Aboriginal legends reveal ancient secrets to science - BBC News
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-32701311
Last year, he travelled to Victoria with tsunami expert James Goff, also from UNSW, to visit members of the Gunditjmara people
“They describe this gigantic wave coming very far inland and killing everybody except those who were up on the mountaintops, and they actually name all the different locations where people survived,” says Mr Hamacher.
He and Mr Goff took core samples from locations between 500m and 1km (0.6 miles) inland, and at each spot, they found a layer of ocean sediment, about 2m down, indicating that a tsunami likely washed over the area hundreds, or possibly thousands, of years ago.
The samples need further analysis but Mr Hamacher says it is a “very exciting” result that suggests the legend could be true.
Earlier this year, another team of researchers presented a paper arguing that stories from Australia’s coastal Aboriginal communities might “represent genuine and unique observations” of sea level rises that occurred between 7,000 and 11,000 years ago.
Quelle belle #culture ... quel triste sort que celui des #peuples_premiers ...