The Low-tech Early Warning System

This is a fascinating example of how oral traditions carry practical knowledge about how to live safely in a particular place. Researchers studying the level of fatalities in tsunamis report that they are far higher in areas where the population is made up of recent migrants, compared to those with longstanding traditional communities:

It became apparent that oral traditions were going back 500 years ... The stories contained information about how to recognize when a tsunami was about to come, such as falling sea levels, and told how people should take action.

Read the whole article here - and the press release from UC Santa Cruz on which it's based.

(Hat tip to Tom.)