A new Paradise myth? An assessment of Stephen Oppenheimer’s thesis of the South East Asian origin of West Asian core myths, including most of the mythological contents of Genesis 1-11’, proposed paper for: THE DEEP HISTORY OF STORIES: Annual Conference, International Association for Comparative Mythology, Edinburgh 28-30 August, 2007-- part of : Ancient models of thought in Africa, the Ancient Near East, and prehistory

‘A new Paradise myth? An assessment of Stephen Oppenheimer’s thesis of the South East Asian origin of West Asian core myths, including most of the mythological contents of Genesis 1-11’, proposed paper for: THE DEEP HISTORY OF STORIES: Annual Conference, International Association for Comparative Mythology, Edinburgh 28-30 August, 2007

by Wim van Binsbergen

homepage

THE DEEP HISTORY OF STORIES

Annual Conference,

International Association for Comparative Mythology

Edinburgh 28-30 August, 2007

theme I: The spread of stories throughout the world from the earliest times and the meaning of any suggested fundamental narrative element

Title: ‘A new Paradise myth? An assessment of Stephen Oppenheimer’s thesis of the South East Asian origin of West Asian core myths, including most of the mythological contents of Genesis 1-11’

Author: Wim van Binsbergen

Abstract: An examination, from the complementary perspectives of archaeology, linguistics, genetics, ethnography and comparative mythology, of Oppenheimer’s (1998) Sunda thesis, and especially an assessment of his claim of the South East Asian origin of West Asian core myths, including most of the mythological contents of Genesis 1-11. My argument will examine the Sunda thesis from complementary archaeological, linguistic, genetic, ethnographic, and comparative mythological perspectives. The outcome will be patchy, but by and large surprisingly positive.

Expanded abstract: In 1998, the paediatrician/geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer sought to rock the world of comparative myth, archaeology, linguistics and long-range studies in general, with his book Eden of the East. This was conceived as a popular book, with personal narrative and extensive editorial input reminiscent of (allegedly) non-fiction best-sellers by e.g. Graham Hancock. Yet the book’s serious and scholarly contents make a claim that its author considers, obviously, a further step in the timely struggle against Eurocentrism, and hence in the decolonisation of global knowledge (cf. Afrocentrism, the Black Athena debate, the South Asian postcolonial theory, Mudimbe’s work, etc.).

What is, today, the hydrographically fragmented Indonesian archipelago is argued by Oppenheimer to have been a contiguous, and culturally highly advanced, sub-continent (‘Sundaland’), up to the onset of the Holocene (c. 10 ka BP). At that moment, melting of the polar caps produced dramatic flooding which chased the Sunda people from their lands, forced them to become seaborne, and permanently raised the global sea level by 200 m. Apart from the claim of Sundaland’s cultural advance, the scenario so far is in line with widely accepted views. However, Oppenheimer goes on to claim that the main evidence for his Sunda scenario is of a mythological nature. The core of West Asian mythology, including the mythological contents of Genesis 1-11 (Paradise, the first human couple, the Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, the Flood, the Tower etc.), as well as these elements’ subsequent ramification in Graeco-Roman myth and European mythologies at large, are argued to derive from South East Asian / Oceanian prototypes, ultimately hailing from the lost Sundaland.

My argument will examine the Sunda thesis from complementary archaeological, linguistic, genetic, ethnographic, and comparative mythological perspectives. The outcome will be patchy, but by and large surprisingly positive. Although Oppenheimer has received positive comments from archaeologists specialising on South East Asia, yet his transcontinental reading of the archaeological evidence does not stand up to scrutiny. Pedersen, however, has recently advanced interesting linguistic support for the Sunda thesis. I am surprised that Oppenheimer (who since the publication of Eden of the East has developed to become one of the main public faces of long-range genetics in Britain) did not bring more of the available, supportive genetic evidence to his Sunda thesis, especially from Africa. Also from Africa I will adduce considerable ethnographic support for the idea of a Sunda-related transcontinental cultural revolution. So, in its general form, the Sunda hypothesis deserves to be taken seriously, and is not just another scholarly myth.

However, when we narrow down the assessment to comparative mythology, we will see that most of Oppenheimer’s ingenious and original mythological analysis does not survive

1. the methodological objections (how can myths attested in Asia and Oceania from only the 19th century CE on, be proven to be parental to myths attested from West Asia from the third millennium BCE on?),

2. the theoretical difficulties (pace Levi-Strauss, Eliade, etc.) of confidently comparing mythologies that not only are millennia and continents apart, but that also look rather different from one another, at least on the surface

3. nor the obvious objections against any kind of monocentric view of the more recent cultural history of Anatomically Modern Humans, from the Upper Palaeolithic onwards

4. nor the suspicions attending any recourse to natural catastrophe in order to explain the course of cultural history (cf. Bernal on the Thera eruption).

In fact, of the many mythological themes Oppenheimer presses into service, only one appears to make a serious case for transcontinental diffusion on the wings of Sunda expansion:

· not, of course, the (far too widespread) flood theme in general,

· but a particular, very specific, complex version of the Flood theme (with the specific sequence of human transgression, divine wrath, selective divine warning, selective survival, evocations of heaven-earth connections such as rainbow, ladder and tower), as found in Oceania, East and South East Asia, Ancient Near East, Southern and North-western Europe, and throughout Africa, especially where evidence suggesting Sunda impact is also available from other sources than myth.

This paper is in continuity with the ones I presented at our most recent conferences on comparative mythology (Kyoto 2005, Beijing 2006). There I presented a coherent view of long-range history of (mainly) Old World mythology in terms of complex and multicentred transmission, transformations and innovations that seems to have greater explanatory potential than the rigid monocentrism of the Sunda thesis; while in both papers the transcontinental spread and transformation of the flood theme is discussed, in connection with mitochondrial DNA type B which turns out to have strong Sunda connotations.

January 2007

homepage

page last modified: 12-01-07 09:39:06