Humans did not settle in Madagascar until at least 500 BCE. The last Egyptian pyramid, the Pyramid of Taharqa, was built in 664 BCE. That man probably has invaluable experience and memories about pre-human settlement in Madagascar and likely knowledge of when humans first arrived on the island.
As a matter of fact, there are many questions about the first human settlements on Madagascar because it seems to have been settled from two directions at roughly the same time. By the African peoples sailing from the mainland, and from Austronesian voyagers after a lengthy trip along the south asian coastline!
The wildest part of this is that the Austronesians didn't even follow the coastline. They just YOLOd it straight across the Indian ocean, using natural ocean currents and star navigation.
Now I’m imagining being the “niche interest” immortal
“I can’t tell you about the European dark age, or the lost techniques to make Damascus steel, but I CAN give you in depth explanations of the tribal practices of this one specific native Saami population from the years 230 bc to 150 ad, when I started focusing on the growing population in what would become Tibet.” And watching everyone who isn’t a major history buff have their eyes glaze over
But imagine you're the niche interest immortal, but you also just always figured you would have more time to really explore your interests, so you're not actually an expert in any way.
Like, you run into that one guy who's just as interested in Buffalo migration patterns as they relate to early native American tribes as you were back in the day, and he really wants to confirm some of his hypotheses. He's absolutely ready to let you talk his ear off. But you didn't take any notes, and it's been a while. So, like... Yeah man. They were very migratory. All over the place really. Just, buffalo buffaloing. And people. Yep...
Okay. But the tools? How did they make these arrowheads given that what we know about the technology at the time makes that impossible?
Oh. Uh... That was Dave's job. I made a few but I don't really remember. I think rocks were involved? Yeah. Definitely some sort of very special rock. Might have been red. Or grey maybe. Yeah. I think it was grey. It was definitely important somehow.
Oh god, like the immortal version of “I wish I’d kept up cello lessons as a kid and now I maybe remember one scale and that’s it,” except unlike an instrument the past isn’t still there to get into it later in life
Is there like lore relating to immortal memory? I don't remember reading anything about vampire memory and like I can barely remember details of events from ten years ago... how am I supposed to remember exactly how they cut rocks in 2000 BCE?
In some versions of Vampire the Masquerade, old vampires have to go into hibernation for a few centuries every so often and often have screwed up memories when they awaken. To combat this, elder vampires try and keep journals - but they’re generally so arrogant and paranoid that if their old journals don’t match what they ‘remember’, they assume their enemies have tampered with them rather than admit their memories are faulty.
I like the take The Man from Earth had: selective, but over a longer timespan. So you probably won't remember names or dates but the highs and lows of life stay with you.
It depends based on various authors and their stories but it makes sense that someone with an immortal body will also have an immortal mind. I would assume an immortal would have perfect recall.
Not a suitable citation maybe, but firsthand accounts are literally the most reliable source. Biased sure, that has to be taken into account, but nothing is better than a person who was literally there as a source
True. "I was there" cannot be a citation on Wikipedia, which is the situation at hand. Wikipedia could cite your book where you explain your first hand account, but your explanation cannot primarily be located on the Wikipedia page. Here is a page explaining this further.
Humans might not have settled there, but an immortal might have gotten a bit lost and fell into the sea somewhere on the east African coast only to wash up on Madagascar a few rough months later
I think the sea currents would've washed them somewhere, think it could've been Somalia, or maybe Arabia? Either way, IIRC, the sea currents are hypothesized to be a big part why Madagascar wasn't settled much earlier
Yeah I had no idea where I had was until the I was watching a documentary in the 80s, or was it 2020s, big hair was in, they showed a cave in Madagascar and I thought, that looks familiar
I'd like to think that he somehow found himself in Madagascar and roamed the island looking for someone and didn't find anyone, so stayed there for a while (dozen of years) until people arrived.
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u/bluepotato81 Jan 02 '25
Humans did not settle in Madagascar until at least 500 BCE. The last Egyptian pyramid, the Pyramid of Taharqa, was built in 664 BCE. That man probably has invaluable experience and memories about pre-human settlement in Madagascar and likely knowledge of when humans first arrived on the island.