5 ms·

Scientists Trace Society’s Myths to Primordial Origins

137 points by Vigier 10y ago

georgecmu 10y ago
Here's a link to one of the author's academic papers with detailed description of methodology: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00932197/file/A_2013.10._A_Cosmic_Hunt_in_the_Berber_sky_-_Les_Cahiers_de_l_AARS_16_93-106.pdf https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00932197/file/A_2...
Natsu 10y ago
How do we know these actually relate to the same original story and not to, say, the fact that there weren't quite so many things to do back then but look at stars and hunt, so there would be a lot of random stories about starts and hunting, along with other common elements of daily life?
- nswanberg 10y ago
  That's a great question which doesn't appear to be answered in the article or the paper. Maybe there is convergent evolution for features in myths just like in biology.
- posterboy 10y ago
  I don't know an answer to your question, but I wonder what makes a story original, when it's common to say, every love story is the same story told over again.
- blacksmith_tb 10y ago
  Another approach (which would be time-consuming, admittedly) would be to work from the opposite direction - how many themes in the myths of a particular group don't seem to be found elsewhere? That would tend to argue against some kind convergent evolution, at least, but might not rule out inconsistent transmission to other groups. Even in the article, it looks like the data could be used to emphasize the outliers and not the common thread (which does seem to potentially suffer from selection bias).
- lgessler 10y ago
  Isn't the answer to this the same as the answer to Jung's hypothesis? > “Myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul,” Jung argued. But the dissemination of Cosmic Hunt stories around the world cannot be explained by a universal psychic structure. If that were the case, Cosmic Hunt stories would pop up everywhere. Instead they are nearly absent in Indonesia and New Guinea and very rare in Australia but present on both sides of the Bering Strait, which geologic and archaeological evidence indicates was above water between 28,000 and 13,000 B.C. (So, the absence of Cosmic Hunt stories in New Guinea, Indonesia, and Australia would seem to be a counter to your hypothesis, unless for some reason we could explain why people in those regions thought less about stars and hunting.)
  - aaron695 10y ago
    "very rare" "nearly absent" does acknowledge that they do exist though. So we know at least they will spontaneously appear. And if it's a good meme why didn't it spread? The stars are a huge part of any lore. Hunting is a huge part of a mans life (Along with women) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_astronomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_astronom...
    - lgessler 10y ago
      I don't think that's a good counterargument--there are hundreds and probably thousands of data points in those regions. Using a simplistic metaphor, what are the odds that when all the cultures in the world rolled the dice to decide whether they'd have a Cosmic Hunter myth almost all of the ones in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea rolled not to? Vanishingly small.
      - aaron695 10y ago
        I don't know. Stories like this sound pretty close to me - http://members.optusnet.com.au/virgothomas/space/abobeliefs2.html http://members.optusnet.com.au/virgothomas/space/abobeliefs2... (Two Brothers & The Pointer Stars) All primitive societies obviously have stories of the stars being people and animals. Men were hunters, the animals will be game. Finding a exact narrative the fits your model from thousands of data points feels possible to me. [edit] From the authors paper read "What about the Saharan versions of Cosmic Hunt" and tell me they are not just making stuff up
- coldtea 10y ago
  >the fact that there weren't quite so many things to do back then but look at stars and hunt, so there would be a lot of random stories about starts and hunting, along with other common elements of daily life? If that was the case, the stories would be found in most/all places that there was hunting groups (e.g. maybe not in the Alaska). But they are not, they are in specific places where people seem to have migrated and brought them with them. Besides, there are far more common themes, resemblances and details (that change as the story passes on) apart from "there is hunting and some constellations" involved. Finally, while hunting might have been a big part of daily life, the idea that there were few things to do than "look at stars and hunt" seems a little off.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Modern anthropologists have had the opportunity to observe several groups of neolithic hunter-gatherers. They hunt or gather or prepare food for a couple of hours a day, and spend the rest of the day napping and playing. The pressures that create the variety of more developed cultures simply don't exist for them. Of course, sometimes the whole tribe dies from disease or starvation or war, but those are relatively rare events.
whatnotests 10y ago
Makes me think of Joseph Campbell's work on the Power of Myth[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGx4IlppSgU&list=PLePFb3rlFbw4G1aPfn-9HIH5epz0vFXKq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGx4IlppSgU&list=PLePFb3rlFb...
aaron695 10y ago
Looks more like cold reading to me. And to make it worse they would have been translated with a modern viewpoint.
contingencies 10y ago
Great article - I shared it with a WeChat history group here in China, and the reception was great. It's being deployed to Chinese world history students this week. Also, lovely to see some leading work from the Sorbonne. Yay France!
the8472 10y ago
> Reptiles, immortal like others who shed their skin or bark and thus rejuvenate, are contrasted with mortal men and/or are considered responsible for originating death, perhaps by their bite. In this context, a person in a desperate situation gets to see how a snake or other small animal revives or cures itself or other animals. The person uses the same remedy and succeeds. Interesting. In the epic of gilgamesh (one of the oldest tales preserved in written form) it is the protagonist who seeks immortality and then has the plant which is supposed to grant it stolen by a snake which then sheds its skin.
panglott 10y ago
Look at the actual tree chart "Genealogy of Myths". There are numerous Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Inuit examples from northeastern North America, a number of examples from southeastern North America, and a small cluster of cultures from Siberia and the Russian Far East. A common myth transmitted through North America and possibly the Russian Far East is very plausible—we have multiple lines of evidence of cultural transmission among the preColumbian cultures of North America, including language, technology, and other beliefs. Outside of that sphere? There's two Tuareg examples from North Africa, two Basque examples, and the Greek myth, which is represented by four(!) individual writers. It's certainly possible that there was some transmission of this myth around the Mediterranean, but... The Greek myth is apparently closely related to the Ojibwe example from the Great Lakes region(?). Let's also note that there is no other evidence of any cultural transmission between these groups and North America before the modern era. This is very implausible. Cultural practices can be invented as well as transmitted. How implausible is it that these represent independent inventions? Well, it's very common to relate constellations to animals, heroes, or divine beings. The constellations naturally follow each other through the sky, over the course of a night and over the course of seasons. Hunting was a primary subsistence activity in every pre-agricultural culture. These are not ideas that are hard to tie together. Note also the likelihood of chance resemblances between languages. http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm
- vannevar 10y ago
  It's not unreasonable that there should be similar stories, given the ubiquity of hunting culture and the brilliant night skies. But consider the number of visible stars and the possible patterns they might be grouped into, and the number of possible interpretations of those patterns. It seems highly unlikely that both the Greeks and the Iroquois would independently group the stars we call Ursa Major into a single constellation associated with a bear. To the modern eye, it looks nothing like a bear, and the stars comprising it might be split into any number of combinations to make other constellations. It seems much more likely that either there was some kind of communication between the two cultures, or that they shared a common mythological origin that preceded both: the article's 'proto-myths', accompanied by proto-astronomy.
charlieflowers 10y ago
I don't see the connection between biologists analyzing DNA (very precise and objective) and someone analyzing different versions of stories. With stories, which aspects you focus on and how you score similarity are highly subjective. Can anyone who knows about the technique elaborate?

