Three clocks · not one line

Timeline

The age a tradition claims, the date of the earliest surviving writing, and a date from the ground are not the same number. This page does not put them on one axis, does not sort the records by year, and does not supply a year the file does not contain.

An empty clock stays empty. Chart order is not chronological order.

41 records · claimed age filed in 29 · ground date filed in 15 · none placed on a line

Science
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
This row is a present-day description of a method, not a sacred book. Writing that counts as science is ongoing.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Older natural philosophy is related and is not the source of these nine sentences. There is no autograph that founded “Science” as this chart uses the word.
Judaism
Tradition’s claim of age
The tradition’s own claim places the Torah earlier than any surviving copy.
Earliest surviving writing
The oldest Hebrew biblical manuscripts of any length are among the Dead Sea Scrolls, from about the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE. Short earlier inscriptions exist, including the Ketef Hinnom amulets, often dated to the late 7th or early 6th century BCE.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Short earlier inscriptions exist, including the Ketef Hinnom amulets, often dated to the late 7th or early 6th century BCE.
Not one date. The tradition’s own claim places the Torah earlier than any surviving copy. No autograph of the Torah is extant. The usual complete Hebrew text is medieval (the Leningrad Codex is dated 1008). The tradition may be older. The surviving evidence for the text is not.
Enochic / Dead Sea Scroll Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
There is no source from a historical Enoch.
Earliest surviving writing
Aramaic pieces of the Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book are among the Dead Sea Scrolls, commonly placed in the last centuries BCE. A continuous book survives in Geʿez, in medieval manuscripts.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. There is no source from a historical Enoch. The Book of Parables has no Aramaic copy from Qumran, and its date is uncertain. Parts of the collection do not share one century. The Geʿez book is a later form of an earlier literature, not the earliest form.
Christianity
Tradition’s claim of age
The tradition’s origin and the date of the surviving books are not the same date.
Earliest surviving writing
The earliest surviving Christian writings are letters of Paul, from about the 50s CE. The gospels are later in the 1st century. The oldest substantial gospel manuscripts are still later copies, from the 2nd century onward.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Jesus left no extant writing. The gospels are decades after the events they narrate. They rest on oral telling and on earlier notes we do not have. A 4th-century codex is not a 1st-century autograph. The tradition’s origin and the date of the surviving books are not the same date.
Islam
Tradition’s claim of age
The tradition says the Qur’an was recited before it was a bound book.
Earliest surviving writing
The Qur’an is traditionally compiled in the mid-7th century. Early manuscript fragments are also 7th century. One folio’s parchment has been radiocarbon-dated to a range overlapping that century. That dates the skin, not by itself the day the ink was written.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
One folio’s parchment has been radiocarbon-dated to a range overlapping that century. That dates the skin, not by itself the day the ink was written.
Not one date. The tradition says the Qur’an was recited before it was a bound book. We do not have a public autograph in Muhammad’s hand. Major hadith collections are 8th–9th century. Biography (the sīra) is later still. Those are not the Qur’an. The gap is shorter than for many ancient canons, and it is still a gap.
Hindu Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
The tradition may be much older than the oldest manuscript.
Earliest surviving writing
The Vedas were carried orally. The oldest manuscripts of them are medieval, many centuries after any plausible date of composition. A few names of Vedic-like gods appear in a Mitanni treaty of about the 14th century BCE. That is a linguistic trace, not a Veda.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
A few names of Vedic-like gods appear in a Mitanni treaty of about the 14th century BCE. That is a linguistic trace, not a Veda.
Not one date. The tradition may be much older than the oldest manuscript. Scholarly dates for the Rigveda, often set in the second millennium BCE, are reconstructions, not colophons. Schools (Vedānta and others) are later and disagree. Do not treat a medieval copy, or a modern textbook, as the first utterance.
Buddhist Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
The Buddha’s lifetime is not fixed by a contemporary document.
Earliest surviving writing
The earliest datable mentions of the Buddha are Ashokan inscriptions of the 3rd century BCE. They are not the canon. Among the oldest Buddhist manuscripts are Gandhāran texts from about the 1st century BCE to the 2nd century CE.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Ashokan edicts are contemporary inscriptions of a later king who honors the Buddha. They do not contain the suttas.
Not one date. The Buddha’s lifetime is not fixed by a contemporary document. Scholarly estimates differ by a century or more. A Sri Lankan chronicle says the Pali canon was written in the 1st century BCE. That chronicle is later than the event it reports. Chinese and Tibetan canons are other transmissions. The teaching may be older than every surviving page. The pages are not from the Buddha’s lifetime.
