火山噴發(fā)的證據表明土著人的故事可能是地球上最古老的故事

火山噴發(fā)的證據表明土著人的故事可能是地球上最古老的故事

A story told for generations by the Gunditjmara people of southern Australia is thought to describe a volcanic eruption. Now, dating of lava produced by a volcano thought to feature in the tale shows the account is 37,000 years old, quite likely making it the oldest tale on Earth.

澳大利亞南部岡蒂奇馬拉人世代相傳的一個故事被認為描述了一次火山噴發(fā)?，F(xiàn)在，據認為是故事中出現(xiàn)的一座火山噴發(fā)出的熔巖的年代表明，這個故事有37000年的歷史，很可能是地球上最古老的故事。

The lava flows of South-western Victoria mark it as a former volcanic province, but the timing of the last eruptions has been uncertain.

維多利亞州西南部的熔巖流標志著它曾是一個火山省份，但最近一次噴發(fā)的時間還不確定。

The traditional owners of the Budj Bim heritage area, the Gunditjmara, have an origins story about four giants who gave life and laws to the land. In the Dreaming, an ancestral being – Budj Bim – emerges from the ground to become a domed hill with lava spilling out of its head, while the story also includes references to the “land and trees dancing”. It's not hard to see how this could be a description of a major eruption, leading anthropologists to wonder if the Gunditjmara were living there at the time of the last eruption. The possibility gained a boost with the discovery in the 1940s of an ax beneath the most recent layer of ash.

Budj Bim遺產地區(qū)的傳統(tǒng)所有者，Gunditjmara，有一個關于四個巨人的起源故事，他們給了這片土地生命和法律。在夢境中，一個古老的生物——Budj Bim——從地面出現(xiàn)，變成了一個圓頂?shù)男∩?，熔巖從它的頭上噴涌而出，而故事中也提到了“土地和樹木在跳舞”。不難看出，這可能是對一次大噴發(fā)的描述，這讓人類學家懷疑岡蒂奇馬拉人在上次噴發(fā)時是否生活在那里。20世紀40年代，在最近的一層火山灰下發(fā)現(xiàn)了一把斧頭，使得這種可能性大大增加。

Dr Erin Matchan of the University of Melbourne used 40Ar/39Ar to date the most recent eruptions from the Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes. The technique relies on the fact potassium radioactively decays to argon-39, so as time goes on potassium-rich rocks the amount of argon-39 builds up relative to the more common argon-40. Advances in mass spectrometry have recently made this technique much more widely available for dating volcanic rocks. In the journal Geology, she reports they released lava and ash respectively around 37,000 years ago, with an uncertainty of 3,100 years.

墨爾本大學的Erin Matchan博士使用40Ar/39Ar來確定Budj Bim和塔山火山最近的噴發(fā)日期。這項技術基于這樣一個事實:鉀放射性衰變?yōu)閍rgon-39，因此隨著時間的推移，在富含鉀的巖石上，argon-39的含量相對于普通的argon-40逐漸增加。近年來，質譜分析技術的發(fā)展使這項技術更廣泛地應用于火山巖的年代測定。她在《地質學》雜志上報告說，它們分別在大約3萬7千年前釋放了熔巖和火山灰，不確定度為3100年。

These lava flows are part of a series produced by the Budj Bim volcano, the most recent of which, possibly recorded in Aboriginal myths, was 37,000 years ago. Robirensi/Shutterstock

If the Gunditjmara story really does describe one of these eruptions, it is almost certainly the oldest surviving story whose origins we can identify.

如果Gunditjmara的故事確實描述了一次這樣的噴發(fā)，那么它幾乎肯定是現(xiàn)存最古老的故事，它的起源我們可以確定。

It might seem impossible that eye-witness accounts could survive over such a vast sweep of time, even modified into myth. However, around much of coastal Australia Aboriginal stories refer to lands that were overwhelmed by rising seas, matching events that happened 7,000 years ago. An account of a volcanic eruption in northern Australia appears to be from the same time.

