Patrick Nunn

The Edge of Memory (eBook, ePUB)

Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

How much of the folk tales of our ancestors is rooted in fact, and what can they tell us about the future?

In today's society it is the written word that holds the authority. We are more likely to trust the words found in a history textbook over the version of history retold by a friend - after all, human memory is unreliable, and how can you be sure your friend hasn't embellished the facts? But before humans were writing down their knowledge, they were passing it on in the form of stories.

The Edge of Memory celebrates the predecessor of written information - the spoken word, tales from our ancestors that have been passed down, transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. Among the most extensive and best-analysed of these stories are from native Australian cultures. These stories conveyed both practical information and recorded history, describing a lost landscape, often featuring tales of flooding and submergence. Folk traditions such as these are increasingly supported by hard science. Geologists are starting to corroborate the tales through study of climatic data, sediments and land forms; the evidence was there in the stories, but until recently, nobody was listening.

In this book, Patrick Nunn unravels the importance of these tales, exploring the science behind folk history from around the world - including northwest Europe and India - and what it can tell us about environmental phenomena, from coastal drowning to volcanic eruptions. These stories of real events were handed down the generations over thousands of years, and they have broad implications for our understanding of how human societies have developed through the millennia, and ultimately how we respond collectively to changes in climate, our surroundings and the environment we live in.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. August 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781472943279
• Artikelnr.: 54149654

Autorenporträt

Patrick Nunn received a PhD from the University of London before spending 25 years teaching and researching at the University of the South Pacific, where he became Professor of Oceanic Geoscience in 1996. He moved to Australia in 2010 to work at the University of New England before being appointed to a research professorship at the University of the Sunshine Coast in 2014.

The author of more than 320 peer-reviewed publications, Patrick has also written several books, including two for Bloomsbury Sigma, The Edge of Memory and Worlds in Shadow.

Patrick has received the Gold Medal of both the Pacific Science Association (2003) and the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland (2018) and was one of those scientists to share the award of the (2007) Nobel Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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