Transcription
John, welcome in the flesh.
Derek, it's good to see you and know that you're not AI.
I know. I know. It's hard these days to know what's AI and it's not. You are a YouTuber like me. Um, but much more than just a YouTuber. You do lectures or you go around and also help academics trace help me with this. trace, track the history of myth as it's in different areas of the world, different stories, where they may have gone and uh do the best you can with the evidence we have to figure out where maybe things travel or how they change over time. I mean various things.
It's a little like that. So I own a data set called the mythology database and that has hundreds of thousands of narratives in so stories and poems and songs and along with that data is other metadata such as where those were told and when it was told and the like and then scholars and academics can use that data to not only understand uh where myths could possibly originate and so therefore have a better understanding of the meaning but it's also used by social scientists to understand the past and what was going on in the past and so it's a useful tool for that and yes on top of that I'm I travel around a reasonable amount giving lectures and presentations on it as this mythology is almost like a glue that can hold genetic linguistic and archeological information together. It's like a wrapper to to yeah sure it's all correct.
You you you mentioned the word mythology and it's worth first covering what that means because some scholars even to this day debate what ultimately the essence of mythology is. So can you give us a working definition that you think may encompass broadly what most scholars think it even means?
Okay. to do so would would would would be subject to disapproval by many people. So basically mythology is part of folkloristics, the study of folklore and no one could really agree what that encompasses. So to try to define something within something that can't be defined is a challenge. But to me mythology is a genre of story. So you can have folk tales which are generally fictional. You could have legends which generally are have some historical truth but some fictional value in them. And then you have myth which we generally regard as fictional with but are considered truthful. So not factually correct but have a a narrative authority. I often say they're sacred truths but you there stories about gods uh religious stories people will think are or must must be true if you believe that religion. But if you don't belong to that religion and you look at them, you think, well, that's nonsense. So it's a narrative authority. So if the person telling it is telling it with authority, then it is relatively mythical. If told as though it was back in time, but it doesn't have to be ancient uh as such because you can have modern myths. Yeah. As well. But uh I'm actually writing a paper to define this and that should be out in the next couple of months to make it easier to understand how myths and legends and folktales can change because that's the other thing. It's very easy to stick a pin in something say that's a myth but if you move through history the myth may become legend or or folktale may become myth these so stories change. So you want a a framework that can adopt that and that's something I'm working on.
So I if we before we get into some of the meat uh uh that's on the bones. Um, I want to talk about the bones a little more about myth here. What purpose does it even serve? Because it sounds like uh if we look at it I think you and I share that we evolved.
Yeah. So let's approach this conversation as if our viewers are already on the same page. Evolution is a fact right? That we evolved. We're a primate species. And what what how does that work? Well, you you have tribes. You have groups of individuals often that uh are are linked together. But maybe at some point in the distant past, you would say, well, societies function differently. And there were stories that floated around that told them about the world, whether they thought literal history, which is like if we'd had a time machine to go back and ask, maybe one person said, "No, I think that literally happened." and another one might go no these are stories we tell ourselves or whatever you know it just depends on like today you know you ask yourself um, but what does myth serve in that perception approaching this from evolution is it some type of um like glue you mentioned the word glue earlier that that unifies the inroup um of that local telling of that story that sacred narrative would you say like what what why do we tell myths is The question I do tell stories is be a part of that.
So it's it's a so myth in particular it tends to be cosmological. It tend to explain the world around us. It is the science before science.
So if you didn't understand quantum mechanics and and gravity and physics and the orbit of the planet, you want to explain why the sun comes up and and sets. you want to explain why the moon has certain phases every sort of four weeks. Uh, and myth was a way are the stories that tell that. And so that's why they're often divine because they're related to beings greater than us who are able to control these things. So there really are a way to allow us to understand the world sort of outside of science and that can become so important to people that even if science comes along and proves the myth wrong I someone came along and said no earth is not at the center of the solar system it's the sun many people will disregard it you know and and and think that is tragic how dare you defiled the myth, the story we were telling. It's really quite interesting seeing that.
So really, a myth is a reflection of how cultures thought about the world around them and why things happened in the past.
And of course, scholars will disagree on the details surrounding that definition or what that encompasses, language, culture, whatever, all sorts of different things, which we're not going to get into too much of that. But it is worth noting they do have different views, different spelling.
Absolutely.
Um, specifically I feel like one of your primary focuses is Indo-Uropean mythology. What is Indo-Uropean mythology?
Okay. So when you say Indo-European, people can become polarized by that a little. So Indo-Uropean is a family a linguistic family grouping of different languages that seem to have a ancestor language that we all shared. So that ancestral language we call protoinduropean uh developed and changed into languages we see spoken today from northwest India all the way through to Scandinavia through the Indo Iranian landscape uh through Turkey, Greece, Italy and and up through for Eastern Europe as well. So it's a it's a language group. It has nothing to do with DNA or anything like that. It's linguistic. is that's quite important to know.
However,
yeah, because people have abused
Yeah, people have abused that. Think protoinduropeans are a race of people there. They're not. So, there are cultures that spoke Indo-Uropean languages and and protoindouropean. The Yamna is the most wellknown of those, but the Yamna were not the first people to speak protoinduropean, nor were they the only people to speak protoinduropean. And it's probable that not all of them spoke protoinduropean. So it's really you have to be quite distinct that DNA does not dictate the language you speak.
That's
that should be a given but it's kind of
you you have to be sure. So it's about the the language people speak and whilst that's important is language allows you to communicate and so the stories you tell are more easily understood. So the culture which involved storytelling the myths would well be told and transmitted uh as these groups of proto or Indo-European speaking peoples migrated and they migrated a lot and very well because they had some cultural advantages over other groups such as they were pastoral farmers uh which made them pretty wealthy and quite mobile and they were the people who made best use of wheel transport and one of the first groups to uh adopt wheeled transport and horse riding
whe they could domesticate a cow to pull a cart and so if you're farming cows and they need a field
and your grass field is now eaten up and and has no grass you move to another field
simple
very successful
Now what what were the uh alternatives here
agricultural farming
would you see to the near east that what was very famous to the nearest and went across the northern Mediterranean most prominently.
So you have a nomadicish or at least nomadic possible group right which can move if necessary.
Yes, there there is sedentary behavior in there though they do settle but yes they also have Exactly.
But it's a much more mobile option versus the agricultural which is cyclical. It's it's exactly
and that's where civilizations typically become empires in a different way it seems. Okay. Uh, this gets to the Bible, but before we get to the Bible, I just want to ask you one question because I did a video a long time ago and it was about the Manowans. They got brought up in it. Um, and there's linear B and linear A. And we haven't deciphered linear B. And I think we're still strugg with this ancient Sanskrit, if you will, type of Indo-Uropean language. So just to ask you, how far back can we trace as far as we have empirical data or do we have to go beyond the empirical and suggest is there clues how far back does this what they call Indo-Uropean language go and was there language before that we've identified that gave rise to this thing we now call this Indo-European and by the way Indo-Uropean is anacronistic because again you're dealing with like the region of where we would say you know India and stuff is and then you got Europe and so that name itself is a scholarly name that people are just attributing to something that goes way back in
Exactly. So it's an Indo-Uropean language because the Indo-Uropean landscape is where the descendants of the protoinduropean language tend to have settled right and where we can see the languages being spoken that we can trace back. So how far back does it go? Um, we can use DNA evidence and archeological evidence for looking at cultures. Uh, and linguistic evidence, social linguistic evidence is really useful because I I sometimes use the term exceptionist which may not be quite right but language develops in an absolute identical way. We see that across continents in the world. Different languages develop that in the same way sounds turn into other sounds turn into other sounds. So if we see particular sounds in a language, we've got a vague idea how old it is or how it changed from a a previous sound. So we can recreate that. And so we get all the Indo-Uropean languages spoken today and push them back. We get to an age of probably I would go back to about 6,000 BC. Um, 4,000 B.CE is where most people think the the the starts of the Yamaya culture which the most people refer to as the Indo-Uropean culture really started but certainly it was before then and those people tended to live somewhere between the Dipro River of the Black Sea uh Ukraine to the vulgar north the Caspian Sea. So there's an area the Pontic Caspian step we call it which is north of the near east. So if you go up the near east into Syria and Anatolia, you'll hit some mountains, the Caucus. The other side of that is the Black Sea and where we think the Indo-Europeans were. And most people think that is a real physical barrier that no one would cross. So no one in the Near East knew anything about the Indo-Uropeans and the Indo-Uropeans didn't know about the Near East allegedly.
It's kind of funny you bring that up because Gog and Magog, literally the description of the wall that Alexander the Great builds between the north and south is that very pivotal region. And you kind of wonder if there's like this old vestigial kind of idea that people have like there's no way they would uh cross over because those are those cannibal, you know, completely ruthless, lawless people up here. We're civilized down here. So I feel like there's still continuity.
Greeks considered it the end of the world out there.
Yeah.
Much like the Jaborta was one end of the world. The Caucus was the other end.
Super interesting. And there's so much more there. So, so the question I ultimately wanted to lead up to while we were defining things and kind of wrapping our minds around this linguistic group and how that would spread with culture and storytelling and all of that is that I know that some of these stories that are floating around are there are similarities if you will you can tell they're family groups of stories that come from the Indo-European family groups of narratives being told.
Absolutely. And I say family groups not as in like genealogical tribe even though there probably are that later. Um simply the linguistics and showing there's a commonality of narrative in the terms of stories myth. So the question I have is is if we took stripped away Indo-Uropean myth out of the Bible what do you think remains?
That is a simple question that has a very complicated answer, Derek. So, it would be easier for me to tell you what Indo-Uropean was could be stripped from the Bible.
Okay?
Uh because that's where my specialist area lies. But we also have to remember that cultures weren't just Indo-Uropean or just agricultural. Greece for example is an absolute prime example of an agricultural uh type culture where Indo-Uropean has gone in and shake it up a little then come in again and shake it up a bit more and you get this whole mix where you can't tell are they agricultural or are they indo-uropean so so there isn't sort of a black and white there as you say there's a Greek story in the Bible and the New Testament you know the gospels you could argue have some influence from Greek writers who studied Greek myth. Um, so you could say that but then say it's Greek doesn't mean it's necessarily Indo-Uropean. It just means it's there is some Induropean influence there. Terms of true Indo-Uropean stories that are definitely from that neck of the woods. Uh, there are there are two key ones in the Bible. One is uh well, they're both from kettle um dragon slaying. Okay. Yeah.
They're the biggest. So, there's a lot of dragon slaying in the Bible or more than people realize cuz most people think there's none. And by the time you and the end of verse 41 one of Genesis to 14 Genesis, you've already got a bit of dragon slaying in there. If you That's how I perceive it. That's a synopsis of the enumeration. Marduk blowing winds down Timoth's mouth to kill him to split Timat into two. splitting tat into two is a dismemberment creation myth and
is that why there's a kayastic structure you would argue in Genesis one where you know there's a splitting of uh the sky right the splitting of land from water a splitting from the animal from animal like there's it's a
that yes it isn't that isn't directly the uh dismemberment myth the the first verses are dismemberment myth revised and I see that as if people are telling a story many of them at the time let's say a th000 BCE if you started saying that they'll know oh you're talking about the innumeraish type story whatever that was called at the time so they know what you're talking about and then you just extended it and so that you've already got the audience on your side that's how storytelling work most old storytelling told you what was going to happen in the story before they told you the story that's how it was in case you probably fell asleep or the story lasted 3 days and had to go and kill a buffalo or something in in the middle of it. So, so you knew what was going to happen. We see that all the time. So, we so dragon slay's important. Uh, and the big uh dragon slay myth of the Europeans is a cattle raiding myth where uh a dragon steals cattle because cattle are really important. their uh creatures from the gods for Indo-Uropeans because they are the perfect animal. You can use every part of them. So they be they become so important and in some aspects so sacred in Hinduism they become a the sacred animal. So that's just
literally holy cow.
Literally holy cow. Yes. So uh you have that and so if you look at David and the Philistines that is a cattle there's a cattle radio myth slap bang in there and we see cattle radio myths then go into Africa and down the Nile there are instances of more cattle ready myth and that is a that has to come from pastoral farming and pastoral farming started with Indo-Uropean speaking peoples there was cattle farming but in terms of it being the primary thing and the the dragon story that seems to have been developed there. Now the the it's all gone off sort of off topic with the dismemberment thing. So the dismemberment of a large being to create the world the split in two the enumer is about 1500 BC dated wise the rig vader has a very similar story Indra versus vitra dated 1500 B.CE Now I'm not saying that Indra versus Vitra uh directly influenced the enumerish or the enumemerish directly influenced in versus vitra uh but they both have lots of similarities in in terms of what type of god it is the weapons being used where the fight was happening.
So you you're not closing the door but you're not being a scientific certain
No. What's more likely is there was an earlier story that both came from.
Okay.
Okay. So the story went to northwest India and went into the near east 1500 B.CE. Uh, and it was about dismembering a a creature to create the world. And we see the dismemberment of a creature to create the world in other Indo-Uropean stories which we do but we don't see them in uh Neolithic agricultural stories such as the Greek creation myth and there's there's many like the crash myth of Dunu and the like which is a matraside patraside ancestral kill your family so you can rule type myth which is very different to killing a big beast and making the world. So it's an Indo-Uropean myth. How does that end up in the enumer then? It's probably come from Indo-Uropean peoples although it could theoretically been an earlier myth and survived. But I think timewise and the evolutions of of the cultures at the time would suggest it may not have persisted in Babylon and Samaria to 1500 BC if it hadn't had a transmission that was nearer that date. So it's probably more likely to be Indo-Uropean. saying that there's other stories like uh uh David and Goliath that seems very uh much like there's Indo-Uropean influence there. Goliath seems like a a Manoan or sea people's type warrior. Uh, the name Samson I think in its original form is like a solar deity name. Uh, there and there are very there's a story in David Vader which is very similar that oh no it's Heracles isn't it? I think I think Heracles is
Nelcart Heracles
is and and lions and um
Gilgamesh there's an iconography of Gilgamesh that a statue of him holding a lion with his hand.
Yeah.
But we don't have a story about it. But we that happens a lot right where you find a piece of evidence like we have one with Jason
from the Argonauts. Um, and there's a giant serpent. I can't remember the name of it, but it's it's spewing Jason out of his mouth at the command of it looks like Athena, the goddess. And there's in the background a golden fleece hanging in a tree. And we have this old 600 B.CE myth in art, but we don't have the story.
And that's that's the real problem. So, we see this a lot. So when we talk about a culture like Greeks or or even a Jewish culture or Indo-Uropeans or even Vikings is a good one. That isn't talking about a point in time at one location. You're talking about several centuries, maybe 5 10 centuries. You're talking about a landscape that may be 500 to 5,000 square miles. Stories will not stay the same. Details will change. You can't say this is the Greek creation myth when we we can default it to to let's say ovid's one because that's common or but there could there were many creation myths and they slightly different point in them. So when he talk when we talk about comparing stories which is what what we do or I do we don't actually compare the narratives in their raw form we actually convert them into what we call mythmes which are really the smallest part of a narrative you can get uh and we make that such that it cannot be corrupted if we take it through translation or through a cultural boundary. So, a really good example of this is if I had a story in England talking about it was raining really hard. The story might say it was raining cats and dogs because that's a metaphor we use for it's raining hard. If you take that to France and say it's raining cats and dogs, they go they don't know what you're talking about. You have no no idea. But if you said, "Oh, ropes are falling from the sky." They go, "Ah, it's raining hard." So what we would if if you took that ropes from the sky to England, they would be going what? But if you actually created a myth saying it's raining hard as as that then you can compare the stories accurately. So what we do is we create all these myth themes for stories and then we compare them and see which are similar. And that's basically what I do when I'm not doing YouTube and and other research. So and and so when you look at a culture over a period of time over a landscape whilst the stories look different if we break them down into mythy content we can then say sometimes with confidence actually they are all the same it's just that things change so the details change kings don't want older kings names in the stories and animals may change from cows to horses cuz they were seen as as better beasts a thousand years down the line and things like that. So that's why stories sound different, but actually the detail will be the same. And there's been a lot of research on this and those details, those myths do persist for thousands if not tens of thousands of years. The core structure of story Yeah. remains.
It's interesting because hearing you describe the method of how scholars and I I like to call them mythologists that that are diving into uh where these myths tracing these myths trying to track them and see what commonalities um and then also identifying that there are differences. Uh a lot of people I get this accusation all the time will say I do parallel mania and to them they define that ultimately as meaning you think this myth that looks like that myth means that there's connection
a topological understanding rather than a genetic
I used to make that more genetic in some cases and guilty is charged you know you can put me in the category of making parallel
natural human
and I I say all that to say I've kind of gotten to a position where unless I can really make a strong case linguistically or really make a strong case for whatever reason archaeologically whatever I will probably end up saying I think there's some communication happening here or they have common source or something like that which is more of the scholarly take but do you ever run into situations where you're looking for that myth and you guys might actually go well this is a guess here cuz this actually might be something completely different because you you know what I'm saying? Not all of this is going to fit nicely into like a perfect
and you do have to be careful then the flood myth is a brilliant example of this. So um we see the flood myth almost ubiquitous as a as a myth for cultures. Every culture feels like it's got a flood myth. That's not quite true. But if if it was probably certainly half the cultures in the world probably have a flood myth and so people think there must have been a giant flood and so they've all got the story from that. But actually what we believe has happened is the early creation myths tended to have a world of water of which land came from and then later on around 30,000 years ago we see what we believe was a shift in Asia, central or southeastern Asia where that turns into a flood myth. So the world has been created of people living on it and then a flood happens. Uh, and that's the story of a recreated earth, a rebirthed earth. And then the fact that there are floods all over the world anyway, just allows that story to persist more easily and people can relate it to their own cultures. And so we we see a real mix of that. But the fact is that when we look at stories like Noah's ark and Noah releases a dove to get an olive branch, that is an absolute myth of the earth diver creation myth of the SeaWorld we know was probably being told shortly after the 55,000year dispersal of humans out of Africa.
