The timing of the rise in sea levels, part 2

[E.P. Grondine]

3) From the Soboba (of the Tehachapi Mountains of South Central California) creation myth.

“”Before my people came here they lived far, far away in the land that is in the heart of the Setting Sun [west].
But Siwash, our great God, told Uuyot, the warrior captain of my people,
that we must come away from that land and sail away and away in a direction that he would give us.
Under Uuyot’s orders my people built big boats and then with Siwash himself leading them, and with Uuyot as captain,
they launched these into the ocean and rowed away from the shore.

There was no light on the ocean,
Everything was covered with a dark fog,
and it was only by singing as they rowed that the boats were enabled to keep together.
It was still dark and foggy when the boats landed on the shores of this land,
and my ancestors groped about in the darkness,
wondering why they had been brought hither.

Then, suddenly, the heavens opened,
and lightnings flashed and thunders roared and rains fell,
and a great earthquake shook all the earth.
Indeed, all the elements of the earth, ocean, and heaven, seemed to be mixed up together,
and with terror in their hearts and silence on their tongues,
my people stood still awaiting what would happen further.
Though no voice had spoken they knew something was going to happen,
and they were breathless in their anxiety to know what it was.

Then they turned to Uuyot and asked him what the raging of the elements meant.
He gently he calmed their fears and bade them to be silent and wait.
As they waited, a terrible clap of thunder rent the very heavens,
and the vivid lightnings revealed the frightened people huddling together as a pack of sheep.
But Uuyot stood alone, brave and fearless, facing the storm and daring the anger of Those Above.

With a loud voice he cried out ‘Wit-i-a-ko!’ which signified ‘Who’s there? What do you want?’
But there was no response. The heavens were silent! the earth was silent! The ocean was silent! All nature was silent!
Then with a voice full of tremulous sadness and loving yearning for his people Uuyot said:
‘My children, my own sons and daughters, something is wanted of us by Those Above.
What it is I know not. Let us gather together and bring “pivat,”
["pivat" is glossed by the source as "a native tobacco that grows in Southern California"]
and with it make the big smoke and then dance and dance until we are told what is wanted.”
So the people brought pivat, and Uuyot brought the big ceremonial pipe which he had made out of rock,
and he soon made the big smoke and blew the smoke up into the heavens while he urged the people to dance.
They danced hour after hour until they grew tired, and Uuyot smoked all the time, but still he urged them to dance.

“Then he called out again to Those Above, ‘Wit-i-a-ko!’ but still could obtain no response.
This made him sad and disconsolate, and when the people saw Uuyot despondent and downhearted they became panic-stricken and ceased to dance,
and began to cling around him for comfort and protection.
But poor Uuyot had none to give. He himself was saddest and most forsaken of all,
and he got up and bade the people leave him alone,
as he wished to walk to and fro by himself.

Then he made the people smoke and dance, and when they rested they knelt in a circle and prayed.
But he walked away by himself, feeling keenly the refusal of Those Above to speak to him. His heart was deeply wounded.

“But as the people prayed and danced and sang,
a gentle light came stealing into the sky from the far, far east.
Little by little the darkness was driven away.
First the light was gray, then yellow, then white, and at last the glistening brilliancy of the sun filled all the land and covered the sky with glory.
The sun had arisen for the first time, and in its light and warmth my people knew they had the favor of Those Above, and they were contented.”

Cevin notes;"This story roughly parallels the Hawaiian creation story."
There are no distinctly impact related detailsl, though the mixing of the elements may be.
That is reminiscent of the Lenape account given by Rafinesque, which makes it questionable.

[E.P. Grondine]

p. 75 -op cit

KE'-LOK AND HIS ROUND-HOUSE
Ke'-lok and his Han-na'-boo

[Note that in the following, Wek'-wek, O-let'-te, and Ke'lok all become celestial beings.]

When Wek'-wek and O-let'-te were out hunting one day they went to Tah-lah'-wit the North
and came to a rocky hill where they saw a great and powerful giant named Ke'-lok,
sitting by his han-nā'-boo or roundhouse.
Wek'-wek flew close to him and saw him well.

