h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hm, you're close to the story but not quite on the mark. This is from World Tibet Network News:

Lhamo Dhondup's name was one of 12 on a list of likely young candidates. The group of monks sent from Lhasa were searching for a boy with tiger-striped legs, big, shell-like ears, and the imprint of a conch shell on the palm of his hand. Now 63, Kundun shows little evidence of these distinguishing features, just deep vaccination scars on the shoulder of his right arm revealed from beneath his maroon robes. Children judged candidates for reincarnations of senior lamas have to recognise objects from their previous lives. Lhamo Dhondup was shown two rosaries and two drinking bowls, one of each belonging to the thirteenth Dalai Lama, and he chose correctly. So, at the age of four, he became the temporal and spiritual leader of Tibet.

So there are conch shells involved, and shell-like ears, but it's two different signs. Still doesn't explain how those shells got to Tibet in the first place.

Thanks for that, at least I know I didn't imagine the whole story.
I have wondered if continental drift and plate techtonics have a role to play, considering that the Himalayas were once seabed and there are certainly lots of oceanic fossils to be found in Nepal at least. Maybe if timeless things like rocks contain imprints of shells then it's a good symbol of continuity across aeons...?
Less fancifully, I thought about scarcity of objects with distant origins leading to mystery and respect. Or trading value.
Or something.
No, I still haven't got a feasible explanation of this one.

You got it, it's trading value. Conch shells are serviceable
trumpets in many cultures, so they aren't just decorations.
And they increase in value the farther you get from water,
especially the sort of water conches prefer...

ffMike, why am I not surprised to find you here?

Anyway, hallo, Metal Chicken, followed you here from the
Book Nook.

Lil

You're not surprised because I'm following you in advance. Rather a tricky skill, that, but it leads to fun results.

Thanks for your help guys. Now I've got an answer I'll have to think of something else to write on my home page. Maybe I'll try my wonderings about how tone deaf people communicate if they happen to speak Chinese or Thai or some other language where tone matters. Are the cognitive processes that fail in someone who can't tell a middle C from a top F the same as those involved with identifying a falling, rising or other tone in a tonal language??
On the other hand I could always write something about me but that's not half as interesting..

I've wondered that myself. I think even tone deaf people can
distinguish a rising slide from a falling one.

I've been told that the Japanese will actually draw ideographs on
the palms of their hands, sketching with a finger, to make their meaning clear, during a conversation. Kind of like if I whipped out a little whiteboard to remind you that I had said "Yes dear", not "Yes, deer".

Lil

I may well qualify as tone deaf. If you play two adjacent notes on the piano without me watching, I can't reliably tell you which was the higher note. However I do think I can tell rising pitch from falling pitch.

Having no particular talent for languages, though, I shan't be trying to learn Chinese to test this hypothesis further.

That's OK, I won't be round with a 'Teach Yourself Mandarin' book and a whip. I've decided there are two different processes at work. Partly because of your comment and partly because I can remember my (tone-deaf) father once illustrating the difference between his Southern Irish accent and a Northern Irish one by accentuating a final rising questioning tone at the end of a Northern accented sentence but a falling tone at the end of the Southern one.
Also he certainly didn't speak in a constant monotone suggesting he (and presumably you) could distinguish enough of the tonal variety in speech to hear and reproduce the differences.

There is in fact a term for this: "Intonation contour". It's the tonal shape of speech. Intonation contour provides context and helps the listener to fill in the syllables of a muffled or interrupted utterance.

Lil