137 points by Vigier 10y ago

Here's a link to one of the author's academic papers with detailed description of methodology: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00932197/file/A_2013.10._A_Cosmic_Hunt_in_the_Berber_sky_-_Les_Cahiers_de_l_AARS_16_93-106.pdf https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00932197/file/A_2...

Natsu 10y ago

How do we know these actually relate to the same original story and not to, say, the fact that there weren't quite so many things to do back then but look at stars and hunt, so there would be a lot of random stories about starts and hunting, along with other common elements of daily life?

nswanberg 10y ago
That's a great question which doesn't appear to be answered in the article or the paper. Maybe there is convergent evolution for features in myths just like in biology.
posterboy 10y ago
I don't know an answer to your question, but I wonder what makes a story original, when it's common to say, every love story is the same story told over again.
blacksmith_tb 10y ago
Another approach (which would be time-consuming, admittedly) would be to work from the opposite direction - how many themes in the myths of a particular group don't seem to be found elsewhere? That would tend to argue against some kind convergent evolution, at least, but might not rule out inconsistent transmission to other groups. Even in the article, it looks like the data could be used to emphasize the outliers and not the common thread (which does seem to potentially suffer from selection bias).
lgessler 10y ago
Isn't the answer to this the same as the answer to Jung's hypothesis? > “Myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul,” Jung argued. But the dissemination of Cosmic Hunt stories around the world cannot be explained by a universal psychic structure. If that were the case, Cosmic Hunt stories would pop up everywhere. Instead they are nearly absent in Indonesia and New Guinea and very rare in Australia but present on both sides of the Bering Strait, which geologic and archaeological evidence indicates was above water between 28,000 and 13,000 B.C. (So, the absence of Cosmic Hunt stories in New Guinea, Indonesia, and Australia would seem to be a counter to your hypothesis, unless for some reason we could explain why people in those regions thought less about stars and hunting.)
- aaron695 10y ago
  "very rare" "nearly absent" does acknowledge that they do exist though. So we know at least they will spontaneously appear. And if it's a good meme why didn't it spread? The stars are a huge part of any lore. Hunting is a huge part of a mans life (Along with women) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_astronomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_astronom...
  - lgessler 10y ago
    I don't think that's a good counterargument--there are hundreds and probably thousands of data points in those regions. Using a simplistic metaphor, what are the odds that when all the cultures in the world rolled the dice to decide whether they'd have a Cosmic Hunter myth almost all of the ones in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea rolled not to? Vanishingly small.
    - aaron695 10y ago
      I don't know. Stories like this sound pretty close to me - http://members.optusnet.com.au/virgothomas/space/abobeliefs2.html http://members.optusnet.com.au/virgothomas/space/abobeliefs2... (Two Brothers & The Pointer Stars) All primitive societies obviously have stories of the stars being people and animals. Men were hunters, the animals will be game. Finding a exact narrative the fits your model from thousands of data points feels possible to me. [edit] From the authors paper read "What about the Saharan versions of Cosmic Hunt" and tell me they are not just making stuff up
coldtea 10y ago
>the fact that there weren't quite so many things to do back then but look at stars and hunt, so there would be a lot of random stories about starts and hunting, along with other common elements of daily life? If that was the case, the stories would be found in most/all places that there was hunting groups (e.g. maybe not in the Alaska). But they are not, they are in specific places where people seem to have migrated and brought them with them. Besides, there are far more common themes, resemblances and details (that change as the story passes on) apart from "there is hunting and some constellations" involved. Finally, while hunting might have been a big part of daily life, the idea that there were few things to do than "look at stars and hunt" seems a little off.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Modern anthropologists have had the opportunity to observe several groups of neolithic hunter-gatherers. They hunt or gather or prepare food for a couple of hours a day, and spend the rest of the day napping and playing. The pressures that create the variety of more developed cultures simply don't exist for them. Of course, sometimes the whole tribe dies from disease or starvation or war, but those are relatively rare events.