目擊者的描述在這么長的一段時間里仍然存在，甚至被修改成神話，這似乎是不可能的。然而，在澳大利亞沿海地區(qū)，許多土著居民的故事都是關于被海平面上升淹沒的土地，這與7000年前發(fā)生的事件相吻合。澳大利亞北部的一次火山噴發(fā)似乎來自同一時期。

Matchan thinks the four giants story is five times older, but if 7,000 is possible, why not 30,000 more? The hardest period for the story's survival would have been the last two centuries, during which Indigenous Australians were banned from speaking their own language, and frequently had their children stolen by white authorities.

Matchan認為“四大巨人”的歷史要長五倍，但如果7000年是可能的，為什么不是30000年呢?這個故事最艱難的時期是過去的兩個世紀，在這期間，土著澳大利亞人被禁止說自己的語言，他們的孩子經常被白人當局偷走。

Matchan pointed out to IFLScience it is well established that Indigenous Australians have been in south-eastern Australia for at least 40,000 years, so habitation of the Gunditjmara lands almost certainly stretches back that far. However, aside from the ax and one profoundly mysterious 120,000-year-old possible fireplace and midden all the evidence of human occupation comes from the last 13,000 years.

Matchan向IFLScience指出，澳大利亞土著人已經在澳大利亞東南部生活了至少40000年，所以岡蒂奇馬拉人的居住地幾乎可以肯定可以追溯到那個年代。然而，除了斧頭和一個非常神秘的12萬年前的可能的壁爐和垃圾堆之外，所有人類占領的證據都來自于最近的1.3萬年。

The lake in Budj Bim today. CC BY 1.0/Public Domain

Matchan and her co-authors admit the evidence for the origins of the four giants story is far from conclusive. It might not describe a volcanic eruption at all. Or perhaps it was inherited from people fleeing the eruption of Mount Gambier, 130 kilometers (80 miles) northwest, which could be as little as 5,000 years old.

Matchan和她的合著者承認，關于四大巨人故事起源的證據還遠沒有定論。它可能根本不能描述火山噴發(fā)?；蛘撸赡苁菑奶与x西北部130公里(80英里)的岡比亞火山噴發(fā)的人們那里繼承而來的，而岡比亞火山可能只有5000年的歷史。

Nevertheless, there is mitogenomic evidence that Indigenous peoples may have remained in discrete geographical areas for tens of thousands of years following initial migration from Northern Australia. A people forced into a major migration by a local disaster would be expected to have interbred much more with their neighbors. The area's remarkable eel traps, the world's oldest aquaculture remnants are part of the Gunditjmara culture, indicating their presence in the area for at least 6,600 years.

然而，有mitogenomic evidence表明，土著民族可能在最初從澳大利亞北部移民后的數(shù)萬年里一直生活在離散的地理區(qū)域。一個因當?shù)貫碾y而被迫進行大規(guī)模移民的民族，應該會與他們的鄰居進行更多的交配。該地區(qū)非凡的捕鰻器是世界上最古老的水產養(yǎng)殖遺跡，也是岡蒂奇馬拉文化的一部分，表明它們至少在該地區(qū)存在了6600年。

Proving the four giants story really does describe the eruption may never be possible, but recovering additional relics from before the eruptions might tell us a lot about the people who inhabited the area. The reason nothing new has been found for 70 years, Matchan says, “Is probably because no one has really looked. The ax was a chance find by a farmer digging post holes, rather than part of a deliberate search."

要證明“四大巨人”的故事確實描述了火山噴發(fā)可能是不可能的，但從火山噴發(fā)前找到更多的遺跡可能會告訴我們很多關于該地區(qū)居民的情況。70年來沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)任何新東西的原因，Matchan說，“可能是因為沒有人真正看過。”這把斧頭是一個農民在挖柱子洞時偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)的，而不是經過深思熟慮后才找到的。”