That is really, really cool. It's honestly quite fascinating how we're somehow still uncovering new material about a man who's been dead for nearly 500 years. I wonder how many other ciphered letters, both for Charles V and other past rulers as well, are still sitting around, waiting to be deciphered.

That's pretty neat, but not even close to the scale of the extreme rigor of these Indigenous Australian oral traditions. 170 years is basically just two or three generations of elders; no one alive now was around back then, but the elderly bard recounting his tale to his people probably had a grandparent that was there to witness the events, or at least hear of them as they were happening. Therefore, the story would only need to be passed along a few times before it's present incarnation. In a game of telephone, which this can be compared to, the original phrase is usually mostly intact after being passed along to only two or three people.

To pass down a story from 7000 years ago, however, it would need to be told at least a hundred times, though probably many times more. That opens up a lot of opportunity for certain storytellers to add elements, and others to forget certain details, and yet more to slip up on certain figures or change names; the end result may be nothing like what actually happened in reality that inspired it. On this sort of timescale, it is also very possible for a story to simply stop being told, and thus be completely forgotten to posterity.

The example that you posted was cool, but not particularly unique. The article above tells of an oral storytelling tradition that has proved impeccably, perhaps uniquely, accurate even after millenia.

That is seriously cool. I wonder if so few, if any, other oral traditions in other cultures proved so meticulously accurate.

I just don't understand. So, these whistleblowers reveal that Exxon is completely and knowingly over-projecting their future Permian Basin drilling prospects, and thus lying to investors about their future profits (which is fraud, and very illegal), and they still want to work for them. Apart from how hypocritical and self-serving it is to reveal this important information, and then agree to shut up about it after getting their jobs back and paid arrears, it seems that they simply haven't fathomed what this fraud suggests about Exxon itself. Any company which has to actively lie in order to maintain a perception of future growth is a company which is seeing its prospects and future profits inevitably crumble. The point of this exercise was to put off the realization of this inevitable contraction by their investors, and thus delay a plummet in investor confidence, by maintaining the illusion of growth long into the future. In the end, though, shareholders are going to realize that in our modern climate change impacted, energy transitioning era, there's no more place for fossil fuels: it is then that the Carbon Bubble will pop, with disastrous effects for Exxon and other fossil fuel corporations. This, on Exxon's part, is all one sick play for time, with our planet and civilization's health and prosperity on the line, to make a few more hundred billion dollars over the next few decades. If I were in these whistleblower's positions, I would get out as quickly as possible, and try to find work with a more ethical firm.