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Further steps towards an aggregative
diachronic approach to world mythology starting from the
African continent by Wim van Binsbergen (Leiden/Rotterdam, the Netherlands) summary paper for the International Conference on Comparative Mythology, organized by Peking University and the Mythology Project, Asia Center, Harvard University/Sanskrit Department, to be held May 10-13, 2006, at Peking University, Beijing, China (convenors Professors Duan Qing and Michael Witzel) |
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My argument
departs from two seminal ideas:
This paper is one of a series of explorations (cf van Binsbergen
in press and n.d.) in which I attempt to combine these two
seminal ideas. I seek to identify (along with other cultural,
linguistic and religious elements: AMH’s near-universals) some
putative ‘Out of Africa’ original mythological
package; moreover, I attempt to trace this package’s subsequent
transformations in the process of global spread. Emphasis is on
the development of an explicit methodology, without which the
entire exercise would be pointless. Meanwhile, the fact that I
have termed the putative original mythical package ‘Pandora’s
Box’, is a reminder (cf. van Binsbergen 2003) of the fact that
our scholarly approach to myth cannot and should not escape from
our own mythopoiesis (myth-making).
To begin with, formal analysis of an extensive corpus of
cosmogonic myths attested in sub-Saharan Africa in historical
times, suggests that much of their contents may be regarded as
the elaboration and transformation of (combinations of) less than
twenty different ‘Narrative Complexes’, each with its own
specific minimum story line.
Next, for each Narrative Complex a putative origin is proposed in
space and time – in each case prompted by a combination of
considerations:
a)
the Narrative Complex’s empirical attestation in space and
time, not only in texts (which only afford a time depth of 5 ka
(kiloyears, millennia) maximum, but also iconographically in
archaeological data, which go back much further
b)
any relevant outside material constraints e.g. in astronomy,
glaciology, modes of production analysis;
c)
hermeneutics of a Narrative Complex’s contents, which may bring
out implications that may contain time- and space specific clues.
In the background, my approach is based on a number of
assumptions that are highly contentious and whose critical
testing, as well as the invitation to critical testing and
subsequent improvement by others, are among the aims of my
project. These assumptions include:
·
Myth may be defined as ‘telling collectively managed stories
about fundamental reality’
·
Although AMH have, admittedly, an infinite capability for
imaginative invention, hence – on the surface – an
potentially infinite repertoire of myth, still that invention is
constrained by a limited number of basic thought operations (e.g.
distinction, juxtaposition, identity etc.)
·
Each Narrative Complex encodes and facilitates one or more of
these basic thought operations
·
Although myth can be told in music, dance, spatial layouts etc.,
its typical (more recent?) form is language-based
·
It is only partially true that myth expresses culture in
language; rather, it is myth that constitutes language and
culture in the first place (cf. Cassirer 1946, 1953f; Donald
1991).
·
Therefore, myth may have been AMH’s principal claim to adaptive
advantage
·
My proposed aggregative diachronic approach to world mythology
therefore amounts to the reconstruction of the sequence of
emergence and transformation of Narrative Complexes in time and
space (in reflection of AMH’s increasingly complex and
diversified tool to articulate reality through myth), along the
paths which AMH (according to the reconstructions by genetics and
archaeology) appear to have taken since their emergence in
Eastern and Southern Africa 200 ka.
·
Central myths (composed out of our Narrative Complexes)
constitute the ideological/ cosmological knowledge component of
any mode of production. Therefore it is specific modes of
production, and specific changes therein, that power the
demographic and mythological processes attending AMH before and
after their exodus ‘Out-of-Africa’
My emerging aggregative model of global spread and transformation
of world mythology is, in the first place, predicated on the
geneticists’ finding that AMH initially migrated east from
Africa along the Indian Ocean coast to South East Asia, Australia
and New Guinea. Only subsequently, especially in a new migratory
wave, were Asia and the other continents populated by AMH.
Subsequently, from c. 20,000 BP onwards, a westbound and
southbound return migration from Asia ‘Back-into-Africa’ has
been attested genetically. This offers further clues as to the
situation of specific Narrative Complexes in time and space,
through triangulation with the Australian and New Guinean
material.