Daoist Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
A 6th-century BCE Laozi is traditional and historically disputed.
Earliest surviving writing
The oldest Daodejing manuscripts are the Guodian bamboo slips, from a tomb of about 300 BCE, and the Mawangdui silk copies, buried in 168 BCE.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Those are copies, not a signed autograph of Laozi. A 6th-century BCE Laozi is traditional and historically disputed. Religious Daoism as a church (the Celestial Masters, traditionally 2nd century CE) is a later movement. It is not the Daodejing. The chart’s “Daoist” row covers more than one of these layers, and the dates must not be blended.
Ancient Egyptian
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
The Pyramid Texts were carved in royal pyramids around the 24th century BCE. They are contemporary inscriptions of that ritual literature. They are not a handbook of all Egyptian religion for the next two thousand years.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Pyramid Texts, and later coffin and temple inscriptions, are primary texts of their own centuries. Each dates to the monument it is on.
Not one date. “Ancient Egyptian” on this chart spans a very long time. The Book of the Dead is a later copy-tradition of spells. Greek and Roman descriptions are outside accounts from the end of that span. Decipherment in the 1820s is modern. A translation is not the wall it translates. Gaps inside the span are normal, not a license to fill them from later centuries.
Mesopotamian Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
Royal inscriptions in Sumerian and Akkadian are contemporary with the kings who commissioned them, from the third millennium BCE onward. Mythic poems more often survive as later copies.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Building inscriptions, year names, and some administrative texts are contemporary with the events they record. They are not the flood poems.
Not one date. A tablet that copies a story is not the first telling, and a translation is not the tablet. The Enūma Eliš is known from first-millennium copies of a poem often placed earlier. Old Babylonian copies are not third-millennium autographs. Where a tablet is broken, the break stays. Zecharia Sitchin’s books are a modern alternative reading. They are not statements the tablets make.
Norse Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
The tradition may be older than 1220. The surviving myth books are not.
Earliest surviving writing
The main mythic books are 13th-century Icelandic: Snorri Sturluson’s Edda around 1220, and the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda around 1270.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Archaeology does not by itself confirm a stanza. This chart does not treat Snorri as an eyewitness.
Not one date. Those writers were Christians, centuries after the pre-Christian North. Some poems are probably older oral material. How much older is argued, not stamped on the vellum. Runestones and bracteates are artifacts and rarely tell the stories. Adam of Bremen’s 11th-century description of Uppsala is an outside account. The tradition may be older than 1220. The surviving myth books are not.
Anishinaabe / Ojibwe Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
No century is assigned here as the start, because no contemporary source establishes one.
Earliest surviving writing
This is an oral tradition of a living people. Extended writing about it is mostly 19th- and 20th-century: ethnographers, and also Anishinaabe authors and teachers. Midewiwin birchbark scrolls belong to one society, not to every community, and they are not a dated public archive.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. The tradition may be much older than any of those writings. The writings are not the origin. An outsider’s book is an outside account even when the teller was Anishinaabe. A community teaching today is not the same document as a 19th-century collector’s notes. No century is assigned here as the start, because no contemporary source establishes one.
Maya Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
Classic Maya inscriptions on stone, from about the 3rd to the 9th century CE, are contemporary texts of the cities that carved them. Three or four Postclassic books survive (the Dresden Codex and others). Most books were destroyed.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Monument inscriptions are primary texts for Classic royal ritual, war, and calendar. They are not a single Maya bible.
Not one date. The Popol Vuh is not a Classic inscription. It is a K’iche’ text written in Latin letters in the 16th century, known through a later copy, of a tradition that may be older. Decipherment of the glyphs is 20th-century work. A translation of a stela is not the stela, and a colonial book is not a stela. Preclassic religion is mostly artifact without a readable myth.
Zoroastrianism
Tradition’s claim of age
Zarathustra’s date is not established.
Earliest surviving writing
The oldest Avestan manuscripts we have are medieval, mostly from the 13th century onward. The language of the Gathas is much older than those copies. A Sassanian written Avesta is reported by later Pahlavi books and does not itself survive.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
There is no autograph and no contemporary inscription that contains the Gathas.
Not one date. Zarathustra’s date is not established. Scholarly guesses range over many centuries. The tradition may be far older than the oldest manuscript. Pahlavi works such as the Bundahišn and the Dēnkard are 9th century CE and later. They are not the Gathas. Do not fill the gap with a chosen century.