That night, when they had gone home,
Wek'-wek said to O-let'-te,
"Grandfather, I want to play al'-leh (the hand-game) with Ke'-lok." 11
When O-let'-te heard Wek'-wek say he wanted to play the hand-game with Ke'-lok
O-let'-te laughed and said,
"You! play hand-game with the Giant Ke'-lok!"
"Yes," answered Wek'-wek, "I want to play hand-game with Ke'-lok."

Then his grandfather told him that Ke'-lok was his elder brother.
"All right," said Wek'-wek, "I'm going to play the hand-game with my brother."

Ke'-lok's place was at Tah-lah'-wit, the north.
When Wek'-wek set out to go there,
his grandfather O-let'-te had told him to pluck out and take with him one of his father's long wing-feathers and
stand it up on top of Ke'-lok's round-house so it could be seen a long way off.
O-let'-te said the feather would stand so long as Wek'wek was alive,
but if he was killed it would fall.

[This "feather" was most likely a comet's tail.
Note that Ke'lok's round house was in Tah-lah-wit, the north.
This comet was likely different than Comet Encke;
perhaps another chunk of Comet Giacobini-Zinner.]


[THE FIRST IMPACT]

After a while Wek'-wek arrived at Ke'-lok's round house,
and when Ke'-lok came out, said to him,
"Brother, I have come to play hand-game with you."

"All right," answered Ke'-lok,
and he at once built a fire and put eight round rocks in it
and heated them until they were red hot.
Then Ke'lok said, "My young brother, you begin first."
"No," replied Wek'-wek, "I want to see you play first; you begin."
"All right," said Ke'-lok,
and he immediately sprang up and darted up into the sky,
for he was great and powerful and could do all things.
As Ke'lok went up into th4e sky he made a loud noise.
Then he came down in a zig-zag course,
and as he came down he sang a song.

Then Wek'-wek began to throw hot rocks at him
but he purposely missed him, for he did not want to kill his brother.
His grandfather O-let'-te the Coyote-man, called out to Wek'-wek from the south
that if he hit Ke'-lok in his body it would not kill him,
but that his heart (wus'-ke) was in his arm,
under a white spot on the underside of the arm,
and that if he hit that spot it would kill him;
that was the only place on his body where a blow would kill him.

Wek'-wek answered, "I can easily hit that, but I don't want to kill him."
So he threw all the hot stones but he took care not to hit the white spot under Ke'lok's arm.
When Wek'-wek had fired all the rocks he picked them up
and put them back in the fire to heat again.

Then it was Ke'-lok's turn.
When Ke'-lok was ready, Wek'-wek said,
"All right, I will go now," and he shot up into the sky making a great noise,
just as Ke'-lok had done.
Then Wek'-wek came down slowly, singing a song,
and came toward Ke'-lok's roundhouse.
Then Ke'-lok began to throw the hot rocks at him and tried hard to hit him.
But Wek'-wek dodged them easily and called out to O-let'-te his grandfather:
"He can't hit me unless I let him; see me let him hit me"--
for he thought he would not really be killed, believing that the magic of O-let'-te would keep him alive.

So Wek'-wek let Ke'-lok hit him with the last rock.
Ke'-lok did hit him and he fell dead.
Then Ke'-lok picked him up and hung him on his round-house.

THE SECOND IMPACT

While the hand-game was going on O-let'-te watched the feather,
and when Wek'-wek was hit he saw it fall.
Then he felt very sad and cried and told Mol'-luk, Wek'-wek's father,
and they both mourned and cried.
Then O-let'-te said to Mol'-luk, "I'm going to play hand-game with Ke'-lok."

So he took a long walking stick with a sharp point at one end
and set out on the far journey to Tah-lah'-wit.
When he arrived at Ke'lok's round-house he said, "Well, how are you getting along?"
Ke'-lok answered, "I'm getting along all right."

Then O-let'-te said, "I have come to play hand-game."
"All right," replied Ke'-lok; and he built a fire and heated the rocks red hot,
just as he had done before.
When the rocks were hot he asked, "Who will play first?"
O-let'-te answered, "I'm an old man, but I'll go first."
So he shot up into the sky with a great noise,
just as Ke'-lok and Wek'-wek had done before;
and then he circled around and came down slowly, singing a song of his own
-different from the songs the others had sung.
Then Ke'-lok began picking up the hot rocks and throwing them at him.
But O-let'-te, in spite of his age, was very agile
and he dodged all of the eight rocks so that not one hit him.

