The Memory Remains...

[Ankari]

But for how long? How much time must pass before people forget their origins or the origins of others? The races in question wouldn't be sophisticated enough to write down every detail, especially as their nations are being forged at this time.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Kelise]

A lot of Aboriginal communities throughout Australia (all speaking their own languages and dialects) remember a surprising lot about their own histories, as they pass nearly everything down in stories throughout the generations.

If you make a group of people storytellers by nature, there's probably no telling how long they can remember for.

 

[Queshire]

haha~ This is an interesting question, bit blunt though....

Now, let me preface this by just saying that I'm not anything close to an expert in this topic, so I'm pretty much just talking out my ass here, so..... yeah.

I read in a novel somewhere that you're unlikely to have concrete memories from before you were like five. I don't think there's a set time limit until they're forgotten for memories established afterwards, the memories remembered longest are those with the strongest emotional ties and/or linked to a physical thing. If you met your true love for the first time under a sakura tree (sorry, just got done with a manga binge, it's got me feeling a bit spoony ^^) then everytime you see them, you'll remember that time.

The web comic Dresden Codak did a comic on memory that proposed a theory that I find simply romantic. ^^ In it, they say that you never really forget anything, what you think you've forgotten is simply stored deep in your mind waiting for the right key to unlock it. That key could be the smell of motor oil, the taste of a fresh baked cookie, or, for less pleasant memories, something like the sight of blood.

I think a culture based around memories and keys to unlocking them would have a lot of potential in a story.

*Ahem,* Anyways, back to the original point, there's simply no hard and fast rule, somethings you remember all your life, others you forget moments after they happen, there's even those guys with photographic memory that can remember anything that happens to them. Honestly, I think that would kind of suck, what if there's some things that you want to forget.

Hmm.... I suppose that's not very helpful either.... I'd say maybe a week for the real fine details, like how tall a guy is, a couple of years to a decade for the general details to blur unless something refreshes your memory regularily?

Since you're talking about origins and origins of nations / races in general that's a signifcantly longer time. With oral retelling and likely frequent reminders, I'd guess..... Oh, maybe 10-20 generations to get warped, perhaps twice that to become completely unrecongnizable to what really happened?

Sorry if I babbled, hope that helps ^^'

 

[Chilari]

It can be remarkable what things people remember - or what they forget. The classical Greeks had stories of events and people from the bronze age embedded in their culture. Agamemnon, Odysseus, the fall of Troy, ancient conflicts - things that happened before 1100BCE - were remembered. But the number of generations between themselves and their mythical ancestors put these events, as far as the classical Greeks knew, in about 800BCE. Meanwhile there are no stories originating in the Greek dark ages, after the end of the Mycenaean age until about the time of Homer in the 8th century BCE. Having not remembered that 300-odd-year period, the Greeks cimply condensed the time line and put them immediately before remembered events which were actually centuries later. While the inbetween time contained a lot of stuff going on - including various invasions, foreign settlers, trade etc - it was all but forgotten.

So I think it depends on what your culture wants to remember - mythic story in which they defeated a powerful foe, yes. Period of upheaval where population declined, raiders swept through the land and pillaged and destroyed those legendary cities of old, no.

On another note, the origin stories of Athens were varied and firmly rooted in myth - great gods fighting for territory, demi-god princes returning from slaying unnatural beasts. Nothing that could be considered historically accurate. Compare Sparta - just as ancient a settlement, but rather than focus on a mythical founder, they put greater emphasis on their 8th century BCE lawgiver, Lycurgus. While there were some myths about his birth, most of his life was relatively well known - he brought laws back after journeying to different states and seeing what laws they had that worked or were fair. Lycurgus was remembered, and while the mythical Menelaus was also remembered, Lycurgus was the important one in terms of defining the character of the citizens of Sparta in the classical period, while Menelaus was just part of an old story.

 

[Steerpike]

I think you could choose any amount of time you deem suitable, Ankari, and build how your culture deals with such memories around that time period. Or, if you already have the culture and its oral traditions and the like well-defined, come up with a number that reflects that. There's no reason you couldn't have a culture that for whom such stories die very quickly, and by the same token you could design a fantasy culture that faithfully keeps such 'memories' alive for centuries, virtually without change, through oral tradition.

As has been done above, people can provide examples of what happens with real cultures, but there's no reason to be bound by examples from the real world (unless you wish to be).

 

[Philippjs]

I feel that it's worth mentioning that many ledgends have basis in fact, and that storytelling has over-exaggerated the truths over time. Take King Arthur for example, his is a ledgend of Knights of the Round Table, a wizard, and a magical sword. It has been suggested (or even proven) by historians that King Arthur was in fact a saxon who drove off the Vikings for a time. Perhaps these "memories" could be legends or glorified versions of the truth?

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

My grandma is Irish, so she is of that generation that is very much steeped in the local dialect, traditions and culture. I suppose different countries hold onto their cultural traditions for longer than others.

 

[James Chandler]

That would be a fascinating theme to explore. What if you have one group of people who splinter off from a main group where one group is meticulous about keeping its history through an oral tradition while the other kind of forgets...or do they?

 

[deepikasd]

Memory also depends on the events that occur to the group. Let's say a well-founded and based group is suddenly invaded by another people. This new group of people (group B) force the original group (group A) to either convert to their way of life or die. The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar did something similar to this. When they would invade a people they would actually take them from their homeland and insert them into a completely different way of life. This way they are forced to kind of forget their old customs and cultures and participate in the new life. Something similar also happened to the Aboriginal tribes of Australia. When the first Westerners set foot in Australia they met the "strange" tribes. Since, like the majority of Christian nations at that time, these natives were not Christians, the Westerners, instead of learning about them, basically forced the natives to reform. To do this, they would gather the children and teach them English and Christianity, etc. to basically "brainwash" them. Since normally the children would be taught by the elders of their tribes and family, they did not really learn their culture and was in a way Westernized since they were basically living under the Westerners. Something similar also happened wherever the Spanish went in the new world. They would basically "reform" the people of the region with this method. This way the people would in a generation or two forget the majority of their past and customs because they are not only being forced into a new culture, their old culture and homes were destroyed (take for instance the Mayan people: they had all these writings and history written down, but when the Spaniards came and destroyed all of these because they wanted to "purify the heathens". This way their culture was decimated since their historical written past was destroyed.)