an indigenous response to this book, I would love to read it.

Finally, a bit of a diversion for a particular pet peeve of mine: how endnotes are presented in nonfiction books. In my opinion, the best books label each page in the endnotes section with “Notes to pages x-x,” making it easy to find the note you’re looking for regardless of where you are in the book. The worst provide no such labeling, and instead require you to determine the chapter you’re currently reading (which is easy to forget if the pages in the chapter aren’t titled with the chapter number) and then go digging through the endnotes until you find the notes for the proper chapter, and then search for the original note number. The Edge of Memory has the latter system, which is especially frustrating because important information is often buried in those notes, such when certain myths were first recorded. In one case, Nunn describes a “greenhorn geologist” who reports that certain Fijian myths contain memories of volcanic eruptions, only to bury in the endnotes that this geologist is indeed him, meaning that this anecdote which seems to indicate a network of scholars who support Nunn’s theories actually provides no additional weight to his argument. This may seem like a somewhat petty complaint, but as soon as it seems like you’re using endnotes to obscure information rather than provide it, my BS radar goes off.

That being said, this book does present exciting possibilities about the power of human memory. If you’re interested in indigenous knowledge, the limits of human memory, or the preservation of knowledge in myth, it’s worth checking out The Edge of Memory, if only to determine for yourself if the argument holds water.

[Ben Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very very interesting. But it felt a bit undercooked, and a bit... forced? I don't know the word for it. But the author clearly believes strongly in his point of view and I don't think there was enough discussion of whether each of the examples were passable as evidence.

So lots of the Australian Aboriginal tribes have stories about the sea rising. If I lived by a tidal sea and wanted to tell a fun story, maybe saying the sea flooded the land is an obvious choice to add to a fantastical tale... And people on Flores have stories about a race of diminutive humanoids. If I wanted to tell a fun story about things that are almost human but not quite, an easy thing to do is to make them very small, or very big, or maybe give them an animal head or some wings... I'm not saying it all is coincidence, but the possibility of these just being stories was kind of ignored, I thought. Presumably SOME stories are made up - the Cyclops or Medusa or Ratatosk and the World Tree (excuse my knowledge being restricted to Europe) - but where do we draw the line? Would have loved a bit more on this, as it seems to me to be one of the large barriers to science 'believing' in these oral tales.

Also, there is an implicit (as far as I remember) assumption that since 20-odd Australian Aboriginal tribes have sea level stories, and they're separated around the continent, then surely that's too many to just be coincidence/come from a common source. Yet, although the author leans on historical/comparative linguistics at one point, I'd love to hear more on the fact that it is generally agreed that most Aboriginal languages are descended from one language which spread about 4,000 years ago. If a language could spread in this time, could not (a kernel of) a story about sea levels (which may or may not have been made up) have spread with it, which was subsequently adapted to fit local geography? He makes a nice point about using 'motifs' to trace a common ancestor for Little Red Riding Hood - can we not apply the same to Sea Level Rising?

As a fan of mythology and mythologisation, I found it fascinating. And we certainly should be doing more to preserve the knowledge of aboriginal inhabitants around the world, regardless of their use to science. And this is a very interesting look into this world. I just... wanted a bit more. Perhaps a sequel?

[Mark Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nunn makes the case that oral traditions can preserve memory of events from long ago, even 10,000 years ago or more. Mostly he does this by citing 21 legends from around the coast of Australia that describe sea encroachments, which he takes as indicating rising sea levels and therefore must be thousands of years old. He also devotes some attention to folklore of meteorites, volcanoes, extinct animals, and disappearing islands. However, he gives little consideration to alternative explanations. I have seen one of his "sea level rise" myths described by someone else as evidence for a tsunami, for example. His example of an Indonesian myth of little people being inspired by _Homo florensiensis_ is particularly unconvincing, since he makes no effort to explain (or even mention) similar folklore from Europe, North America, and probably other areas. I cannot much fault Nunn for not specifying what it would take to falsify his hypothesis because I cannot think of such criteria myself, but he should at least be more forthcoming about its weaknesses. I would particularly have liked to see a chapter on how oral traditions are known to change and spread. Still, the book is interesting reading, and some of the cases Nunn describes are difficult to explain except as millennia-old records.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

So people listened to the indigenous stories, took them seriously, including details of geography and used that to judge how long ago the story took place. Looking at archaeology and sea level changes and listening to the stories of Indigenous Australians and Californians, and tracing historic migration patterns, Patrick Nunn shows how stories of events have continued on for 5000 years with many details that appear to be historically accurate - and then he shares stories from even longer ago. It was a bit Australian focused, or at least I feel like I would have appreciated it more if I knew Australian geography, but when it moved to California that was nice. It went to Wales and other places where we couldn't really hope to be an expert at all the locations, but I think Australia was most represented. A drawback of an audiobook was wincing at the pronunciation of the Californian place names - also I hope the book would have had some illustrations.

Listened to as an audiobook through Audible

[SuzAnne King · Rating 5 out of 5]

My interest in aboriginal rock art started when I was putting together an art project for primary school students on Mural Paintings. It sparked my interest and an eventual trip to Australia to gather firsthand experiences.
Fast forward to 2018 and I am running an event for the Brisbane Writers Festival where Patrick Nunn is launching this book. The oldest peoples in the world have stories to tell that have been largely ignored by western science because they "haven't been written down". But these "Indigenous peoples", he writes, "have preserved..stories for perhaps more than 10 millennia". And these stories are increasingly supported by hard science.
It's a must read for geologists, sociologists, artists and anyone studying folk tradition. 5/5

[Allie Seliger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book very much changed my way of viewing mythology and oral history for the better. The author makes a great case for the strengths of oral histories, and he provides a clear understanding of how stories that seem fantastical can have their roots in very real events.

