100 years isn't that long though. Enough to transmit an exact date to multiple people. Also, the oldest surviving record isn't necessarily the earliest record there ever was.

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cogman10 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah it is. It's a full generation.

The Spanish flu is a great example of that phenomena. It's hardly mentioned in history books yet we had a flu season where people were dying in the streets. Very shortly after it happened, people stopped talking about it or mentioning it.

COVID is looking like it will very much turn into the same thing.

These are massive global events that may only get small blubs 100 years later. Now imagine an event that happens in a localized area. How much of that event will get carried on or reported?

You also have to remember that in the 1200s, things like paper and ink were a lot more expensive than modern paper. That's part of the reason literacy rates were a lot lower.

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lproven 18 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's a full generation.

This is wrong. It is 4 generations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation

« the average period, generally considered to be about 20–30 years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, and begin to have children. »

> a great example of that phenomena

This is wrong. "Phenomena" is plural. The singular is "phenomenon."

> It's hardly mentioned in history books

Because it is living memory for a small number of people.

"Spanish flu" is widely remembered, and just 4-5 years ago thousands of articles were published comparing the measures taken a century before against a pandemic.

> small blubs

I think you meant "blurbs", as in "short informal pieces of writing", and it's a poor choice of words anyway. "To blub" means to cry.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/blub

These repeated errors strongly weaken your argument, and suggest that despite your confident tone you don't know as much as you think.

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jvanderbot 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Your off-topic ad hominems or pedantic takedowns weaken any point you might have had, if you'd had one. This is not high school debate or reddit. We can do better here. It's best to take the most generous view of a post and address the core thesis.

	▲	lproven 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think the core argument was wrong and it was surrounded by a whole list of other errors which demonstrate flawed thinking and lack of knowledge and understanding. I further think that pointing out errors is absolutely vital and core to intelligent discourse and discussion. It is a terrible weakness of 202x attitudes that saying "you are wrong, your reasoning is wrong, and here I will spell out how and why" is perceived as rude. This attitude is what led to Trump, notably the 2nd term, it led to Brexit, it led to the Ukraine war, and it led to international attitudes on Israel v Palestine. Calling out mistakes and outright lies is crucially important. It is not rude or discourteous. It is necessary. If people don't like it... well, tough.

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hluska 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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thinkingtoilet 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Go play a game of telephone with 20 people and see how well information travels. Now multiply that by 100 years.

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IAmBroom 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If that game of telephone includes the sentence "I'm going to kidnap your child", I'll bet it travels faster and more accurately than you think it will.

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advisedwang 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

100 years doesn't require a game of telephone with 20 people. It requires maybe 2 or 3. And for a event known to a whole town, you have multiple independent narrators which can help stabilize information.

My family has far more trivial information passed down orally that is way older than 100 years.

	▲	cogman10 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Mine doesn't. I know just a handful of things about my great grandparents. Things I do know about my family history didn't come from oral traditions but rather records placing my ancestors in places. Even from what I know of my parents, I'm sure I've forgotten or misremembered a bunch of stories that they've told me about their lives. I couldn't reliably retell more than a handful of stories.

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cubefox 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That calculation doesn't make sense.

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soperj 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Except oral histories seemed to have been very important to people and passing them down accurately has been noted throughout history

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bbarnett 16 hours ago | parent [-]

No TV, no books. Lightly populated rural communities, without a lot of visitors.

People loved stories because they were bored.

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AlotOfReading 16 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not boredom. Humans have always told stories and we still tell them today. How often does the 500 mile email come up on HN, or The Story of Mel? What about the SR-71 speed check? It's an innate human characteristic to love stories and most social media is lightly disguised storytelling.

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bbarnett 14 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not boredom.

Says someone who didn't listen to an old timers 70th rendition of the same old story.

There are stories, and then there are stories. I grew up pre-Internet with limited books, no way to get more, 3 fuzzy TV channels on a good day, and nothing else.

People today don't even know what boredom is. You don't know what boredom is, until you've watched the same episode of The Andy Griffith Show 15 times, and still think it is entertaining.

Now go to pre-literate times. No TV. Yes, stories are fun.

But hearing the same story over and over 1000 times is only fun if you're so bored, any external stimulus is a blessing.

	▲	AlotOfReading 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Let's not assume things about age. I'm old enough to remember holding the stupid rabbit ears. Never liked the Andy Griffith show though. I've also spent plenty of nights sitting a fire with a bunch of nomads in the middle of nowhere. It's not fundamentally different from media today. Audiobooks, Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Disney movies, true crime media, etc. People don't choose these for lack of alternatives. They're activities people like (excepting the parents forced to watch Frozen for the thousandth time). Strong oral storytelling cultures also have many, many stories available to them. It's not as tedious as syndicated TV was. Two examples of collections that survive to the modern day are the Jewish bible (old testament) and the Christian New Testament, each of which has dozens of stories you're likely familiar with no matter your religious background. They're not communicated solely through everyone sitting down around a campfire, and not every recitation is in the formal verbiage of the source material. Often recitation is associated with a calendar (e.g. the sermon schedules ministers follow in modern churches, or performed only at particular seasonal festivals). Different recitations are often performed in new ways to adjust things to the audience (e.g. referencing recent events) or with slight changes to keep things fresh. So on and so forth. It's a much richer world than you may be aware of.

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Jtsummers 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The telephone game lacks features in the telling that are common in oral storytelling that help reinforce the content and reduces the number of errors. Repeated telling, repetition in the structure, rhyming and alliteration (which is used, or even if they're used, depends on the language), being made into a song (seems to stick better than just straight speaking), etc. If you played the telephone game with a deliberately constructed story using those elements and taught that story to the next "generation" by repetition over a period of time before they, in turn, repeated it to the next generation it would be much more reliable. It also wouldn't be the telephone game.

	▲	WalterBright 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm convinced that poems are an effective error-correcting code for remembering things.