People tell tales to explain what they see – centuries later, scientists try to map handed-down myths onto real geological events.
The trilobite manuport (Bainella sp) from Robberg on the Cape south coast was carried at least 10 km to a small cave shelter. For scale, the bar is 10 cm long.
Author Supplied
Tales of giants can be found around the world - in Wales, in Australia, and the Pacific Islands. They helped people explain the sometimes cataclysmic changes to the environment they saw around them.
Mount Mazama, a volcano in Oregon. Indigenous stories preserve tales of its eruption more than 7,000 years ago.
Shutterstock.com
Old stories from around the world tell of drowned islands, volcanic eruptions and upheavals to the land around them. Increasingly we are realising these tales preserve actual memory, often from thousands of years ago.
Cataclysmic natural disasters frame indelible human stories.
Francis Danby, The Deluge
New research suggests a mythical flood in China really happened about 4,000 years ago. It’s the latest case of scientists matching ancient tales to actual local natural disasters.
Research Professor and Director of the Southeastern Paleoamerican Survey (SEPAS) at the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina