(This is an updated and edited version of a post that I did years ago.)
Mythology defines who we are. It is the way we explain and justify the way that we live not just to others but also to ourselves. In its way it helps make sense of our world. Myths have been there with us before written language was even developed. They help define what themes and messages are timeless and can relate down the ages to those that come after us.
To understand myth it helps to understand a little about how humans spread across the globe. Modern humans burst out of east Africa about 70 to 45 thousand years ago. Why so vague? Like most things that people do it was an unplanned. Tribes, bands, families, sometimes just individuals went out from East Africa. Some up the Nile River, some crossed the then accessible red sea land bridge across to Yemen and some across through Jordan. A few settled in the lush green Sahara and eventually watched their dreams turn to dust. This exodus deposited groups of peoples everywhere it touched creating the seeds of future cultures and languages
(Writer’s note: I seem to be out of order in these stories but I am saving some myths like the creation of man for a future post)
It’s interesting to note in the book of Genesis the tower of Babel story
“The Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” Genesis 11:9
One could make an argument of this being a perfect description of the scattering of mankind across the old world.
This also compares well to the Hindu myth of language in which a proud tree grew up to the heavens and scorned the gods telling them that its branches would cover all mankind and protect them from the gods. Brahma, the god of creation, cut the proud trees branches and tumbled them down on mankind forcing them to scatter all over the world and confusing their language.
The Bantu of east Africa have a story of extreme drought and famine causing people to scatter looking for food and as they scattered their languages changed. This may be the closest to the truth as the ancient savannahs of east Africa probably didn’t have enough food to sustain the growing numbers of early humans.
The common thread in all the stories is how an outside agent forces mankind to split up forcing a change in their languages.
Now, during this time humans are still simple hunters and gatherers. They carry their belongings on their backs, and they’re not much better off than their immediate predecessors like Homo erectus or homo rhodesiensis. The archtypal hero is going to be the wanderer, the nomad, the man of action that doesn’t think before acting.
The initial exodus east finally gives out in Pakistan or northern India. Further smaller waves would continue east towards Asia and Australia but western culture would be founded in three vital areas, the Nile River, the tigris-euphrates basin, and the Indus valley. These three valleys had the things that early humans wanted, a good source of food (both meat and vegetable), fresh water, and almost as important a moderated climate. Moderate at that time anyways.
In time these valleys would spring up the first villages and towns and people began telling stories of what they knew. One of the first would be a story about sibling rivalry and the rivalry between professions.
Cain and Abel. On the surface a story of jealousy and the first murder. But it illustrates the concerns of those early cultures. We have the herder with his flocks, and on the other side the farmer with his fields. Both need water, both need land, so conflict is inevitable. Herding is the older of the two professions (probably adopted as humans traveled out of east Africa), so Abel the older brother is the herder and Cain, the younger brother, is the farmer. In the story the farmer dispatches the herder signaling the rise of settled farmer over nomadic herding lifestyle.
The story itself has an almost direct parallel in the Sumerian story of Enkimdu (god of farmers) and Dumuzi (god of herders) trying to win the hand of Innana (goddess of fertility). In that story however the herders win. This possibly signifies that the Sumerian story was created earlier and during a time when herding was still a very important occupation.
The same story crops up again in roman times. This time in the guise of Romulus and Remus the twin brothers that founded Rome. Curiously though in this story both brothers are herders. Possibly this relates to the fact that the Latin tribes that founded Rome were themselves migrants into this part of Italy and they still depended on their livestock. Both brothers offered sacrifices to the gods to see who should be king, Remus seems to be favored but Romulus uses a land boundary dispute as a pretext and slays his brother to become king.
Among other topics that people knew well would be life, death, floods, disaster and I will cover these in another post. I will end it here but I will note that these people were not all that different from us at all. They lived in different times but they had the same basic concerns we do. That they can perfectly relate to us how they dealt with issues in their lives shows us how similar we are.
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