火山喷发的证据表明土著人的故事可能是地球上最古老的故事

火山喷发的证据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.

澳大利亚南部冈蒂奇马拉人世代相传的一个故事被认为描述了一次火山喷发。现在，据认为是故事中出现的一座火山喷发出的熔岩的年代表明，这个故事有37000年的历史，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.

维多利亚州西南部的熔岩流标志着它曾是一个火山省份，但最近一次喷发的时间还不确定。

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遗产地区的传统所有者，Gunditjmara，有一个关于四个巨人的起源故事，他们给了这片土地生命和法律。在梦境中，一个古老的生物——Budj Bim——从地面出现，变成了一个圆顶的小山，熔岩从它的头上喷涌而出，而故事中也提到了“土地和树木在跳舞”。不难看出，这可能是对一次大喷发的描述，这让人类学家怀疑冈蒂奇马拉人在上次喷发时是否生活在那里。20世纪40年代，在最近的一层火山灰下发现了一把斧头，使得这种可能性大大增加。

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.

墨尔本大学的Erin Matchan博士使用40Ar/39Ar来确定Budj Bim和塔山火山最近的喷发日期。这项技术基于这样一个事实:钾放射性衰变为argon-39，因此随着时间的推移，在富含钾的岩石上，argon-39的含量相对于普通的argon-40逐渐增加。近年来，质谱分析技术的发展使这项技术更广泛地应用于火山岩的年代测定。她在《地质学》杂志上报告说，它们分别在大约3万7千年前释放了熔岩和火山灰，不确定度为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的故事确实描述了一次这样的喷发，那么它几乎肯定是现存最古老的故事，它的起源我们可以确定。

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.

目击者的描述在这么长的一段时间里仍然存在，甚至被修改成神话，这似乎是不可能的。然而，在澳大利亚沿海地区，许多土著居民的故事都是关于被海平面上升淹没的土地，这与7000年前发生的事件相吻合。澳大利亚北部的一次火山喷发似乎来自同一时期。

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认为“四大巨人”的历史要长五倍，但如果7000年是可能的，为什么不是30000年呢?这个故事最艰难的时期是过去的两个世纪，在这期间，土著澳大利亚人被禁止说自己的语言，他们的孩子经常被白人当局偷走。

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，澳大利亚土著人已经在澳大利亚东南部生活了至少40000年，所以冈蒂奇马拉人的居住地几乎可以肯定可以追溯到那个年代。然而，除了斧头和一个非常神秘的12万年前的可能的壁炉和垃圾堆之外，所有人类占领的证据都来自于最近的1.3万年。

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和她的合著者承认，关于四大巨人故事起源的证据还远没有定论。它可能根本不能描述火山喷发。或者，它可能是从逃离西北部130公里(80英里)的冈比亚火山喷发的人们那里继承而来的，而冈比亚火山可能只有5000年的历史。

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从澳大利亚北部移民后的数万年里一直生活在离散的地理区域。一个因当地灾难而被迫进行大规模移民的民族，应该会与他们的邻居进行更多的交配。该地区非凡的捕鳗器是世界上最古老的水产养殖遗迹，也是冈蒂奇马拉文化的一部分，表明它们至少在该地区存在了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."

要证明“四大巨人”的故事确实描述了火山喷发可能是不可能的，但从火山喷发前找到更多的遗迹可能会告诉我们很多关于该地区居民的情况。70年来没有发现任何新东西的原因，Matchan说，“可能是因为没有人真正看过。”这把斧头是一个农民在挖柱子洞时偶然发现的，而不是经过深思熟虑后才找到的。”