Contrary to my initial hypothesis, the unfolding of world
mythology turns out not to be a gradual process evenly spaced out
along the migration route of AMH. On the contrary, a limited
number of Contexts of Intensified Transformation and Innovation
(CITI) can be discerned, in which specific new Narrative
Complexes emerge. By and large, these CITI coincide with the
contexts in which significant new linguistic families have arisen
(among others, proto-Khoi-San, proto-Dene-Sino-Caucasian, and
proto-(Mega-)Nostratic (Kaiser & Shevoroshkin 1988), and the
further differentiation of the latter into, among others,
proto-Indo-European, proto-Afro-Asiatic, proto-Niger-Congo, and
proto-Nilo-Saharan. Of course, the latter three languages
together with Khoi-San sum up the language map of Africa in
historical times.
The most recent of these CITIs is the one preceding and
facilitating Neolithic food production through agriculture and
animal husbandry. Here the Narrative Complex of ‘The connection
of Heaven and Earth’ emerged (among others), whose richly
elaborated ramifications (in such themes as creation, kingship,
salvation, human conception and birth, the origin of death,
etc.), often with shamanistic overtones, are found – as the
paper will demonstrate in some detail – all over the Ancient
Near East including Ancient Egypt, the Indus valley, China,
Ancient Europe, and (as a result of the ‘Back-into-Africa’
movement) much of Africa. As a result the African continent today
combines a genetically highly diverse and relatively ancient AMH
population with, largely, a relatively recent mythology that is
in striking continuity (pace Witzel) with the rest of the Old
World.
The resulting aggregative diachronic approach to world
mythology might appear to be a mere house of cards – a
myth, perhaps, in its own right. However, its claims to scholarly
credibility are considerable. It does take into account much
comparative state-of-the-art evidence from a variety of
disciplines. It throws light onto hitherto unexplained
continuities and affinities within and across continents, even if
this goes against inveterate geopolitical stereotypes. Contrary
to a house of cards, it is internally coherent and will not
collapse as soon as one constituent element is replaced or
removed; the latter is demonstrated by the considerable changes
that had to be made in the model’s details since it was first
formulated in 2005. And most importantly, the model suggests
fascinating paths for further research, which will surely enhance
our insight even at the cost of discarding the present model that
prompted them.
The internal consistency of the model persuades us to take one
further, audacious step, and to propose which of the Narrative
Complexes identified may have been originally part of
‘Pandora’s Box’. The consideration listed above as A0, b)
and c) suggests these to have been the Narrative Complexes of
In earlier attempts, I distinguished two routes for the
Out-of-Africa expansion of AMH, carrying their ‘Pandora’s
Box’ including these three mythical complexes:
I projected the
unfolding of Narrative Complexes largely onto Route A, which was
taken to constitute a crude time axis.
However, further reflection on the contradictory empirical
implications of this model, and more extensive perusal of the
genetic and archaeological literature, now leads to revision. The
early Route A ended in Australia and New Guinea, and was not
continued westward. Most of the unfolding of world mythology now
turns out of have taken place along the much later Route B, which
also has New World ramifications starting in Central Asia.
Why did Route A become abortive after reaching Australia and New
Guinea? Why was there this enormous delay before Route B
successfully made inroads into Asia? Why was Route B so
successful and so richly elaborated, both demographically and
mythologically? Why did the mythological elaboration along Route
B take the form it did? Was there any subsequent mythological
contribution from Route A to Route B, in the regions where the
two trajectories ultimately converged (South and South East
Asia)? The present paper will try to answer some of these
questions, leaving others for further research and for Asianist
specialists.
Current wisdom seeks the answer to this kind of questions to
‘windows of opportunity at least partly dictated by
fluctuations in sea-levels and climatic conditions’, while
stressing the intensive and transformative intra-Africa
percolation of AMH during the first 100 ka after their emergence
(Forster 2004). Such ‘windows of opportunity’ are intuitively
relevant for Route A: on their first sally Out-of-Africa, AMH
apparently stuck to a littoral tropical climate familiar from
East Africa, and crossed significant sea straits only when the
opportunity arose – notably, when glaciation heights at the
poles produced low sea levels (which, incidentally, suggests a
well established time frame for such crosses).
However, Route B is largely or entirely overland, across a
considerable variety of (palaeo-)climatic zones. Therefore less
mechanical, less natural factors need to be invoked to explain
both the demographic and the mythological processes that
characterise it.