Latter-day Saint Tradition
Tradition’s claim of age
The tradition says the book was translated from ancient plates. Those plates are not available to read or to date.
Earliest surviving writing
The Book of Mormon was published in 1830. Parts of the original manuscript and the printer’s manuscript survive. Doctrine and Covenants and Joseph Smith’s papers are likewise 19th-century documents of the movement.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. The tradition says the book was translated from ancient plates. Those plates are not available to read or to date. The evidence in hand is the 1830 publication and the manuscripts behind it, not an ancient artifact on a shelf. Later church teaching is a further layer. The ancient claim and the surviving book must not be written as if they were the same object.
Scientology
Tradition’s claim of age
There is no older source this row is copying.
Earliest surviving writing
Dianetics was published in 1950. L. Ron Hubbard’s books and lectures from the following decades are the movement’s own texts. They are contemporary with the founding.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. There is no older source this row is copying. Materials withheld from the public cannot be described here. Guessing their contents would fill a gap. Public books are the evidence. They are not a report about a prehistoric civilization that we can check against another archive.
Astrological Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
The oldest surviving celestial-omen series are Mesopotamian tablets, especially Enūma Anu Enlil, from the second and first millennia BCE. Personal birth-chart astrology is later, Hellenistic, from about the last two centuries BCE, known through Greek papyri and much later manuscripts.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. This row is not one tradition, so it has no single chain. Indian Jyotiṣa, Arabic medieval astrology, and modern Western practice are further transmissions with their own books. An omen tablet is not a natal house system. A modern textbook is not the tablet.
Sumerian Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
The copy is not the first telling.
Earliest surviving writing
Contemporary Sumerian royal inscriptions exist from the late third millennium BCE. The literary stories used on this row — Enki and Ninmah, Inanna’s descent, the flood pieces, the King List — are known mainly from Old Babylonian copies in the early second millennium, and from still later copies.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Royal inscriptions and administrative tablets are contemporary evidence for Sumerian language and kingship. They are not the literary poems.
Not one date. The copy is not the first telling. Several compositions are fragmentary. The King List exists in versions that do not match. A translation is not the tablet. Sitchin’s readings are not the Sumerian. Where the flood tablet is broken, the cause of the flood is not filled in from a later poem.
Greek Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
The tradition of the gods may be older than Homer. Homer is not a Bronze Age book.
Earliest surviving writing
The Iliad and the Odyssey were probably written down in the 8th or 7th century BCE, from oral poetry. The famous medieval manuscripts, such as the 10th-century Venetus A, are copies. Vase paintings from the 6th century BCE show myths without quoting the poems.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Linear B tablets of about 1400–1200 BCE are Greek, and they are palace accounts, not Homer.
Not one date. Linear B tablets of about 1400–1200 BCE are Greek, and they are palace accounts, not Homer. Mycenaean cult and archaic poetry are separated by centuries with almost no mythic text. Plato survives mainly in medieval copies. The tradition of the gods may be older than Homer. Homer is not a Bronze Age book.
Jainism
Tradition’s claim of age
Mahāvīra’s lifetime is not fixed by a contemporary inscription of his teaching.
Earliest surviving writing
The Śvetāmbara canon is traditionally said to have been written at a council in Valabhī in the 5th century CE. That date is traditional. The oldest surviving Āgama manuscripts are medieval. Digambara tradition holds that the ancient canon was lost.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Mahāvīra’s lifetime is not fixed by a contemporary inscription of his teaching. The preaching may be older than every manuscript by many centuries. The two communities do not agree on what survived. A modern outline of “Jainism” that ignores that split overfills the record.
Sikhism
Tradition’s claim of age
These books are close to the Gurū period (Nānak died in 1539).
Earliest surviving writing
The Ādi Granth was compiled in 1604 under Gurū Arjan. The Kartarpur manuscript is associated with that compilation. The Gurū Granth Sāhib as the final form dates to 1708. These books are close to the Gurū period (Nānak died in 1539).
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. The scripture is not the same evidence as the janam-sākhīs, which are later life-stories and disagree with each other. A story about Nānak’s early life in a later hagiography is not a line of the Granth. The gap for the scripture is short by ancient standards. The gap for the biographies is wider, and it should stay visible.
Shinto
Tradition’s claim of age
Kami practice may be older than 712. The written myths date to the 8th century.
Earliest surviving writing
The Kojiki (712) and the Nihon Shoki (720) are the earliest extended mythic texts. They were compiled at the Japanese court. Shrine practice is older than those books as an activity, and those books are not shrine ledgers.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Archaeology of earlier ritual is artifact without a readable doctrine, so it cannot be quoted as myth.
