maaaaybe the oldest stories in the world

What are the oldest stories in the world? I'd like to suggest 2 contenders.

Klamath Sources:

Gunditjmara Sources:
Early human occupation of southeastern Australia: New insights from 40Ar/39Ar dating of young volcanoes. Matchan et al. 2019.

Disclaimer: Use my videos as a rough guide to a topic. I am not an expert, I may get things wrong. This is why I always post my sources so you can critique my work and verify things for yourselves. Of course I aim to be as accurate as possible which is why you will only find reputable sources in my videos. Secondly, information is always subject to changes as new information is uncovered by archaeologists.

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[StefanMilo]

Anyone know any other super ancient tales that we can kind of date?

[timmccarthy]

I felt a magnitude 5.8 earthquake 12 years ago and have yet to stop talking about it. If i saw Mount Mazama pop off my children's children's children would hear about it.

[theneocypher]

Klamath Tribal member and long time subscriber here. Thank you so much for talking about my tribe and our legends. We owe you a thanks! Great content as always and I can’t to see more!

[JobKiriaku]

The fact that some legends of modern tribal communities of beasts and monsters roaming the wilderness are based off of real life mega fauna that existed and that their distant ancestors interacted with is pretty cool.

[paulrudd]

Hey Stefan, there are very old stories here in Australia. But some just can’t be dated. They don’t necessarily relate to a specific event that can be dated. But here in Victoria, bass strait flooded somewhere between 7-8k years ago. This put pressure on the tectonic plate and throughout the western district of Victoria, many volcanoes erupted which changed the landscape forever. Some indigenous people were recorded telling stories about these eruptions. In regards to the eel traps you mentioned, there are older ones in the Australian alps that go back to the last ice age, at least. Huge channels and water management systems. Also, eel traps have been found in central Australia that used to be employed in the large inland lakes - which are now completely arid. And I think the oldest art on earth has been found here, with the stone engravings in Tasmania probably the oldest man made art on the planet. A great book on this is by an amazing ethnographic and cultural researcher, Josephine Flood, called ‘archaeology of the Dreamtime’. It’s a shame that most people who are interested in this area of research don’t take more interest in what has been discovered in Australia. It’s just seen as a bit of an aside to the grand picture of humanity, which I believe reflects the European primitivist discourse that permeates academic thinking. So it’s great to see you referencing Australia’s indigenous people on your channel.

[pinchevulpes]

As an indigenous person and social studies teacher I want to say thank you for making points of reference to oral historical reference points for Aboriginal peoples which in many instances do not allow deviations from the exact way a story is told and handed down like a library book one knowledge keeper after another.

[suneeln]

In the world of YouTube where extremely unqualified people are peddling false history, fake facts, guesses, conspiracy clickbaits, your channel is a breath of fresh air.
Thank you Stefan.

[yildizofyiti]

I live inside the caldera of Mount Aso in Japan. Here, we have a legend about how there used to be a huge lake surrounded by the outer rim of the caldera. Then the god Takeiwatatsu-no-Mikoto kicked a gap into the outer rim so all the water could flow out, which is why people can now live inside the caldera and grow crops 😊

[HistoryDose]

It's worth looking into the oral histories from Haida Gwaii! This detail didn't make my video on the Haida PNW people, but some of their oral histories appear to make reference to glaciers and other climate-related events that some archeologists have linked to occurrences over 10, 000 BP. Pacific Rim Archeology's 2005 book "Haida Gwaii: Human History and
Environment from the Time of Loon to the Time of the Iron People" is a great resource for this.

[callump]

Interesting you mentioned Neolithic tombs in Ireland, Stefan. In medieval times, the mounds in county Meath such as Knowth, Dowth and Newgrange (it was not then known that they were megalithic tombs) were known as the “Hills of Incest”. Recent DNA studies of the bodies found in these discovered megalithic tombs showed that they were the product of incestual relationships, probably to conserve a royal or aristocratic bloodline like in Ancient Egypt. It’s been hypothesised that this naming is due to some folk memory or oral history that dates back to the times of these burials, around 5500 years ago!

[mdyas]

Oldest story that can be tracked, nearly every culture has a story regarding the Pleiades also known as the Seven Sisters. Thing is only 6 can be seen with the naked eye. The last time 7 individual stars would be able to be seen without optics was in 100, 000 BCE. Yet every single myth and story references Seven. That is some deep time there.

