I remember reading how, for thousands of years, Aboriginal Australians would avoid outcrops or locations with high levels of radioactive material. Those areas were known as places of sickness and to be avoided, warnings were passed down in Aboriginal lore and intergenerational stories.
It’s fascinating how people, even without knowing anything about the “why”, just realised that whoever hangs around a lot in those specific areas gets sick, and then they’re able to retain that information for many generations.
One of my favourites from aboriginal oral history I that, apparently, they have a history about how they used to cross to some peninsula over dry land, but that the sea slowly came in and made the area inaccessible. Geologists have found that they’re accurately telling the story of sea level rise that happened around 50 000 years ago, and I seem to remember that they’ve found archaeological evidence that backs the story as it’s been told through generations up to this day.
I remember reading how, for thousands of years, Aboriginal Australians would avoid outcrops or locations with high levels of radioactive material. Those areas were known as places of sickness and to be avoided, warnings were passed down in Aboriginal lore and intergenerational stories.
It’s fascinating how people, even without knowing anything about the “why”, just realised that whoever hangs around a lot in those specific areas gets sick, and then they’re able to retain that information for many generations.
One of my favourites from aboriginal oral history I that, apparently, they have a history about how they used to cross to some peninsula over dry land, but that the sea slowly came in and made the area inaccessible. Geologists have found that they’re accurately telling the story of sea level rise that happened around 50 000 years ago, and I seem to remember that they’ve found archaeological evidence that backs the story as it’s been told through generations up to this day.
Interestingly, most natural radioactive material in nature comes from uranium. Uranium is also a heavy metal, and is quite toxic in its own right.
It’s likely that it’s avoided due to heavy metal poisoning rather than radiation.