What Do Historians Think of Oral History? | Myths Highlights

I don't like how oral histories are taken as a gospel when it comes to Native American history... it is all we have due to the lack of writing, but some native groups shouldn't be so dismissive about genetic and archeological science.

What about Islamic oral tradition which is controlled, every person in the chain of nareation is named and each person narrates it to diferent people do the chain splits out in several lines. Here is an example from Sahih al Bukhari Book 16, Hadith 1

Amr ibn Awn reported: Khalid narrated to us from Yunus, from Al-Hasan, from Abu Bakrah, who said: We were with Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) when the sun eclipsed. Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) stood up dragging his cloak till he entered the Mosque. He led us in a two-rak`at prayer till the sun (eclipse) had cleared. Then the Prophet (ﷺ) said, "The sun and the moon do not eclipse because of someone's death. So whenever you see these eclipses pray and invoke (Allah) till the eclipse is over."

So in this narration the author gets told by an individual by the named Amr sibn Awn who claims have heard it from Khalid who in turn heard from Yunus who heard from Hasan who heard it from Al bakra who was the eyewitness

And so this is one chain of narration where the author documents what he heard from the narrator, muslim since the death of the prophet had schools for studying and memorising what the prophet and his followers said and did, they wrote it down and even memorised it, they had a controlled oral tradition were students spent their life memorizing the sayings of the prophet and his followers just like muslims memorize the Quran today.

So in the chain of narration the actual eyewitness says "we were with the messenger" meaning that there were other eyewitnesses not just him, so did they narrate this to their student in similar chain of narration, turns out they did, many of them

Here is just one of them Sunan an-Nasa'i Book 16, Hadith 32
Muhammad ibn Bashar told us, he said: Muadh ibn Hisham told us, he said: My father told me, on the authority of Qatada, on the authority of Al-Hasan, on the authority of Al-Nu’man ibn Bashir The Prophet (ﷺ) came rushing out to the masjid one day when the sun eclipsed, and he prayed until the eclipse ended, then he said: "The people of Jahilliyyah used to say that eclipses of the sun and the moon only happened when some great man on earth died. But eclipses of the sun and the moon do not happen for the death or birth of anyone. Rather they are two of the creations of Allah (SWT) and Allah (SWT) causes to happen in His creation what He wills. Whichever of them becomes eclipsed, pray until it is over or Allah (SWT) causes something to happen."

Here there is some context and it is diferent drom the previous one but the core events are intact.

What about Islamic oral tradition which is controlled, every person in the chain of narration is named and each person narrates it to diferent people till it gets written down. Here is an example from Sahih al Bukhari Book 16, Hadith 1

Amr ibn Awn reported: Khalid narrated to us from Yunus, from Al-Hasan, from Abu Bakrah, who said: We were with Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) when the sun eclipsed. Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) stood up dragging his cloak till he entered the Mosque. He led us in a two-rak`at prayer till the sun (eclipse) had cleared. Then the Prophet (ﷺ) said, "The sun and the moon do not eclipse because of someone's death. So whenever you see these eclipses pray and invoke (Allah) till the eclipse is over."

So in this narration the author gets told by an individual by the named Amr ibn Awn who claims have heard it from Khalid who in turn heard from Yunus who heard from Hasan who heard it from Abu bakrah who was the eyewitness

Thanks for your scientific information. I wonder what you might think of The Walking People: a Native American Oral History by Paula Underwood. There is also an educational series of books that go with. I have read the history on an eponymous podcast with my name added. Miriam Moore reads

I'm not big on oral history. It can change a lot as it is handed down. Have you heard of a game where people get in a circle? One person will whisper something in the ear of the person next to them. When it makes its way around the circle to the person that originally started it, what that person originally said and what they got back are very different.. Now just do this through multiple generations.

Wow thanks this video has been very deep and enlightening about a subject i didn't never stop to think about
Thanks for your videos man

Hearing the term “Oral History” makes me feel conflicted. I want it to be so much more, but to me, an oral history just feels like a somewhat historical (or someone’s interpretation of), yet mostly entertaining form of information, sprinkled with a smattering of hope for accuracy.😬 I just can’t help but think of the Telephone Game from my pre-school days. Albeit, on a much grander scale, over a vast amount of time… it’s still the Telephone Game.🥴

I recommend you to recharch about pre islamic oral tredition . They are pretty accurate because they were in form of poem not story only .

A hypothesis is a grounded and justifiable assumption ready to be evaluated

I don't think written sources are necessarily more valuable than oral sources. All history is interpreted by the person writing it. That person has a worldview, biases, etc. The only way we could ever know exactly what happened would be video evidence.

With all due respect , the Zunnies is just one of many oral tradition that proved to be so correct that astrophysics was stunned by what they knew for thousands of years .

