Commonality of Worldwide Myths

This is a point that came up in a discussion about taking the Bible literally, but it echos stuff I've seen in other threads from time to time, so I'm proposing a new thread all it's own.There are many common elements in the mythologies of different cultures around the world. (ie Flood stories, dragons, man created from clay, etc.)Many of the YEC have sited these as evidence that their theory is correct.But aren't there other (better?) explainations for these stories. I'd like to suggest a few.1) Common experience - (the is very close to the YEC argument) world wide changes in climate / world wide events will have similiar effects on the cultures of different people. For example: At the end of the Ice Age, the water levels would have risen re-flooding the vast shoreline tracts which had openned and become inhabited. Peoples all over the world would have experienced "a great flood", but not "The Great Flood".2) Common reasoning - given similar discoveries, people from different cultures may draw similiar conclusions. For example: Megalodon (giant shark) teeth are fairly common fossils. There are a lot of them, they are generally well preserved. If someone with no frame of reference other than the natural world around them discovered one of these fist sized teeth, it's not hard to see how they would imagine it coming from a "dragon".3) Common psychology - No matter what culture you come from, some things don't change. Children are born, people grow old and die, some people are mean, others are nice. Isn't it reasonable that facing similiar experiences, people would develop similiar coping mechanisms/rationalizations? For example: As babies are born with a flood of water from the womb, so too, couldn't the world have been born from a flood of water?4) Common materials - The natural world offers up only so much for building materials. We've become very tricky at teasing out alloys and mixing up concrete, but clearly there was a time when people had only sticks, stones and clay. Given this limited exposure to materials isn't it reasonable that many different cultures have myths of man's creation being from clay. After all, clay is much more like flesh than sticks or stones.To my mind, these explain many of the points raised about the common myths. They do so within the framework of the evidence at hand and don't rely on "magic".Anyone have other examples? Questions? Disagreements?

Well, that's a very loaded questionFirst, there is a common language we all share, it's body language. You can tell an angry person, even if you can't tell what they are angry about.Second, most languages can be traced back (much like the evolutionary tree) to earlier languages. As groups split off and become isolated, new words appear, differences crop up, etc.Third, this is a good question to be asking a YEC, since all people were born from Noah and his offspring only six thousand years ago, why is Chinese so different than Aztec or French.Fourth, nothing in my original statement suggests a common language. Just because people experience common events, emotions, etc, doesn't mean they'll make up the same word for it. Why would we assume that someone on one side of the world witnessing a comet would call it exactly the same thing that someone on the otherside of the world would?

Well, there is a great site, I'll try and find it, in which people from all over the world mimic the sounds of animals in their area. And these animals are pretty much "universal" (ie frogs, chickens, etc.) But each culture has a different description of what a frog sounds like, or what a chicken sounds like.Also, clearly a German Sheppard sounds different than a French Poodle. Just as a man from Germany sounds different than a man from France. I think the both the dogs and the people will recognize that their counterpart is also (dog/human) and trying to communicate.

Well, a person speaking Chinese in Houston sounds a lot like a person speaking Chinese in Hong Kong. German in London sounds like German in Berlin.Your bigger question of why do we have so many languages is best answered by the fact that populations split from each other and spend huge amounts of time seperate, and during that time their languages evolve differently.

Could help by notice that this response follows the exact same problem that Creationists have with evolution.Check out these two sentences -Different languages evolved as groups got seperated and continued developing their languages in isolation.Different species evolved as groups got seperated and continued developing in isolation.Now let's look at your response:"No one knows how language began"or the typical Creationist response to evolution:"Science can't tell us for certain how life began"But, you aren't reponding to the original statement. I don't care how language (or life) began. It's completely irrelavent to the mechanics of how language(or life) got to where it is today.Is it an interesting question? Sure. Do I have theories? Sure. But it has nothing to do with the mechanics of the original statements.

Depends, I guess, on what you mean by language?Do you mean, they don't have the ability to communicate their internal emotions to a different individual? - they certainly canThey can't communicate information that they have obtained to a different individual? - the certainly canOr is it more like, they can't communicate abstract ideas? - I can't prove they can, but I know you can't prove they can'tSimply because we don't speak dolphin doesn't mean that dolphin's don't have language.

With training a chimp can manage a level equivalent to a young child in Human communication.However, with training, humans can't seem to manage much in chimp communication.I'm being argumentative here for a reason. Just because we don't speak chimp doesn't mean that chimps don't speak chimp.I don't think that language is one of those "clear cut" barriers which seperate man from animal. In fact, I don't think there are any "clear cut" barriers at all.

BTW, we are WAY off topic here.My original question is: Are common features in world wide myths a function of common factors in human life? Or do they necessarily indicate that all stories arise from some specific event?Why can't people from around the world, given the same circumstances, show the same degree of creativity?

1337!

Couldn't agree more. And what is there is explainable. Rather than site "Discworld" here, look to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a ground breaking work in which he describes paradigmatic shift in great detail. It's essentially the same concept, but explains why this sort of thing happens. (fair warning - VERY DRY reading).

Okay, but how about Coyote, or Ginesh, or Isis, etc. Are these Gods myths?This message has been edited by Nuggin, 09-13-2005 10:29 AM

That's fine and I don't want to disparage your beliefs in any way, but you must recognize that your beliefs are your perspective.A Hindu very much believes that the God he worships is a divine entity, and probably believes that your God is the imitator.Given a fair and level playing ground, what are we to conclude? Everyone is right? No one is right?