Piotr wrote
>There is no memory of mammoth hunting in Siberia,
though real mammoth carcasses are regularly found there, fossil ivory
has always been an important object of trade, and mammoths survived
Neanderthals by twenty millennia at least. The local stories about
mammoths have nothing to do with reality. It's extremely unlikely
that
any cultural memory of the Neanderthals should have survived till
historical times.
That is strange since Mammoth finds have been recorded since at least
the 16th century, and presumably were found before that too. I know
of some Scythian ornamentation that has been shown to have been
mammoth ivory! Presumably people had stories of the strange hairy
animal found frozen in the snow.
As for long lived cultural memmories, it has recently been
demonstrated convincingly that Aboriginal people living in Arnhemland
(NE Northern Territory), knew of the megafauna that became extinct it
is believed 15-20,000 years ago. Cave paintings in the area are
known
to show species that have local names, and myths about these animals
show a thorough understanding of particular types.
Our local "Rainbow Serpent" here in Perth was known as the Waugal.
Known scientifically as Wanabi naracourtensis, it was an ambush
predator, living in natural sun-traps, besides waterholes. It would
wait for kangaroos to come to drink, and then pounce from within the
water. It is interesting that even today, all Waugal sacred sites
are
in areas that are natural sun-traps, besides waterholes, over 18,000
years since they became extinct.
But then as our last post showed, Aboriginal people here show an
amazing cultural continuity not found elsewhere.
Regards
John