[malteaurich]

Hi Stefan, great video!
The oldest story I know of is about the Plejades, which in many different cultures all over the world (from indigineous peoples in Africa, Australia and the Americas as well as in ancient European mythologies) are called the "seven sisters". In many, but not all of this stories, these seven sisters are pursuit by either one or three hunter(s), which are linked with Orion or the three stars which form Orions belt. To save the sisters, they are put on the night sky. Of course, up to this point it could be a simple case of convergent story-evolution. However, another thing that links all of this stories is the fact that only 6 stars are visible in the "seven sisters". Therefore, there is an explanation to the question what happened to the seventh sister in all the stories. But these explanations are different in every culture. Modern observations of the Plejades-Starcluster have shown that one of the six bright mayor stars are infact two, slowly passing each other from ouer point of view. Simulations have shown that between 80.000 an 70.000 years ago, the two stars would have started to get to close to be distinguished by even the best human eyes. So the story of the seven sisters and their cosmic safeguard seems to be at least older than 70.000 years old and therefore could be even older than the Diaspora of Homo sapiens out of Africa...
Of course, all of this could just be a huge coincident, but I think that just the possibility of one story old enough to be just "human" in origin is realy awesome ^^

[PrehistoricPro]

Oh man, I love you for this, Stefan! I'm a PhD researcher in archaeology specialising in prehistoric artificial memory systems (i.e. technologies developed to record, store, & transmit information in oral traditions). I'm so glad you covered this, as people tend to view the written word as having sumpremacy over oral traditions, but that's because people don't understand how they work or how reliable they can be at retaining accurate information over long periods of time. I think it's really important to highlight the intellectual lives of indigenous people, as well as prehistoric people, as it can help change perceptions of how those groups think & innovate - and that can help combat bigotry. So, thank you for this. These stories are a remarkable & fascinating part of human history. It's these kind of things that made me want to be a prehistorian.

This was a really well researched & presented video. Only thing I'll add is that the Gundjitmara story won't necessarily have been passed down through 1000+ generations. One strategy employed in oral traditions to reduce the 'telephone game effect', where repeated information gets distorted, is to pass stories from grandparent to grandchild, rather than parent to child. Therefore, halving the number of people who have to retain & pass on the information.

Also: I am Do the Damn Research! on Twitter. I haven't posted in a long while, so you might not remember me, but we follow(ed) each other & have interacted a few times. There's a real dearth of quality SciComm in our field, which is what contributes to the popularity of people like Hancock & Ancient Aliens. Those beliefs can have dire political consequences. People like you & Miniminuteman are doing valuable work! Keep it up!

[greenman]

I LOVE that Stefan got excited seeing a chipmunk. That's a lot like a being thrilled to spot a seagull while walking along the coast. It's great. People should never lose their sense of wonder or excitement for such things. But it is particularly endearing when it is someone so knowledgeable and when he's walking around Crater flipping Lake.

[joshuapatrick]

250+ generations have preserved the memory of this event with no written words, just incredible

[AC_Blanco]

Just returned from Morrisons with a bag of Crisps and Haribo. As I sat down, I noticed that Milo had uploaded a new video. It felt like everything fell into place perfectly.

[Wizz]

On the subject of stories about Volcanos, the Rök Runestone, constructed in or around the year 800, may reference a volcanic eruption as well. Recent studies have found that in the year 530, a series of volcanic eruptions in Iceland spread a cloud of smoke over pretty much all of Europe and most of North America for 11 eleven years. about half of all people in Scandinavia died, and there are some parts in Ireland that are completely devoid of graves from that time, too. And heres where the Rökstenten comes in. In the early 2000s, a man named Bo Ralph noticed parallels between a Riddle on the stone, and an old English Riddle in the Exeter Book revolving around the sun and moon and how they "steal each other's light"

A portion of the inscription reads as follows:

_"Þat sagum ąnnart, hwaʀ for nīu aldum ą̄n urði fiaru meðr Hræiðgutum, auk dō meðr/dœmiʀ hann/enn umb sakaʀ. Rēð Þiaurikʀ hinn þurmōði, stilliʀ flutna, strąndu Hræiðmaraʀ. Sitiʀ nū garwʀ ą̄ guta sīnum, skialdi umb fatlaðʀ, skati Mǣringa. Þat sagum twalfta, hwar hæstʀ sē Gunnaʀ etu wēttwąngi ą̄, kunungaʀ twæiʀ tigiʀ swāð ą̄ liggia."_

Which translates to English as:

_"I say the to the young men, which the two war-booties were, which twelve times were taken as war-booty, both together from various men.
I say this second, who nine generations ago lost his life with the Hreidgoths; and died with them for his guilt.
Þjóðríkr the bold,
chief of sea-warriors,
ruled over the shores
of the Hreiðsea.
Now he sits armed on
§B his Goth(ic horse),
his shield strapped,
the prince of the Mærings."_

A generation is about 30 years, 9 generations would be 270 years.
800-270 = 530

The "battle" is probably referring to Ragnarök, pretty much the end of the world, but the talea go that before the battle will come a "mighty winter" which will cause mass famine and block out the sun. So here's the answer to the Riddle.

"Who lost his life nine generations ago?"

The sun.

[pinchevulpes]

The indigenous people like Diné, Hopi, of the southwest have stories about the volcano fields near Grants NM. the solidified rock from the outflow of the volcano is called the Giants Blood after the twin monster slayers destroyed one of the original enemies of men in that area.

[mattswadling]

My people, the Birpai people of NSW Australia, tell a story of three brothers who were turned in islands in the ocean. The three brothers mountains are now all inland. Could this story recount a time when the ocean level rebounded after the last glacial maximum? We were here during that time.

[MothLand]

Your enthusiasm for what you research and educate us on, alongside when you visit these sites is contagious. Thank you for your efforts and work.