MYTHS OF CREATION
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8. Archetypal Traits, Tropes & Themes
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The Myths of Creation which proliferated during the Bronze and Iron ages were mostly anonymous productions shaped by numerous hands and minds in many small-scale communities spread across widely separated geographic regions worldwide, at a time when the vast majority of these peoples lived in relatively isolated societies, without any regularly ongoing communication with other cultural groups, near or far.
— And yet: Over the last two centuries or so Western scholarship has become more and more keenly aware of rather striking consistencies and even a considerable amount of remarkably straightforward continuity between the now-extinct mythopoeic traditions that once endured in nearly every quarter of the world, — such that, corollary to the widespread commonality of their long-lived convictions, we also find an astonishingly constant and surprisingly consistent under-pattern of quite specific archetypal traits, tropes and themes that to this day still resonate very strongly and deeply within the human soul. Despite the unmistakable resemblance in both the basic features as well as the fine details of each of these traditions, however, neither common heritage, nor slow cultural diffusion seems probable, when no historical connections can be shown. — But how is it possible that such similar cosmovisions developed independently in so many distant places at one and the same time? |