A Threat for Common Experience To Die
Last night, before I fell asleep, I had an idea about an essay I wanted to write. This would’ve been that essay if I hadn’t woken up and forgotten everything I thought of. That story died because it relied on my memory alone.
Aboriginal people in Australia have stories that are at least 7000 years old (and likely even older). Stories that have survived time by passing from mouth to mouth and life to life. We often associate memory with the past but isn’t it really about bringing an event, idea, action, or person into the present?
I read that human memory is more like watching a play than a video, that it changes with each recollection depending on the person’s current mood, environment, or need. So our memory doesn’t retrieve the past but recreates it from current information and new experiences.
The stories that have survived the longest time through oral record have done so in large part due to cultural isolation of the societies that told them. ‘Prehistory’ refers to a period before written records. While history used the written word to record past events, perhaps the prehistoric person used the spoken word to share a present time.
From writing with traditional ink and paper, to audio and video recording devices, or computers that store information, human beings have evolved several ways to externalise memory. Some of these tools we’ve created can alter the way in which we remember. Through them we recall an event or material exactly as it was — you see the same video no matter how many times you replay it because the moment recorded remains unchanged. And unlike the memory of our brain which recreates information in order to interact with the present, these memory devices help us respond to preexisting information from the past.
Researchers have been able to corroborate information from oral stories around the world with significant geological events that happened 7000 -10,000 years ago, like the eruption of volcanoes or increasing water levels that submerged islands. Knowledge from human experience that was related to living in specific surroundings, from climate to terrain or where to find food, made its way into stories to ensure the survival of members of the society across generations.
Considering that, as a species, language has been the keeper of our oldest memories but today, the imposition of English has been responsible for the decay of several languages around the world. And although I live in a country of over 2000 dialects, English is the only language I’m really fluent in because it’s the only one I’ve had to practice in every aspect of my life. But while I can get by with some local languages, I’ve personally not had the necessity to use them enough to be able to continue their memory. So if these languages kept alive the experiences from the people who spoke them, I wonder how it’s going to be possible for one language to keep all of them alive in our daily speaking.
__
References:
1. https://www.sapiens.org/language/oral-tradition/
2. https://ich.unesco.org/en/oral-traditions-and-expressions-00053
3. https://www.lexico.com/definition/prehistory
4. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140204185651.htm
5. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/am-i-right/201307/your-memory-isnt-what-you-think-it-is
