I've visited the Bay of Fundy and observed the rapid tidal ebb, later to be replaced by the rapid tidal surge headed by a significant tidal wavefront. I don't recall the exact tidal range, something like 35 feet. Odd to see fishing boats lying over the mudflats during low tide.

[Sometimes you react in such strange ways.)

There are many internet web sites promoting this region of Thailand as a tourist destination, with the main attractions being clean, clear, water, sandy beaches, and snorkeling. The Moken sea gypsies are described as a simple people living a traditional life, very much dependent on the sea.

As sea nomads they may have learned about how to avoid a tsunami from experiences seen, learned, and/or passed on while living elsewhere in the past.

I know the urge to give the Eastern mystic cultures some sort of paranormal credit for a subconscious knowledge of tsunami safety procedures is irresistable for some who give credeence to that sort of mumbo-jumbo, ying and yang, psycho-babble, but I suspect a more realistic possibility for them acquiring the knowledge is something akin to the Western methods above, like simple record keeping and history records.

In other pictures posted onthis link, I saw where fumigation was started for disease prevention. I couldnt tell if this was for misquitoes or for other reasons. The fogging/fumigation is thick and many people are seen covering their faces with no protection. Unfortunately, it may take a while to flip through all the pictures on the link.

You are wrong. The Moken's have no written language. Their history is traditionally passed on orally, however compulsory education being imposed on the children my loosen their ties to their elders. This could make them no better off than the thousands who perished.

How would you explain this?

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Buddha statues spared by tsunami

The Island
Publication Date : 2005-01-02

The Ministry of Buddha Sasana said that 39 Buddhist temples were destroyed by last Sunday’s Tsunami tidal waves in Galle, Matara and Hambantota districts, but miraculously none of the statues of Lord Buddha had been damaged or swept into the ocean.

The ministry said there were no reports of any Buddhist monks in these temples being killed or injured by the monstrous waves. The damage to these Buddhist temples is estimated to be around Rs. 36 millions and the ministry has already allocated Rs. 4.5 million for their restoration, a spokesman said.

Our Galle correspondent Neminda Samarajeewa reported that despite the death and destruction all around, no Buddha statues were damaged or missing.

The surroundings were devastated by the giant waves which swept away thousands of people, but the Buddha statues opposite the Pradeshiya Sabha in Balapitiya and at Narigama, Hikkaduwa, two statues at Maggona, the one near the harbour at Magalla, and those at Katugoda, Beruwala, Habaraduwa (Opposite the bus stand), Galle (opposite the bus stand) and Unawatuna were intact.

The Buddha statue at Katugoda has a glass casing and it’s a miracle that even the glass was not smashed by the deadly waves. There were marks on the glass casing which showed the extent to which the water level had risen following the huge tidal waves, but neither the casing nor the Buddha statue deposited inside it was damaged, the correspondent said.

At Unawatuna where even the bridge was washed away, by the raging floods, the Buddha statue however remained intact.

"It’s a miracle", residents said.

After the giant tidal waves lashed Galle town, two people had saved their lives by clinging onto a branch of a Bo tree. Neither the Bodhiya nor the Buddha statue suffered any damage in the catastrophe.

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oral traditions are: "something akin to the Western methods above, like simple record keeping and history records."

They are much more difficult(naturally, your memory doesn't have to be as accurate if you have notes to go by), but remarkable accuracy can be kept with such methods. If your critique has to do with Western Culture abandoning the wisdom of its forebears, I agree. Unfortunately, we in the U.S. threw that away by the time of Andrew Jackson's presidency.

Ryan

2. Allied by nature; partaking of the same properties; of the same kind.

Western methods of recordkeeping are characterized by the written word. I think a better term would have been "resemble", both types being records of the culture, but using a different method of storing and disseminating the history.

1-there was no time for discussion, much less democratic process, to take place, when someone noticed the ocean receding from the beach. If everyone was to survive, the group had to recognize expert knowledge, or authority, in some form. I don't know exactly when the high waves arrived, but I think it would have been within 10 minutes.