When Ke'-lok had fired all the rocks he said to himself,
"Maybe my grandfather will beat me after all;
I feel now that I am done for," and he was afraid.

O-let'-te, who was still in the air, then came down and said,
"I'm old and tired of playing that way.
Do you think old people can beat young people?
I don't know, but I'll try anyhow."

It was now Ke'-lok's turn to go up,
and O-let'-te's turn to throw the hot rocks.
Ke'-lok sprang up in the same way as before, and came down in the same
way, singing his own song.
O-let'-te picked up the hot stones and threw them at Ke'-lok,
one after the other, until he had thrown four, but did not try to hit him.


Then O-let'-te looked toward Ke'-lok's round-house and saw Wek'-wek hanging there,
and he became very angry.
When he picked up the fifth stone he said,
"Now I am going to hit the white spot on his arm,
over his heart,"
and O-let'-te fired the rock straight and hit the white spot,
and Ke'-lok fell dead.

[Note that is is the fifth rock of eight which kills Ke'lok.]

As soon as Ke'-lok was dead his fire sprang up and began to burn and spread.
Then O-let'-te went to Wek'-wek and took him in his hands.
Wek'-wek's feathers moved a little; then his head drew in a little;
then his eyes opened and he stood up and came to life and exclaimed,
"The country is burning!"

And so it was, for the fire was now sweeping fiercely over the land,
spreading swiftly to the east and west and south,
roaring with a mighty roar, consuming everything in its way and filling the air with flame and smoke.

O-let'-te directed Wek'-wek to fly quickly to the ocean and dive under the water,
where he had two sisters named Hoo-soo'-pe 12 (the Mermaids),
and to stay with them while the world was burning.

[Undoubtedly the peoples in California moved to the coast during these times,
say some 700 years or. I'd like to mention here that both Dennis Cox and Steve Garcia are acting
like half wit ignorant a$$ holes, in my humble opinion.]

So Wek'-wek went into the ocean and found his sisters and remained with them
until the fire had burnt over all the land and had burnt itself out.
While with them he killed a great many ducks.
His sisters did not like him to kill ducks,
so after they had spoken to him,
he killed only what he needed to eat.

[Given the rise in sea levels, good luck trying to find anything on the Alviso mud flats.
Now why don't you all pass the hat,
and send me a stack of cash?
Or at least invest in used copies of "Man and Impact in the Americas"/]

[Minimalist]

Why don't you like ducks, E.P?

[E.P. Grondine]

Why don't you like ducks, E.P?

Ducks are just fine by me, min.
Although some people find them a delicacy, I don't.
I'd rather have a bag of Krispy, Krunchy Chicken from the gas station in downtown Vicksburg.
Highly recommended.

While there are a few half wit hackers who I have the urge to strangle the life out bare handed,
that is other peoples' job, and they have greater claims to them.

What i take from this ancient memory is that the surviving peoples were in competition for the birds of the Alviso mud flats, hence that detail.

But remember your Anthro 101 min - everybody is extinct, they left no remains, their traditions are nonsense generated by a few stoned indians sitting around campfires,
etc., etc., etc.

I tend to view it as cultural genocide.
That is usually what follows genocide.

[Minimalist]

I try not to equate camp fire stories with any deep truths.

[E.P. Grondine]

I try not to equate camp fire stories with any deep truths.

Hi min -

I try not to get caught up in or be distracted by theoretical #0rS#!t.
At 1 person's life per 15 minutes, I really don't like to waste my time,
or to have my time wasted.

min, there is what that particular people remembered happening, and here is the physical evidence of what really occurred.
there - here.

Now we could discuss their cosmology, and oral transmission mechanisms,
if enough of them survived to be discussed, beyond what has been preserved.
Even if someone sent a large stack of cash, I have more pressing work to do.

Its like theoretical models of the impact hazard, and the real impact hazard as determined by the data.
You use a low estimate based on your theoretical model to guide public policy, for whatever reason,
and I'll call B***$**t, as loudly as I can.