That said, it often feels like the author spends more time talking about the science behind volcanoes and sea-level rise than he does about their impact on oral history. A basic explanation would have sufficed to get his main point across, but the excessive amount of in-depth scientific context only seemed to draw attention away from the main point, in my view.

Would still recommend this book, just with the side note that many passages might be skim-worthy.

[Roger Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This great book marshals an impressive set of carefully collected evidence to argue the new and previously controversial claim that traditional societies all over the world have faithfully and remarkably accurately (in some cases) preserved the memory of ancient occurrences like tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and sea level change over many thousands of years (over 10000 years in some cases for Indigenous Australia). Professor Nunn is a careful scientist so anyone wanting to dispute his claims will need an equally impressing grasp of scientific methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation. There are some wonderful and unexpected finding presented here. Highly recommended.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look at pre-literate societies and their stories

I found this book interesting. It tries to match ancient spoken stories to geologic and climatic events and to claim that these stories are a good source of information for looking at these events. Author Patrick Nunn is a good writer and I enjoyed his writing style and the way he tried to make his case. I did think that a lot of what he proposes is speculative and I appreciated his non-dogmatic way of presenting his thesis. At a minimum, it is a good book about human migration and pre-literate society and is worth reading.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

[Karel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive book with a clear hypothesis. The idea that stories could be told from generation to generation for thousands of years with enough stability to contain advice and information on historic events (such as rising sea levels) is mind-blowing. What struck me most was the authors meticulous, scientific style and method. The book does not contain eye-catching quotes, exaggerations or simplifications, it just does what it sets out to do. After reading so much non-fiction that can't resist filling the gaps in data with creative leaps and bold statements, this book is refreshingly honest in what it can and cannot prove.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a great introduction to euhemerism and taught me a lot about Australian Aboriginal traditions, which I appreciate. The level of respect and deference the author shows to nonliterate cultures and their knowledge is refreshing. It is surprisingly readable for being an academic work.

However, I found its organization to be all over the place, and it relied too heavily on footnotes when it didn’t need to. Plus, it focused mostly on a very specific topic, Australian memories of sea level rise, while only briefly mentioning other traditions that are arguably more interesting. At least I’ve come away with a new perspective on myths and mythmaking.

[Mary Arkless · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borrowed from the library, got delayed by all the holidays and then a nasty cold/virus.

The author gathered oral folklore from around the world, then looked at geology to see if they could be verified, but also if an estimate for their dates could be ventured. The best examples were Aboriginal stories from Australia, as they were mostly cut off from the rest of the world. Also, they had an oral culture, not a written one, until the Europeans showed up.

Examples used were coastal flooding, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, extinct fauna, and fairytales.

It was all very interesting.

[Yoric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written communication is quite recent. Oral communication has been used for much longer to pass knowledge from generation to generation.
It looks like this book's purpose is to glorify the oral communication in passing knowledge, and how we underestimate it, and how we felt superior in replacing it with modern ways (writing).
I'm not really sure where it's heading to. There are a lot of historian considerations. Maybe a long read for a few insights?

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always believed that our oral tradition stories were founded on true events! I love to be found right in this assumption! I can still recall a very hostile 6th grade teacher telling us much of what we began to hear was just so much nonsense. Hooray for the scientists, anthropologists, and others for proving what we knew all Along! There is just so much to learn! I received a Kindle arc from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

[Weaponisedfunk · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this absolutely fascinating look at the way humans use oral traditions to preserve knowledge, Nunn, with a particular focus on Precolonial Australia, writes with a fluid and conversational style, matching historical projections and geological data with sacred stories from around the continent and across the world to answer the question - how much is there that we might not realise we remember?

[Avril · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating deep dive into indigenous oral stories backed up by scientific research. Using the dating of massive geological events such as sea level rise, land slides and volcanic eruptions to prove the age and veracity of oral story telling that have survived over many millennia. A really interesting read.

[Jonathan Northcote · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is particularly interesting in this book is that it demonstrates that peoples without writing can pass down memories of significant events, over millennia, through traditional oral stories. The stories mentioned in the book could go back 9000 years or more - to the rising of sea levels due to the melting of the ice caps at the end of the last ice age.

[Dan Herrera · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, but hyperspecific to aboriginal Australians and historical changes in sealevels. The author is up front about this in the first chapter, but I originally checked out the book anticipating a broader handling of the topic. Still fascinating information, however, which has really made me think.

[Sally Piper · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating exploration of oral storytelling traditions that support the occurrence of geophysical events (coastal drownings and volcanic eruptions) as corroborated through hard science, indicating that human memories can be retained through stories for millennia.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting exploration

Great scoping out of the empirical roots of oral history stories. Love that anybody is even thinking about this. Super annoyed that the kindle version does not include the color plates the author refers to a couple dozen times throughout the book.

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the type of book I would usually read, I was given it as a present. Intriguing in parts but overall I found it difficult to maintain my interest

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oral histories are important and can contain useful information, unencumbered by exaggeration or nuance or memory errors even over many years or centuries.

[Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had some interesting points but many of the main assertions were only weakly supported.

[Jennifer Haynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating topic to draw more wonder of the ancient - modern dedication of our Indigenous people's scholars and record keeping. What a gift