Playing with DSR1

:: naga story ::

Continuing with the topic of the Naga Myth per Critical Path, labeled speculative prehistory, we're able to establish a narrow gap between Sundaland and Sahul. Sundaland is roughly Southeast Asia whereas Sahul is Greater Australia (roughly). However this was all during the most recent ice age and the geography was all different, such that names from today's map don't really apply.

To quote DeepSeek R1:

Land Bridges in Southeast Asia

At the glacial peak (~26,000–19,000 years ago), the Sundaland shelf connected modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, and Borneo into a contiguous landmass twice the size of India [34]. Key features included:

• A continuous land bridge from mainland Asia to Java, Sumatra, and Borneo.
• Exposed continental shelves forming coastal plains and mangrove forests.
• The merging of Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania into Sahul, separated from Sundaland by narrow straits [15].

The Indonesian Archipelago was dramatically easier to traverse during this period, with only narrow sea channels (e.g., the Makassar Strait) separating Sundaland from Sahul [5].

Fuller's inventive narrative traces a vector following Sahulis migrating westward, bringing their maritime savvy and Naga religion to the sapiens coming the other way.

Much as Fuller's telling prompts a gestalt switching land-ocean flip, with oceans becoming the connecting medium vs lands connecting oceans, his "Naga peoples moving westward" is akin to flipping positive with negative charges in viewing circuit diagrams. All the textbooks of our time talk about humanity sprawling eastward, out of Africa.

However prehistoric Polynesians, without our modern knowledge of the fossil record, would speculate about other morphogenetic pathways, wiring in alternative metaphors.

Included in this speculative Naga religion are stories wheren whales and dolphins connect to humans through liminal figures, roughly translated as "mer people" in today's English.

DSR1 again (extending the previous query):

Transitional Life Forms: Mermaids and Hybrid Beings

Many Pacific and South Asian cultures feature liminal beings bridging humans and marine mammals:

• Māori Pania of the Reef: A mermaid-like figure who married a mortal but returned to the sea, embodying the tension between land and ocean [6].
• Javanese Nyai Roro Kidul: A sea goddess often depicted as a mermaid (Nyai Blorong), ruling the Southern Seas and influencing maritime fortunes [6].
• Cambodian Sovanna Maccha: A mermaid princess from the Ramayana tradition who initially obstructs but later aids heroic endeavors [6].

We have evidence of Papuan-Sahulis as long as 40K years ago, coinciding with the aforementioned changed geography and climate. 

Human civilization in the South Pacific has a complex and layered history, with archaeological and genetic evidence revealing migrations spanning tens of thousands of years. The earliest confirmed human presence dates back at least 33,000–40,000 years, based on remains found in the Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Islands [1][2][4]. However, recent studies suggest migration to islands like West Papua may have begun over 50,000 years ago, with seafarers navigating equatorial routes from Asia [4].

In sum, Critical Path posits a Naga-informed mindset stemming from Polynesia and morphing along a timeline connecting it eventually around to the Americas, via Thailand, Egypt, Phoenicia, Venice, Russia-Viking... thereby closing circuits and encoding the basis of a new world mythology or cosmic poem, one among several. YMMV.

As with most mythologies, the various threads serve a mnemonic function, by stringing together, in memorable narratives, various technical gems, such as knot-tying and net-making, basket-weaving, navigation data etcetera.