Comment by thaumasiotes a day ago
> Benford was brought in to help calculate the probability that someone or something would intrude on the site for as long as it remains dangerous — approximately the next 10,000 years. It turns out, few things (outside of organized religions and ritualized traditions) last that long.
What a weird thing to say. No organized religion or ritualized tradition has ever lasted that long.
> but I remember reading something about an aboriginal fire ritual that had been practised by indigenous people in Australia for something like 12000 years
In Australia they're very proud of asserting things like that, but obviously there is no evidence it's true. On the other hand, there's lots of evidence that that doesn't happen.
> Because these traditions were passed down orally or through generational practice they have gradually been lost which is sad.
The fact that this mechanism of loss exists is already sufficient to prove that a tradition can't last 10,000 years.
In the post-Hellenistic world yes, but I remember reading something about an aboriginal fire ritual that had been practised by indigenous people in Australia for something like 12000 years. I think there are also very long traditions of ritual practice in Native American peoples. Because these traditions were passed down orally or through generational practice they have gradually been lost which is sad.
I think there’s also a cave in the Middle East where there is evidence that it had been a ritual centre for 30000 years.
And you could probably make a relatively convincing argument that the ‘dying and rising god’ tradition that underpins Christian ritual is just a syncretic continuum going backwards from Jesus Christ to Dionysus to Osiris to Iah to moon deities - the moon being a ‘dying and rising’ entity, which itself underpins a wide tradition of fertility ritual.
So although it’s a stretch there is maybe some logic behind the statement!