ritva Wrote:
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> Hi Kenuchelover,
>
> yes, this is a very sad addition to the dramatic
> events. While life i itself is priceless, the loss
> of whole ethnic tribes is an anthropological
> disaster. Which begs the question (very possibly
> asked in some other thread here), do we have any
> means of detecting this kind of disasters from
> pre-history? I also find the word "dis-aster"
> rather intriguing at times....
Sometimes. IF we look hard. (Geologists CAN detect the signs).
But even if an archaeological presence "stops", we don't neccessarily start looking for geological events that wiped them out.... ESPECIALLY if the area was "soon" recolonized by a people with a similar level of technology, or a related culture. Frankly, we CAN detect the geological events, what we CAN'T detect is the missing languages & cultural traditions. We find people "there" now, but can't neccessarily tell whether they're connected or not (especially in light of how later admixture can blur things) to prior people in the area.
Consider......the Pacific NW Coast has tribal legends of HUGE seismic events & tsunamis, that (according to legend) killed virtually everybody the region and left only a tiny handful of survivors to repopulate it all. People have babies, tribes split, & cultural traditions can diverge easily enough. So a few thousand years later you get a fair number of tribes all with their own traditions & culture......
What's there to notice?
Kenuchelover.