Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

To answer the underlying question “Why and how similarities in myth exist in distant parts of the globe?” Witzel asserts that human intelligence and mythmaking capabilities were no less 40,000 years ago than they are today; the differences are cultural.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

“Worldwide similarities between individual myths are habitually explained by diffusion or by common human psychic traits (Jungian archetypes). However the current proposal supersedes these approaches as it involves a whole system of myths, notably one characterized by a narrative structure (story line) from the creation of the world to its end. This mythology has been spread not by diffusion but above all by the constant advance of humans: after their exodus out of Africa into northern Eurasia and beyond after the past two ice ages, respectively (c. 52.000–45,000 BC and 10,000 BC).”

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

This mythology, he asserts, “represents our oldest complex story. It is a novel of the creation, growth, and destruction of the world, of divine and human evolution and decay, from birth to death, from creation to destruction. . . The universe is ultimately regarded as a living body, not surprisingly in analogy to the human one: it is born, grows, and finally dies”

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

It is a story of humanity's emergence rather than creation.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Father heaven, mother earth, and their offspring; the defeat and displacement of current gods over their predecessors; the hidden sun revealed, after which the sun deity spawns humans; the defeat of the dragon;

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

the birth of humanity,

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

followed by their primal misdeed and subsequent death;

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

the Promethean act of bringing culture, by a hero or shaman;

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

the emergence of local nobility and history;

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

final destruction, usually with variants on the theme of the four (or five) ages;

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

and an eventual rebirth or heaven, or a new earth.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

And to all intents and purposes it is as old as the race – a story that begins with events that could be as distant as 125,000 years ago, the development of modern hominids in Africa, their migration from there in about 65,000 BC, and their subsequent settlement of the entire planet - the march of hominids out of Africa, eastward along the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean coastline into Southeast Asia, Melanesia, and Australia, while another branch appears to have migrated from the Southeast Asian subcontinent northwards into China, Japan, Siberia, and the Americas, and from Southwest Asia in northerly and northwesterly directions into Central Asia and Europe. And we know this not from the study of mythology but from biology, genetics, and the study of mitochondrial DNA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Hence if the development of myth is a marker for the evolution of civilization, then civilization is far older than previously imagined. Because civilization is then mindfulness not cities or technology.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Witzel issues strong warnings about his work. He constantly questions his own data. He recognizes that much of his speculation rests on suggestion rather than confirmation. The reasons are always that the corroborating sciences are thus far insufficiently developed.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

But he remains hopeful that the science will eventually fall into place. For example, he says “population genetics depends partly on so-far-untestable assumptions about rates of genetic drift that have not yet been established.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

He addresses the possibility that Neanderthals were able to speak. The current results appear to oppose this, but are not conclusive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The reason he addresses this is because Neanderthals have a deep antiquity that precedes H. sapiens sapiens. They also had burial practices that appear to have reflected symbolic thought. Even if they did not intermarry with H. sapiens sapiens, it is possible that they influenced them. The possibility of their intermarriage, however, has once again arisen as a result of recent evidence that Europeans have up to five percent Neanderthal genes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Witzel has his detractors. There are many elements of his narrative in which he apparently piles his own assumptions on top of the assumptions of others. Regardless of whether his ideas are found to be proven or not his true legacy may be to have made comparable mythology a science which engages with other sciences.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

If technological advancement rather than the development of values is the measure of our humanity then we are in a lot of trouble.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

It is an appealing notion that human beings have been human since the dawn, and that the sophistication of our thought has not been reliant on the intervention of romanticized mythical lost civilizations or aliens.