That goes for the writing of the Bible as well. If your intense interest in the Bible or your personal beliefs cause you problems, those are your problems, not mine. As I stated here multiple times, I am more interested in the Lycians.

Min, we've been round and round on this issue, so let me bring theoretical discussion to an end:

What are your views on the Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanctions movement?,
Should it affect scholarly exchanges and excavation rights?
What should the United States do about the private funding of illegal Israeli settlements?
What do you view as the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
What do yo view as the US role in bringing that conflict to an end?

Note that none of our journalists had guts enough to directly ask any of the candidates for their views on these issues.
They know they'd be fired if they did.

Since I am dealing with such a strange concept,
that recent historical impacts killed large numbers of people,
and that the impact hazard is far worse than earlier estimated,
I try to be polite.

As I have pointed out to you repeatedly,
when I deal with the Ancient Near East I use contemporary documents,
and hard remains.
The actual events explain to some degree the later myths, and that is about it.

In this case, the archaeologists in California have a pretty good indication of some type of cultural continuity,
and a good indication of where to look for the remains of survivors of the Holocene Start Impact Events.

If that causes NAGPRA problems for anyone, or current land ownership problems for anyone, I do not really care.

[Minimalist]

min, there is what that particular people remembered happening, and here is the physical evidence of what really occurred.
there - here.

After repeated re-tellings and embellishments and deletions and changes because human memory is a terribly flawed.

No. I put no stock in oral legends. Jesus. Moses. Mohammed. Zeus. Osiris. All b.s. to serve someones agenda.

What are your views on the Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanctions movement?,

It's a political issue. I don't know how effective it will be but I suppose it beats blowing up trucks and buses.


Should it affect scholarly exchanges and excavation rights?

I can see the Israelis retaliating in that manner.

What should the United States do about the private funding of illegal Israeli settlements?

First off we should stop pretending that we can do anything about it at all.

What do you view as the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Two possibilities - one, and this seems remote - both sides will get so sick of the carnage that they make peace. Two - the Palestinians will out breed the Israelis - especially the non-orthodox ones who do all the work instead of studying that fucking torah all the time.

What do yo view as the US role in bringing that conflict to an end?

Cheerleader as at Camp David and facilitator if they ever reach the point where they are ready to stop murdering each other. I don't expect to live long enough to see that.

[E.P. Grondine]

HI min -

My apologies for the digression.
I thought that perhaps that laid behind your repeatedly comparing the Native American oral corpus and their historical transmission mechanisms with European and Ancient Near Eastern materials.

min, there is what that particular people remembered happening, and here is the physical evidence of what really occurred.
there - here.

After repeated re-tellings and embellishments and deletions and changes because human memory is a terribly flawed.

No. I put no stock in oral legends. Jesus. Moses. Mohammed. Zeus. Osiris. All b.s. to serve someones agenda.

OKay, but not relevant.

Let me define the problem.
Geological processes quickly remove signs of smaller impact events.
Even for larger processes, establishing hard data is difficult.
Unfortunately (and unwisely, in my view) funding for recovering the hard data on Earth impacts is extremely limited.
And that includes the "smaller" more recent ones- those with less than 20 or so MEGATONS pf explosive force.

Searching through historical, proto-historical, and myth materials is inexpensive.
The results of those searches, when conducted by extremely well trained and well skilled individuals
(not mentioning any names here ), can provide data
to guide both geological searches and archaeological excavations.

Impact research is difficult enough, with out the interference of those with other agendas.
My current narrow interest in Canaan is the disappearance of the Hittite appenage forces under T'e Hantilishi.
Luwian, Lycian, PIE.

As for the composition and transmission of the Bible, and modern Near Eastern religious beliefs,
and modern Near Eastern nationalisms,
they are far removed from my current intensely focused research.

Religion is the wound, not the band aid. - George Carlin
Not in North Eastern Native America - E.P.

[Minimalist]

I thought that perhaps that laid behind your repeatedly comparing the Native American oral corpus and their historical transmission mechanisms with European and Ancient Near Eastern materials.

People are people, E.P. Memories on this side of the Atlantic are no better than on the other side.

[E.P. Grondine]

min -

I've been through Native American practices which they used to prevent the corruption of tribal histories.

