2 Proposition

MYTHS ARE HISTORY

2. Proposition

2. Proposition: On Myth as an Oral Record of Early Prehistory

The comparative study of mythology as a global phenomenon, and the astounding similarity between myths collected in different regions of the world, however, has often raised questions notoriously difficult to answer or meaningfully explain.

When early historians and philosophers began quibbling critically over the nature and meaning of myths more than 2,500 years ago, at the center of their confusion burned irresolvable questions about whether or not the seemingly improbable contents of myth had any real basis in actual events. Many scholars have long since puzzled over the reasons for the ubiquity of celestial images common to practically all early religious traditions. — But despite the proliferation of cultural studies and critical theories that have continued to come forth regarding the essential homogeneity of cosmogonic myths found in the residue of the world’s earliest civilizations, these questions have nevertheless remained just as hotly contested and problematic to address as ever.

The archetypal parallels we find both East and West have indeed proved to be one of the most problematic aspects besetting comparative studies of world mythology and religion. When two or more myths have been found to be remarkably similar in some respects, three possible theories have been employed:

1) One hypothesis is that each is an isolated instance forming part of a common heritage, stemming from an older, as yet unrecovered culture.

2) Another theory is that myths or mythological motifs later spread from one religion to another “by occasion of war or by reason of trade” (Vico, New Science 59), in a process of slow cultural ‘diffusion.’

But despite the unmistakable resemblances in mythological traditions, neither (1) common heritage nor (2) cultural diffusion seems probable, when so many similar myths appear in widely separated regions of the world that had no communication with one another, and no further historical connections can be shown. — Nor does any single cultural version of events seem older and more true than the rest, with the others being but derivative copies that came later.

3) Thus a third idea is that parallel but independent developments in cultures living “everywhere unknown even to their nearest neighbors” (Vico, New Science 59) nevertheless produced similar mythic motifs in different places at roughly the same time.

Considering the global unanimity and the sheer volume of parallel traits, tropes and themes found in the study of comparative mythology, we shall here follow this third line of reasoning — but in a manner quite different, and more extensive, than those covered by the ‘environmental’ or ‘psychological’ justifications that others have posited before.

The primary issue, on which all else hangs, of course, is whether these myths are to be regarded only as inventions of human fancy or whether they indeed represent something more. For how exactly is it possible that such similar cosmovisions can develop independently in two distant places? — let alone dozens of different places, globally? — Whence the source of those improbable beliefs, by which such visions were empowered to galvanize whole populations with such compelling force? — Who invented those impossible tales? Where did their surreal images come from? And why were they everywhere so seriously and reverently believed?

Until quite recently, “not knowing the way in which uniform ideas of gods and heroes were born among the gentile peoples without their having any knowledge of each other” (Vico, New Science 47), the classification of these myths in almost any scheme at all proved quite elusive. — But considering the frenetic energy that all traditional peoples brought to their mythic cosmologies, how can we continue to dismiss our own ancestors’ traditions, which they took seriously as historical truth? Is it not possible to account for what they believed in concrete, purely this-worldly terms? — After all, no myth whatsoever was ever concerned with any abstract explanations.

Although mythic accounts of great cataclysms have generally been considered to be products of primitive superstitious thought and imagination, rather than reflections of actual events, during the past few decades there has been a growing trend to use the natural sciences to re-examine the context, structure, and meaning of myth. More and more scientists and scholars, taking new looks at ancient cultures and traditional societies, have been discovering hard evidence of much greater interest in the skies than anthropologists and historians had previously recognized.

This recent surge of research has not only begun to revise our thinking with respect to the relationship between myth and the major natural environmental events and processes that have shaped the course of human history; these groundbreaking studies have also revitalized the case for global catastrophes in Earth's natural history — including the occurrence of major cataclysms within the period of recorded human history. There is now an increasing awareness that some myths and legends are indeed based on natural phenomena, and that planet Earth and human civilizations in general might be much more threatened by celestial objects than the natural sciences had formerly been able to account for.

Reconsidering how so many ancient myths commemorate spectacular cataclysms associated with the various planets, some researchers have begun to question just how often cosmic events may have directly influenced prehistoric cultures, and if solid information about such events might have been encoded in their cosmogonic myths. Realizing that the factual basis behind the universal properties and patterns that link the world’s mythologies is not to be found in the everyday events of life, these researchers have turned instead to the celestial sphere and have begun locating the wellspring of myth in the awe-inspiring heavens.

In order to account for the sheer prevalence of mythopoeic traditions which held that previous cultural epochs had been terminated by great catastrophes, which at repeated intervals convulsed all nations, subsequently followed by new creations of the world, some authors have begun to suggest that people everywhere preserve the memory of distant prehistoric catastrophes that once imperiled humanity, damaged and dynamically rearranged the solar system and destroyed vast regions of the earth. An expanding sector of scientific literature has adopted the stance that human prehistory during the Holocene was indeed directly shaped by cosmic catastrophes, and that terrestrial and oceanic impacts by comets, asteroids, meteorites and interplanetary lightning strikes are largely responsible for the powerful cosmological and eschatological visions that have been handed down to us from past civilizations.

Approaching myth in this light, we thus affirm some of the basic tenets of earlier groundbreaking studies — including the New Science of Giambattista Vico, who insisted that, if a full history and understanding of man was to be known, the myths of earlier times ought to be taken seriously as accounts of the actual history of those times. "The fables in their origin," said Vico, "were true and severe narrations ...” (Vico, New Science 814). [...]

— Why else, after all, would so many ancient peoples in relatively remote geographic areas have arrived at such similar patterns and systems of belief? Gradual distribution by borrowing and diffusion can only account for a fraction of this confounding pattern of uniformity. The notion of a more or less universal similarity in human psychology notwithstanding, is it really all that probable for all these common mythemes and core archetypes to have originated independently, though roughly at the same time, somehow triggered by . . . forces unknown? — Isn’t it rather far more likely that all ancient peoples everywhere, all over the globe, simultaneously experienced very real, actual, historical cosmological and sociological events that deeply and irrevocably impressed themselves into the collective memory of every culture that happened to survive?

CONTINUE