Oral information always get altered and some extra addition and so on its hard its not perfect but always carry few % of truth hidden inside that information which after so many generation it becomes myth's

I'm glad historians are finally catching up, and seem to be starting the process of cleaning your own prejudiced lenses.

Oral tradition actually comes first. You can have oral tradition with no written, but you cannot have the written without the oral.

I’ve heard many instances of people getting these genetic ancestry tests and the results do not match up with the family lore about their origins. I’ve been told forever that our family is from the Basque region of Spain, even from a particular village (Roncevalls) but then I took an Ancestry DNA test that showed 0% Basque heritage. Instead we are 95% from County Mayo Ireland and 5% Wales. Also most claims of Native American heritage (based on family stories) are not accurate by genetic testing.

Really interesting.
However, how do you handle the fact that what was written 4,000 years ago had perhaps been handed down orally before?

I disagree with written history being truth! You only have to look at the Albion Zodiac as evidence! NOW THAT TRUTH IS WRITTEN IN THE BEDROCK OF THE BRITISH ISLES!!

Happy holidays Dr Miano. ❤

Cultures with oral traditions seem to have ways to ensure that the major beats of their important stories are passed down. Rhyme schemes, rhythms of words, and story structures aid the storytellers in remembering. Some (all?) of them have professional storytellers who are the walking encyclopedias of their lore.

Every once in a while, we hear or read about discoveries that demonstrate the accuracy of a story or legend. A memorable natural disaster turned into a narrative that's passed down through the generations and then evidence turns up. Or the location of something mysterious or lost.

Yet, other times, there are so many additions and accretions that it's impossible to find the original event(s) that gave rise to the stories.

If you still believe that Roman/Greek texts are from antiquity please explain why?

My grandfather was a great storyteller and a repository of terrible dad jokes. He often taught me lessons about right and wrong by telling my about things that he experienced. I wish that I wrote those stories down before he passed. He experienced the great depression as a boy. Grew up on a farm. He attended a small school and went to church with Japanese families who also had farm's in the area. During WW2 he joined the Navy and all of the Japanese people that he knew were put into an internment camp. I remembered my grandfather telling me about these moments but most of the details are gone. Oral history is very important IMO and once it's gone it's impossible to recover.

I have to take issue with your statements that events can’t be dated. My circle has very rich oral traditions and can easily say (for example) the last exercise of the “tradition” occurred last Friday night after 2 glasses of wine….

All history is history until enough evidence exists to prove otherwise imo.

Things in language like etymology and phonics are dated and much more useful than tradition. Language has a canon and many cultures of the past are named after the languages they spoke

30 years of working with oral history and I have a Forrest Gump philosophy. It's like a box of chocolates...

"Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to bear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!"

Don't know why I started thinking about that while watching this video.

Love this highlight. Thanks Dr. Miano for providing nuane in a place that usually lacks it!

Thank you.

I understand the game of telephone being risky when studying oral tradition, but linguistics can aid in establishing a rough timeline. Phrases used in an oral poem might be the only place such sayings exist or even remnant words. In such instances it hints at the language used when the oral poem was composed. You'll find this in a lot of ancient texts that had been an oral tradition centuries prior. Usually sprinkled here and there (usually as analogies that would only make sesne to those in the time period it was written). But in some instances such as the Song Of Deborah it could be much more substantial.

i/me mark s g. Graybeal that is took course , ' Lakota Oral Lit. ( indian fairy tales ? ) from Mom,Ruth Hunsinger, ended with Phd in Ed of Native Studies, set up school districts with diversity curriculum. vise principle of Cebecue,Az. she recorded the stories from the old women and transcribed by colleges to text books. others used for their books to movies ie Lakota Woman. i Only attended few years minus sheep skin. of what i once did photo copies of various 'Winter Counts' saved on early photographs., the told the oral history in a picture for that year event...

have people never played telephone before?

I'm in my seventies. When I compare memories with old pals we are sometimes shocked at how different our recall of the same events are. Your perspective on the concept of oral history seems spot on. Thanks, Doc.

Great video.

I have a question, aren't some cultural oral traditions a little more reliable than others? I was under the impression that some cultures (particularly those without writing systems) developed relatively robust methods to make sure the story changes as little as possible. Generally things that are difficult to change without it sounding wrong - rhyme and meter and so on. Little "checksums" that kind of bounds the divergence of the story over generations.

Of course it's still not as unchanging as a written document, and linguistic drift is of course possible as well, but I was under the impression that SOME traditions are considered extremely reliable compared to other ones because of the presence of storytelling strategies meant to keep the stories from changing the way a regular "my grandma told me..." oral tradition wouldn't.

What about cultures that don't have a written language? Also, are you aware of the progress in understanding the quipu?