whatnotests 10y ago

Makes me think of Joseph Campbell's work on the Power of Myth[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGx4IlppSgU&list=PLePFb3rlFbw4G1aPfn-9HIH5epz0vFXKq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGx4IlppSgU&list=PLePFb3rlFb...

aaron695 10y ago

Looks more like cold reading to me. And to make it worse they would have been translated with a modern viewpoint.

contingencies 10y ago

Great article - I shared it with a WeChat history group here in China, and the reception was great. It's being deployed to Chinese world history students this week. Also, lovely to see some leading work from the Sorbonne. Yay France!

the8472 10y ago

> Reptiles, immortal like others who shed their skin or bark and thus rejuvenate, are contrasted with mortal men and/or are considered responsible for originating death, perhaps by their bite. In this context, a person in a desperate situation gets to see how a snake or other small animal revives or cures itself or other animals. The person uses the same remedy and succeeds. Interesting. In the epic of gilgamesh (one of the oldest tales preserved in written form) it is the protagonist who seeks immortality and then has the plant which is supposed to grant it stolen by a snake which then sheds its skin.

panglott 10y ago

Look at the actual tree chart "Genealogy of Myths". There are numerous Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Inuit examples from northeastern North America, a number of examples from southeastern North America, and a small cluster of cultures from Siberia and the Russian Far East. A common myth transmitted through North America and possibly the Russian Far East is very plausible—we have multiple lines of evidence of cultural transmission among the preColumbian cultures of North America, including language, technology, and other beliefs. Outside of that sphere? There's two Tuareg examples from North Africa, two Basque examples, and the Greek myth, which is represented by four(!) individual writers. It's certainly possible that there was some transmission of this myth around the Mediterranean, but... The Greek myth is apparently closely related to the Ojibwe example from the Great Lakes region(?). Let's also note that there is no other evidence of any cultural transmission between these groups and North America before the modern era. This is very implausible. Cultural practices can be invented as well as transmitted. How implausible is it that these represent independent inventions? Well, it's very common to relate constellations to animals, heroes, or divine beings. The constellations naturally follow each other through the sky, over the course of a night and over the course of seasons. Hunting was a primary subsistence activity in every pre-agricultural culture. These are not ideas that are hard to tie together. Note also the likelihood of chance resemblances between languages. http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm

vannevar 10y ago
It's not unreasonable that there should be similar stories, given the ubiquity of hunting culture and the brilliant night skies. But consider the number of visible stars and the possible patterns they might be grouped into, and the number of possible interpretations of those patterns. It seems highly unlikely that both the Greeks and the Iroquois would independently group the stars we call Ursa Major into a single constellation associated with a bear. To the modern eye, it looks nothing like a bear, and the stars comprising it might be split into any number of combinations to make other constellations. It seems much more likely that either there was some kind of communication between the two cultures, or that they shared a common mythological origin that preceded both: the article's 'proto-myths', accompanied by proto-astronomy.

charlieflowers 10y ago

I don't see the connection between biologists analyzing DNA (very precise and objective) and someone analyzing different versions of stories. With stories, which aspects you focus on and how you score similarity are highly subjective. Can anyone who knows about the technique elaborate?