2-the villagers lived in a place where the local geography provided high ground. The Surin islands are volcanic in origin. Had they been living on a river delta, there would have likely been no high ground within walking(running?) distance.

According to my skim readings, the last major tsunami in the region followed the explosive destruction of Krakatoa in the 1880s. Can anyone offer up links to other tsunamis in the Indian Ocean sector?

I posted a link in the last tsunami thread about it. Here it is again.

now we're quibbling semantics. Obviously oral tradition and written tradition are different, but both are simply variant forms of a complex, pre-existing technology: language.

Ryan

I understand that in our culture there is a deep need to write a chronology and pinpoint historical events. That need isn't universal. Nor is seperating ones environment from their personal/cultural philosphy a universal value.

Being seafaring people, couldn't someone, a long time ago have learned of tsunamis from another tribe that had direct experience?

I thought my post about the statutes and the monks surviving unscathed was also hopeful and inspiring.

Of couse, but given that they were willing and able to communicate, strongly suggests that the other (hypothetical) tribe was also Asiatic which does no violence to Eric's thesis.

Ryan

Sauer also suggested that a lot of archeological evidence of this earlier age was submerged neath the post-glacial rising oceans including evidence of early plant domestication.

I disagree that language is technology. Back to the dictionary...

" 1. [n] the practical application of science to commerce or industry
2. [n] the discipline dealing with the art or science of applying scientific knowledge to practical problems; "he had trouble deciding which branch of engineering to study""

We express our ideas about technolgy in language and other symbols but language itself is not technology.

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"Of couse, but given that they were willing and able to communicate, strongly suggests that the other (hypothetical) tribe was also Asiatic ...."

Why? Couldn't the knowledge have come from say Hawaii or S. America via first hand experience or communication that isn't limited to linguistic expressions?
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On to Carl Sauer....

Do you suppose that this sort of information will be incorporated into the grade school curricula, in coastal regions that might be affected? And, what of low-lying areas with no high ground? The only practical solution I can think of would be to construct tsunami shelters of reinforced concrete, shaped to withstand the force of the water, and resistant to earthquake.

Sorry Althea, different dictionaries. According to m-w online, Technology: 1 a : the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area.

In that case, I would say that it was knowledge of different sounds applied toward communication. Recall that "science" came from the latin word "scientia" which simply means: "to know."

Finally, it really is all a moot point now that I really think about the title of the thread. "Southeast Asia" can be applied to the Indian Ocean area but the description fits Japan as well. A country with a long history of dealing with tsunami.

Ryan

In hurricane warnings they have more time to size up the storm and its likely damage....so we have a fair projection of the most intense damage.

I can remember distinctly reading and being instructed in my early gradeschool years (1960's) about recognizing the potential for a tsunami and what to do. We were taught that a sudden withdrawing of water from the shore was a sure sign of an impending tsunami and to seek high ground immediately. Keep in mind, I was taught this in the land locked South Dakota prairie, thousands of miles from the sea. Why do we have people living along the oceans of this country who have no idea what a tsunami is, how they form, and what to do if confronted with the possibility? Somewhere since my childhood, the liberal minded public education system has blown a fuse. Perhaps their insistance on teaching all the other touch-feeling, multi-lingual, cultural sensitivity stuff usurped the need for and resources available to teach good old science, math, and other things, like survival skills.

You are wrong. The Moken's have no written language. Their history is traditionally passed on orally, however compulsory education being imposed on the children my loosen their ties to their elders. This could make them no better off than the thousands who perished.

As others have already noted, there are alternatives to written histories that are adequate for passing on historical events and cultural knowledge. Eskimos had no written language but had oral histories, story telling, and string art describing animals like mammoths that had been extinct in the area and likely unseen by anyone for at least 10,000 years. So the possibility of a seafaring culture passing on oral history of tsunamis from either direct or indirect experience seems quite reasonable.

Just how strong of a tsunami would be necessary to wash away a solid rock or brass statue of a morbidly obese Buddist deity? Especially if it is sheltered by the temples which took the brunt of the tsunami's force. I'm guessing that with a gravity base like that, they probably don't respond to much of anything, sort of like the pyramids.