Study into folklore shows a 7000yr old link to the past.

a reply to: punkinworks10
In some ways you're preaching to the converted, I play around with similar ideas, it is a subject that fascinates me.

In terms of Jupiter, her Moons and the effect that has on impacts...ever wondered about what difference it made when our own Moon was that little bit closer?

I have little doubt that such an event would be observed from a number of perspectives, and in the case of large impact the effects could be felt over a large distance, the accounts of Tunguska confirm that. For several days the skies across Europe had a strange hue, these effects were noted in England. Witnesses closer to the impact also report a great deal of noise (like artillery fire), and two-Suns, until the sky split in two! Pretty dramatic stuff. I have read of other impacts where they describe a wall of fire 50 meters across, and shock waves that can not only be felt over hundreds of miles, but which are sufficient to set in motion seismic and vulcan activity. Kind of makes you want to see it, and I have little doubt that any one who did see something like that would be sure to talk about it.

I'm only dubious about the 50,000 year date to be honest. I'm not sure if we had developed sufficient longevity at that point to have the understanding of how to build a story to last that long.

Nice links, thanks.

Back to the Pleiades and the number seven, not only are the seven stars of the Pleiades significant, but classic Mesopotamian sources reference the "Seven Judges Of Hell", so I think that at least one of the bronze age events was a multiple fragment impact.

The Pleiades was significant only because it rises in the same position on New years and was used as the Ritual year marker and the "Seven Judges Of Hell", is a Christian translation, because Hell didn't exist until Christianity, so a better translation would be, the seven judges of the underworld. Which isn't at all significant as the Annunaki are actually Cthonic (underworld) deities...

originally posted by: beansidhe
Story of the Stoorworm

The usual themes are all there - a destroyer from the skies, which initially ruins crops and creates a wasteland, which goes on to change the landscape for ever. Assipattle is the seventh son of a seventh son (seven would represent the Pleiades in the sky, I would think?). It's very like the King Arthur legend too. I am convinced these stories are telling us about catastrophic meteor strikes, with dragons being the meteors.

I've been playing with this thought over the weekend, I was particularly taken with this telling of the tale...

www.orkneyjar.com...

...and it made me think about the retreat of the glaciers, and how, particularly in the north, around Norway and the Baltic, how that release of weight led to a period of very dramatic seismic activity as the land readjusted itself. The frequency of these earthquakes would have been extraordinary, and accompanied by both sudden drops in land levels, as well as rises. Alternately. Similarly, around the same time, due to the added weight of the water that had deluged South East Asia, they were setting up for a slower more enduring adjustment after that very dramatic change. I put both stories at the same time, both relating the same post-melt experience but according to the very different effect it had on their particular environment.

The first people to settle the British Isles following the glacial retreat, were the same people who occupied the Baltic, and the Scandinavian and Nordic regions, so likely they would have the same story of those events, though from a slightly different perspective. And the dates, up to around 7,500 BC the coast of northern Europe ran directly from east England to Denmark, correspond nicely. As they would.

a reply to: Anaana

That is a considered point and very interesting. I'd always thought of the Arthur comet stories as being much, much later but your interpretation is really exciting. Did I tell my children a 9k yr old story the other night?
The Picts are said by some to have come from Denmark, and the Stoorworm talks about splitting Scotland from Europe.

I think - I hope - you're right. I'm going to have a look for a Nordic / Scandanavian equivalent tale and see what they say.

originally posted by: beansidhe
a reply to: Anaana

That is a considered point and very interesting. I'd always thought of the Arthur comet stories as being much, much later but your interpretation is really exciting. Did I tell my children a 9k yr old story the other night?
The Picts are said by some to have come from Denmark, and the Stoorworm talks about splitting Scotland from Europe.

I think - I hope - you're right. I'm going to have a look for a Nordic / Scandanavian equivalent tale and see what they say.

I doubt very much that I am "right", what I think, having thunk more upon it, is that the basis of a good story is it's ability to serve as a landing pad for your imagination (and the resources that that brings with it). All the best stories have been told a thousand times, in a thousand different ways, the ones that stay alive are the ones that keep being told, and keep being reworded and re-framed, constantly having new life breathed into them, keeping them relevant. With the Australian story, the narrative has been consistently maintained within the same tradition, keeping it's line to source "pure", as it were, thus enabling that pathway to be followed smoothly back to it's origin, most European literature has been overlaid by many traditions, offering slightly differing experiences of similar experiences. And, then there is the literature that, particularly in the West, has come to dominate all other narratives, but was originated in an environment that has little relevance to our own.

I was also, thinking more about how you build a story to last, and when we might have developed that technology. I wonder if that is all about the development of first, second and third-person narrative...not necessarily in that order. Up until five or so years ago, I never used to read those long-winded introductions that ancient or "great" literature are prefaced with, or the notes. Now I devour them ferociously, and see their point, there is often 100s of years of scholarship behind my being able to read those works in English, and a trial and error process to be understood. And in the case of "lost" or forgotten works, a whole bridge to be built to help us to cross into times and places syntaxically and grammatically very different to our own. I think that often too the story although written down keeps being told orally, maintaining it's vitality, emerging over time to confront it's written ancestor and finding scant recognition, each declaring the other an impostor.

Either way, I had some very productive thoughts and followed some interesting paths, so thanks for introducing me to Assipattle, he's my kind of hero.