Myths Help Geologists Understand Modern Threats

morleron writes "According to a report in the "Guardian Unlimited" geologists have begun using ancient myths as clues to geologic events in Earth's past. Among other things scientists have followed the tracks of ancient stories to uncover the huge Seattle earthquake and tsunami that obliterated large parts of the coasts of Washington and Oregon roughly 300 years ago; the discovery that a volcano on Fiji is active instead of dormant as has been thought for years; and that the Biblical and Near Eastern myths of a world ending flood are probably based on the sudden inundation of the Black Sea when the landbridge that used to link Turkey with Europe - what is now called the Bosporus - suddenly collapsed some 7600 years ago. It's amazing how much information our ancestors passed on in oral and early written myths...we're finally getting smart enough to listen."

Comments

Re:It's not all on us...

[Tanmi-Daiow]

Because they still believed that Gods/Great Spirits did everything and controlled everything so all they had to do to understand what happened is make up something that appeased that and didn't contradict it.

Re:It's not all on us...

[whitehatlurker]

Well, the stories that were written (well, spoken, since most of these are verbal cultures) as things really happened got lost as that was too boring.

The story tellers had to "sex it up" to be certain that the story got through. And the sexed-up stories survived. So, we get thunderbirds ;-)

It's rather cool that things haven't really changed that much over time. People flock to movies "based on a true story", but aren't willing to pay to see a documentary on the same story. (Unless the story's already "sexy".)