In the first place, we can consider the 100 ka which AMH spent
inside Africa before embarking on Route B, as some sort of incubation
time, in which not only great genetic diversity emerged, but
also significant steps were taken in the development of new modes
of production and, concomitantly, new Narrative Complexes.
Probably, the mythological contents of ‘Pandora’s Box’
became already diversified and transformed inside Africa, before
Route B started. There is increasing archaeological evidence of
graphical representation, both naturalistic and abstract, in the
African continent during Middle Palaeolithic times. Some of this
evidence may be interpreted in terms of the Narrative Complexes I
have identified. And all this evidence precedes by dozens of
kiloyears the artistic explosion in the Franco-Cantabrian region
(South Western Europe) that Eurocentrically inspired, only two
decades ago, the notion of the ‘Human Revolution’. So, as
compared to Route A, 100 ka earlier, it was a, linguistically,
culturally, mythically, and social-organisationally (and all
these dimensions are taken to co-vary together), much more mature
version of AMH that embarked on Route B. Hence their capabilities
of adaptation and creative response to new climatic and
productive challenges were much greater, which partly explains
the incomparable success of Route B: it succeeded in ultimately
populating the entire earth with AMH, and, in the process, world
mythology emerged in all its latter-day variety and complexity.
The extensive inroads, into Africa, of more general Old World
later Narrative Complexes in the wake of the
‘Back-into-Africa’ return migration, are associated with all
four African linguistic families without exception. Therefore it
is difficult to clearly identify the ‘transformed Pandora’s
Box’ with which AMH in Africa embarked on Route B. However, it
is likely that this ‘pre-Route B’ complex inside Africa
survives best in the Westerly part of the continent adjacent to
the Atlantic Ocean. Here Frobenius (1931, 1993) has identified
systematic indications to that effect – converging with my own
recent research into leopard-skin symbolism (van Binsbergen 2003,
2004b).
In the second place, we may point to a cultural and demographic
‘window of opportunity’ that is recently being rescued from
the realm of science fiction, and ushered into the realm of
empirical science. From about the same time (100 ka BP) when AMH
set out on Route B, and for several dozens of kiloyears onwards,
AMH and Neanderthaloids lived side by side in the Levant. Despite
geneticists’ claims that they constitute two independent
branches of Homo sapiens, palaeoanthropologists point to
intermediate forms. In recent decades (e.g. d’Errico c.s. 1998)
there has been increasing appreciation of the (admittedly still
heavily contested) cultural achievements of Neanderthaloids,
ranging from burial to flute music, from flower symbolism to
bear-cult ritual, from sculptural representation to stellar maps,
from clothing to articulate speech. Regardless of the question of
genetic interaction between AMH and Neanderthaloids, it is
almost inevitable that cultural exchange took place between these
groups, in West Asia, in the very long time span from 100 ka
BP till the disappearance of Neanderthaloids towards 30 ka BP, at
a time when the Last Glacial was building up. In Europe and West
Asia this disappearance goes hand in hand with the expansion –
into a cooling temperate climate – of AMH from subtropical
environments – not exactly a climatic window of opportunity.
There is no consensus among specialists about what made
Neanderthaloids disappear: genocide on the part of AMH, and
inability to adapt to new environmental conditions, are among the
scenarios proposed. Mathematically, an only marginally lower
reproduction rate as compared to AMH occupying the same
ecological niches would already have been sufficient to lead to
extinction if kept up through dozens of kiloyears.
Inevitably, modern researchers are AMH, and their chauvinism as
such has persuaded some to think that any cultural exchange
between Neanderthaloids and AMH, whatever its scope, could only
have been a mere one-way process, with the apparently culturally
deprived Neanderthaloids as sole beneficiaries. However, our
attempt to construct a diachronic approach to world mythology
seems to be better served by exploring the following points:
References
cited
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http://www.shikanda.net/ancient_models/agency_webpage/agency_www.htm
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postscript on Afrocentrist ideology, February 2006, at: http://www.shikanda.net/ancient_models/mythical_archaeology/kyoto_paper_final_2-2006.pdf
Witzel, M., 2001, 'Comparison and reconstruction: Language and mythology', Mother Tongue, 6: 45-62.
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