Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

July 2, 2024 10:30 AM

Two slightly burnt, fat-covered sticks...... discovered inside an Australian cave are evidence of a healing ritual that was passed down unchanged by more than 500 generations of Indigenous people over the last 12,000 years, according to new research.
posted by symbioid (11 comments total)

It's cool that this ritual was able to be transmitted via oral tradition over such a long period of time.

But I'm also kind of surprised that the ritual did not apparently undergo refinement or replacement in that time. Not due to information decay, but because people are always trying to tweak things, try new things, and get a better result.

Would that suggest this ritual was particularly effective?
posted by keep_evolving at 11:32 AM on July 2 [3 favorites]

...effective?
posted by kickingtheground at 11:39 AM on July 2 [4 favorites]

Should I ask how they smeared the sticks in human fat, or is it better not to know?
posted by daveliepmann at 11:42 AM on July 2

I couldn't help but find this, from a French scientist involved, amusing:

He lamented that the ancient animal paintings found in French caves would probably "never reveal their meaning" in a similar way.

If only the French had continued hunting the mighty aurochs up until the present day!
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:55 AM on July 2 [1 favorite]

wombat details are interesting [pdf, Nature], though i understand why they might not be highlighted elsewhere...
posted by HearHere at 12:44 PM on July 2 [1 favorite]

Would that suggest this ritual was particularly effective?

Given the description of the ritual it's hard to see how it was effective at anything except maybe as a placebo.

In the notes, Howitt describes in the late 1880s the rituals of Gunaikurnai medicine men and women called "mulla-mullung".

One ritual involved tying something that belonged to a sick person to the end of a throwing stick smeared in human or kangaroo fat. The stick was thrust into the ground before a small fire was lit underneath.

"The mulla-mullung would then chant the name of the sick person, and once the stick fell, the charm was complete," a Monash University statement said.

posted by Reverend John at 12:45 PM on July 2 [2 favorites]

Also, it's possible that the tools for the ritual were the same, but that's not necessarily the whole ritual. It's still impressive that even part of the ritual remains.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:50 PM on July 2 [6 favorites]

To guess, if you are conducting a ritual of any real length with some prep work, the person is probably receiving additional care and attention. At a minimum water, food, shelter, and rest?
posted by Slackermagee at 1:02 PM on July 2 [1 favorite]

Also, it's possible that the tools for the ritual were the same, but that's not necessarily the whole ritual. It's still impressive that even part of the ritual remains.

Technically it's not even clear whatever purposes the tools served were the same as the purposes they were used for later - it's an assumption, though not a surprising one.

This is really interesting regardless. The research paper wasn't gated for me and has a lot more details, including that the cave showed evidence of ritual use for a period of 23,000 years and that the 1800s rituals weren't just for healing (they were also for malicious magic...)

To guess, if you are conducting a ritual of any real length with some prep work, the person is probably receiving additional care and attention. At a minimum water, food, shelter, and rest?

According to the (short snippets of) description in the paper, the person the magic was supposed to affect wasn't or didn't need to be present (that was what the "article belonging to the intended victim" was for). The caves were apparently used only for ritual - no meal remnants or other evidence of habitation was found.
posted by trig at 1:59 PM on July 2

Also

By law in Victoria, Australia, Indigenous cultural materials (including archaeological materials) remain the property of the Aboriginal Traditional Owners. This is the case with all the materials reported here. The samples do not have accession numbers and will be returned to the GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation, who will in due course decide how and where to store or display the materials.

posted by trig at 2:05 PM on July 2

... people are always trying to tweak things, try new things, and get a better result.
posted by keep_evolving

Well, with your user name, you'd probably think that!

Seriously, my understanding is that people with traditional oral histories actually didn't tweak things. Even today rituals are patterned formal acts of custom, done for certain reasons, with an expected outcome, and things have to be 'just so' to be effective. Not that there probably wasn't some drift due to misremembering or other errors of passing things on verbally, but overall, staying the same. I would think that an important 'medical procedure' would be subject to memorization and practice to assure a novice gets things right. Otherwise, what's to stop any shaman-come-lately happening along? The article also mentions from the get-go that it's a ritual 'passed down unchanged' so apparently immediately recognizable by current tribal members.

Can anyone knowledgeable comment on this?
Didn't our modern penchant for tweaking things really come about along with the definition of the scientific method?
posted by BlueHorse at 3:14 PM on July 2