When history is deliberately written down incorrectly, whispered secrets may be truth's only hope.

Oral tradition texts are extremely unstable over time, as you have noted. We can easily see this in two contemporary oral traditions--folksongs and family legends. Comparing versions of folk ballads will always show changes to narratives, verses, floating lines that move across songs, changes in diction and misunderstandings of older words, even during the era of sound recordings and transcriptions by song collectors. Families often pass down ancestral tales and explanations of heirlooms that can be show false even after a mere two or three generations. This is partly because oral literature is rarely intended to be preservations of the facts of history, but rather they are designed to entertain and flatter the biases of the current audience. When an oral tradition is written down, this does not necessarily make the text more stable or reliable, especially in the pre-Gutenberg era of manual copyists who are just as likely to make errors or to change texts to suit the audience and the copyist. New Testament scholarship is a great example of this--the variants even in the canonical gospels are numerous and the subject of much academic research and analysis. Oral tradition is valuable for cultural insights, but the limits of their historical worth make them at best only hints of supplemental information in real historical research regarding events. Thanks for all your videos. They are superbly organized and delivered, no matter what the subject.

I read a paper about oral tradition in Native American tribes being used as part of the evidence of continuing tsunamis on the West Coast. Stories of floods and whales being deposited on mountains and so forth.
It's pretty interesting stuff and they also found dead trees and sedimentation (is that a word) to back it up. Earthquakes and flood stories are common up and down that coast.

One might view oral histories not unlike = Wikipedia. They represent a good place to start as far as looking for answers. Yet like the online equivalent in so much as anyone can input information = you must verify what you see - especially in cases of extraordinary claims.

Moral of the story: to use a Cold War metaphor = "trust - but verify." Oral histories can help you in ascertaining what you see. Yet people being fallible means that corroborative evidence should be sought. Sometimes such histories can be quite accurate - sometimes not.

As an example Herodotus - "the Father of History" - related a lot for us. Yet some of what he wrote was clearly mythological while some has been validated by subsequent evidence. Herodotus related = what he was told - aka oral histories. Always try where possible to corroborate and consider the nature of the sources and what is being claimed as to does it add up or not. That is the only way to separate "the chaff from the wheat." Enjoy your day folks.

Things got tricky when the survey and questionnaires were done Soviet style

What is lost so much in this age of political correctness is that skepticism is healthy. When reviewing any historical source, skepticism is necessary. This is even more appropriate when reviewing oral sources. It is not racist to be skeptical of an account by an indigenous person. However, in this age of political correctness, you are likely to be called racist for being skeptical.

My mother wrote down the family history passed to her from her grandmother and mother. I used it alongside official paper records from family history info online. Guess what. Even over 3 generations there were inconsistencies.
An older friend remembered seeing a photo of her and her older sister who had died in childhood. On obtaining the death certificate of the little girl we discovered that she had died, of pneumonia, before my friend was born.
Memories are unreliable.
They can also be implanted. Experiments in Australia years ago proved this. But the onforeseen negative effects on the mental wellbeing of the decieved subjects has meant they were discontinued.

This comment is for the algorithm. Isn't it frustrating that every time you watch one of WoA vids YT starts recommending Hancock and friends.

My understand from what I have read, is that Oral History is usually in accurate but at the same time an invaluable source of factual information about the past.

Isnt this why they Memorized the Koran? Nicea among others things have changed the Bible. I trust my ancestors more than the Jesuit over-takers.

👋👋

Is it Also the case with vedic and avestan recitation which have strictly preserved, they focused on very strict and accurate recitation ,
so do you think that even in this case hymns and verses also changed not rapidly but in a slow manner for a long time ????

I keep wondering how it comes that legions of men do not get how to take information that was passed over
until it was written down and mankind lived the normal 60 years and not the 600 they thought Grandpa must have lived.
like the tellings of Foo that won was in the eyes of the loser maybe 10cm larger but as it was told to their grandchildren more like giants.
and even more, to tell about unmeasurable factors adoration for your long passed kin where capable of wondrous acts,
so can change ancestor worship into a god
some wonderous sight became of the first horse-riding a Sagittarius and as riding went mondaine the tellings from a novelty riding a war horse suddenly of wood and occupied for an interesting narrative.
for me, it sounds like the typical people thing to do.

One can speculate that oral traditions can have a slower rate of distortion when the culture has a slower rate of changes. tribes that have maintained their traditions without much interactions with other cultures can have a slower rate of distortion in their oral traditions than others. One example that came to mind is the case of finding a frozen mamouth in the ice very near the place where and ancetster was said to have seen in the oral tradition. Archeologists that have studied the location are on the opinion that the last time this mamouth could have been visible out of the ice was probably ten thousand years ago. So an event recorded by oral traditions has been preserved with not much distortion for millenia.