Not one date. Archaeology of earlier ritual is artifact without a readable doctrine, so it cannot be quoted as myth. The word “Shinto,” and the idea of it as one religion beside Buddhism, are later classifications. Kami practice may be older than 712. The written myths date to the 8th century. State Shinto is modern. Those three must not share one date.
Chinese Traditional Religion/Cosmology
Tradition’s claim of age
Those do not share one evidence date.
Earliest surviving writing
The earliest Chinese writing is Shang oracle bones, about 1250–1050 BCE. They are contemporary records of royal divination. They are not a cosmology textbook and not a village temple’s manual.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Oracle bones and Zhou bronze inscriptions are contemporary primary evidence for what they actually record: divinations, gifts, appointments. Not a full theology.
Not one date. This row covers classical correlative thought, ancestor rite, and later popular religion. Those do not share one evidence date. Han editors shaped the classics. Popular temples are known largely from much later stele, gazetteers, and observation. A Shang bone does not document a 19th-century festival. The gap is the point of the row’s caution.
Gnostic Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
We often have a critic’s summary, or a translation of a copy, and not the author’s manuscript.
Earliest surviving writing
The earliest extended reports are hostile outside accounts, especially Irenaeus, around 180 CE. The Nag Hammadi codices are Coptic books of the 4th century, copies of translations of Greek works that are mostly lost.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. We often have a critic’s summary, or a translation of a copy, and not the author’s manuscript. “Gnosticism” as one religion is a modern scholarly label, and it is contested. Texts grouped under it do not share one myth. The gap is not filled by picking the most famous demiurge story and assigning it to all of them.
Hermetic Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
A historical Hermes Trismegistus is not established. The figure is traditional.
Earliest surviving writing
The Greek Corpus Hermeticum survives in Byzantine manuscripts. The treatises are commonly dated by scholars to Roman Egypt, roughly the 1st to 3rd centuries CE. That is a reconstruction, not a date written on a title page. The Asclepius survives in Latin.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. A historical Hermes Trismegistus is not established. The figure is traditional. Marsilio Ficino’s Latin translation (15th century) is a Renaissance layer. The Emerald Tablet is a medieval Arabic and Latin text, not a chapter of the Greek corpus. Modern occult orders are a further interpretation. None of these is an eyewitness report from a primordial Hermes.
Yoruba Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
No start-date is invented here.
Earliest surviving writing
There is no ancient Yoruba canon in manuscript. Ifá and other teachings are oral. Extended writing is largely 19th- and 20th-century: missionaries and colonial writers, and Yoruba authors, with diaspora traditions in Cuba and Brazil written down on their own timelines.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. The tradition may be much older than the 19th century. The surviving systematic writing is not. An Ifá verse published by an anthropologist is a recorded oral text, not an old book. Lucumí and Candomblé are related transmissions, not the same file as a Nigerian town. No start-date is invented here.
Australian Aboriginal Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
A date for paint is not a date for a myth, and a myth from one people is not the neighbor’s.
Earliest surviving writing
Rock art and other traces of occupation are ancient, and some paintings are many thousands of years old by archaeological dating. Those dates do not decode a story. Writing about the traditions is colonial and recent: outsiders’ ethnography, and Aboriginal authors speaking for their own countries.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Rock art and other traces of occupation are ancient, and some paintings are many thousands of years old by archaeological dating. Those dates do not decode a story.
Not one date. There is no contemporary text of a continental doctrine, because there is no continental doctrine to have one. The traditions may be very old. The surviving sentences are not. A date for paint is not a date for a myth, and a myth from one people is not the neighbor’s. Insufficient evidence is the accurate classification for any shared creed.
Inca Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
The gap is not filled from the chronicles backward as if they were eyewitnesses to every earlier century.
Earliest surviving writing
The Inca did not leave a narrative script we can read. Quipu are largely undeciphered as literature. The main written accounts are Spanish and Andean writers after the conquest, from the mid-16th century on. Felipe Guaman Poma’s chronicle is about 1615.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Archaeology shows offerings and buildings. It does not state a doctrine.
Not one date. Those books are after the empire fell. They are outside accounts, or Indigenous voices writing inside a colonial situation. They are not Inca state books. Pre-Inca religions are known from artifacts and from later memory, not from their authors’ theology. Archaeology shows offerings and buildings. It does not state a doctrine. The gap is not filled from the chronicles backward as if they were eyewitnesses to every earlier century.