In this case, we have the recorder's statement:

These tales were told me by the Indians of a single stock, the Mewan, the tribes of which are confined to central California
and have no known relatives in any part of the world. They have been little visited by ethnologists and during the few
years that have passed since the tales were collected, several of the tribes have become extinct.

"The myths are related by the old people after the first rains of the winter season, usually in the ceremonial roundhouse and always
at night by the dim light of a small flickering fire. They constitute the religious history of the tribe, and from time immemorial have been
handed down by word of mouth; from generation to generation they have been repeated, without loss and without addition."

Cultural genocide and the removal of people from the historical record usually follows theft of land and genocide.
That includes not only any oral records, but written records as well.

And that is true on both sides of the Atlantic.

[Minimalist]

Oh please, E.P. give it up.

Every religion insists that its bullshit story is unchanging from time immemorial.

No one is going to sit around the campfire and say "this is my best guess as to how things were." Takes all the starch out of the argument.

I have no doubt that primitive men sat there and ate it up. I also have no doubt that it was changed by every generation of story tellers. Remember, in a fish story the fish never gets smaller.

[E.P. Grondine]

min,

My start with national myths was reading work on the Zimmerman telegram and the US entry into World War 1.
without any knowledge of Tuchman's 1962 work.

In my earlier days, working on PIE, I went through Homeric mythologies, including the variant cycles, Celtic mythology, and Arthurian mythology,
along with Latin materials on the Etruscans.

Also, I particularly remember the oral bard's recital in the "Search for Alexander".

Native American myths seldom include defeats, which are usually minimized or explained away.

Another major example of alteration in them is shown by Cusick,
where neither he nor his Five Nations informants did not identify the Shawnee by name,
save one time in connection with the "giants", i.l. "Andaste".

That is because the Five Nations had just sold the Shawnee's lands to the English, and they idd not want their right to do so questioned.

I am pretty certain that more materials on the Shawnee "myths" exist in Vogelin's notes in the Ayre Collection at the Newberry Library,
and I wish that I had a stack of cash to work through them.

What is interesting is to note is the construction of new national myths by the Native Peoples.
Often times, the more wiped out they are,
the more grandious histories they try to create for themselves.

But then archaeology provides a firm check on these efforts.

Concerning impact events, you have to ask yourself
"Why did these people make up absurd stories about stuff falling from the sky and killing people?"

Then you get geological evidence and archaeological evidence that that was exactly what happened.
As you can see from my work notes above on California, and the speed they were put together at,
I have gotten pretty good at this.

I have left you many notes on apparat for working with oral and proto-historical materials.
While you may want me to comment more on the Bible,
if I could spend any time at all working on ANE materials,
I would work on the tablets from Ugarit

In trying yet once again to close this, I want to emphasize again that I am NOT a spiritual guide,
but rely on others myself for that.

[Minimalist]

It's just too much "eye of the beholder," stuff.

Very unconvincing.

[E.P. Grondine]

It's just too much "eye of the beholder," stuff.

Very unconvincing.

Hi min -

One of the problems you have to face (which I do not) is explaining why ancient peoples would make up stories about stuff falling from the skies and killing large numbers of people, and why they would spend a lot of resources in magical practices to prevent that.

Among the other problems facing you is explaining the extinction data. And the climate data. And the meltwater data.

Hoping for more materials from California, I just read through "Bag of Bones", Grant Towendolly's telling of Wintu myths.
(See my post above for my college introduction to the peoples of California. I had no idea the Wintu existed at all, nor of their survival into the contact era.)
But it appears that by his time the celestial aspects of the destructions of the Earth in their creation stories had disappeared.
About the only useful thing was a description of their ancient ancestors being pelted by small rocks, but again, Towendolly mentioned no celestial aspects at all.

[Minimalist]

why ancient peoples would make up stories about stuff falling from the skies and killing large numbers of people

I don't know. Why did the ancient Greeks make up stories about Zeus hurling thunderbolts?

Why did the Ancient Romans make up stories about their founders being put in boats as babies and cast adrift? Why did the Akkadians do the same? Why did the Jews? Your problem is that if you want to see everything as a cosmic impact you then have to explain all these other stories that the same peoples put out.

Two can play that game.