Baháʼí Faith
Tradition’s claim of age
There is no ancient manuscript gap of the kind that affects the Avesta or the Edda.
Earliest surviving writing
The writings of Baháʼu’lláh are 19th-century texts in Persian and Arabic, contemporary with his life (1817–1892). The Báb’s writings are slightly earlier in the same century. Originals and early copies are kept by the community.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. There is no ancient manuscript gap of the kind that affects the Avesta or the Edda. There is a different gap: when these writings interpret Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, or Krishna, that interpretation is Baháʼí teaching about those traditions. It is not those traditions’ own documents. Authorized interpretation by ʻAbdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi is a defined layer after the source, not the source itself.
Haudenosaunee / Iroquois Confederacy Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
No century is assigned here as the start.
Earliest surviving writing
Oral tradition of the nations of the Confederacy. What libraries hold is later writing, by nation historians and by outsiders. No manuscript canon is filed, and no start century is assigned.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora tellings are not one text. A cell names only what those tellings are widely known to share, or it says Unclassified / Source Needed. Wampum is a record. It is not a book, and it is not dated here. No century is assigned here as the start.
Lakota Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
No century is assigned here as the start, because no contemporary source establishes one.
Earliest surviving writing
A Lakota sentence is marked Lakota. No manuscript canon is filed, and no start century is assigned.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Dakota is not filled from it. No century is assigned here as the start, because no contemporary source establishes one. Collector’s syntheses are not treated as the nation’s own canon.
Dakota Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
No century is assigned here as the start, because no contemporary source establishes one.
Earliest surviving writing
Extended writing is mostly later, by Dakota and Lakota authors and by outsiders. No manuscript canon is filed, and no start century is assigned.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Dakota is not filled from Lakota. No century is assigned here as the start, because no contemporary source establishes one.
Diné / Navajo Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
No century is assigned here as the start.
Earliest surviving writing
Oral narrative and ceremony of the Diné. Public tellings of emergence, the mountains, and hózhǫ́ are what this row uses. The chants themselves are not reproduced. No manuscript canon is filed, and no start century is assigned.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. The tradition may be older than any writing about it. A book by an outsider is not the ceremony. No century is assigned here as the start. Cells that outrun the public narrative say Unclassified / Source Needed.
Hopi Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
No century is assigned here as the start.
Earliest surviving writing
Oral and clan teaching. Emergence, Maasaw, the katsinam, and the covenant are public enough to file in outline. Ceremony is not described. No manuscript canon is filed, and no start century is assigned.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. A published ‘Hopi bible’ by a non-Hopi author is not this row. Book of the Hopi is not a source here. No century is assigned here as the start. What is not public stays Unclassified / Source Needed.
Irish Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
Irish stories survive in medieval Christian manuscripts, the Táin in copies from the 12th century and later.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Those medieval tales may preserve older oral material. They do not say so on the page in a way that dates the story to the Iron Age. No start century is assigned here.
Welsh Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
Welsh stories survive in medieval Christian manuscripts, the Mabinogi in 14th-century manuscripts.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Those medieval tales may preserve older oral material. They do not date the story to the Iron Age. No start century is assigned here.
Gaulish Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
The only substantial pre-Christian Celtic writing is short: inscriptions, and the Coligny calendar (2nd century CE), which is a calendar, not a myth. Caesar’s Gallic War is an outside account of druids.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. A druid textbook does not survive. Greek and Roman reports are not Gaulish books. No Gaulish myth is filed from them.
Māori Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
George Grey’s Polynesian Mythology (1855) is a collector’s English book of Māori tradition.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. The stories and genealogies were oral. Nothing in the oldest layer is a manuscript from the composers. No Māori teaching is filed beyond the existence of that collector’s book.
Hawaiian Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
David Malo wrote on Hawaiʻi in the early 19th century; publication came later.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. No further Hawaiian claim is filed. Chant and genealogy are older than the books by an unknown span. No start century is assigned here.
Tahitian Traditions
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
A Tahitian account is not a Māori one.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. No Tahitian teaching, recorder, or date is filed.
The Living Realm
Tradition’s claim of age
Not filed. No date is added.
Earliest surviving writing
This row was written for this chart as a working synthesis. It has no ancient source.
Ground — inscription, artifact, or laboratory
Not filed. No date is added.
Not one date. Nothing was transmitted from an older book, and nothing was translated. Reading it as a recovered scripture would mislabel a modern hypothesis. The chart already says it is not a verdict. That limit is the evidence statement.