Hold up. You just said something that I didn't really catch before in our discussions. What I typically have thought about when it came to the flood myth was usually two maybe three ideas and and I want to hear about this earth diver. This the earth was water and then land came out and that's where humans are made by the gods and all that or however they understand this. I want to hear that again. with you correcting or at least trying to help me perfect my understanding of how the world stories of myth seem mostly to function because I'm not going to say there aren't localized myths that might you know along the way my understanding was they either had the universal global idea that a real flood happened and people had this idea right they're look they're working backwards though with that that's the problem they're working backwards and it's hard where we're at looking backwards
now there is empirical evidence for such a thing to some people so if you look the likes of of the journalist Graham Hancock cuz that's what he calls himself now. He would say the younger dus period which is a cold event 12,000 years ago or about that. And then when it warmed up again all that ice melted and that caused all the floods and yes sea levels rose and and there was more water around but it took hundreds of years for the sea levels to rise meters. So it' be for the narrative itself, it would the narrative would be so exaggerative, it wouldn't make sense.
It' be here comes the flood and that man would probably die 20 years later. His child will stand there said, "Yep, it's coming. It's still coming." And then, you know, it'll take four or five generations before they can stand on the spot to
That's not the most probable.
It's unlikely. There will be particular places in the world where we do see extreme sea level rise in a short period but nothing where a sea level rise over let's say a meter in a year happens as that's exceptionally exceptionally unlikely. So, okay, with that in mind, right, we know that's one model and it's not just Graham Hancock. I mean, this is so prevalent, right? Then there's the other idea that is usually a complete pendulum swing explanation and that is well, humans all over the world just so happen to be made of water and demand water to survive. I know. I know. Humans need water to survive. I Who' have thought that,
fish, but I haven't got a flood me,
right? So what they argue is that humans are usually setting up near water and therefore waters rise, waters go down, right? The Euphrates and the tigers are a perfect example in ancient
Absolutely. The water will rise drastically actually. And then we know from even crazy scary videos we'll see of like mudslides and just wild stuff that could happen in all sorts of different areas everywhere in the world. So then they go, we don't need a unified one story that's spread, right? We have individual experiences of cultures near water cuz humans have to survive. that gives rise to the narratives around and it can help explain the model of why there are natives in in the land we call the Americas have their own flood myths and in you know they're totally separated for who knows how long um from we'll say
we do know exactly how long but
okay okay well that I'd be curious to get your mind on on that as we talk about this specific myth or any other myth diver myth because I want to hear about that I think it relates to what you're going to get to in our audience, I think you're going to love this, so stay tuned. Um, is that they'll try to explain it through the isolation of like individual and and you can see why. We all see the same skies, so we come up with a story that does the same thing. Or we all experience water, water floods us, we don't no water, too much water, no good. Got it. But what you just said, and I'm sorry this is long, but I'm elaborating to make the point. You said that there used to be a story prior to these earth flood catastrophe stories
that the earth was all water
out of the earth came land
and then life animals humans are made um after that help me out.
Okay. So, there's the
help me understand.
I said there's multiple versions of the story, but the general uh framework of the story is in the beginning there was just water and the duck is on the water. Now the duck's there because there's no other way of making this happen and that's that's fine. Often magical animals appear in myths because they can. So this ducks here and uh the duck goes down to the bottom of the water and gets mud from the seabed and brings it up and when it hits the surface of the water land is created and that land spreads and becomes land and then things happens on the land. Now there is a older creation myth probably the very oldest creation with myth we know is where there is no creation the land is just there there's a tree there and people come out from a tree in the land but when I talk about this myth I say well what you you tend to find in some stories is that uh the the land starts to allow waves to happen and when waves happen wind happens and that mixes things up and then life starts to grow and a tree grows and then we the world tree type uh story or my thing which pushes the sky away from the land so there's room for sky and you've got a tree trunk and the tree trunk allows us to understand time and growth so the and the world tree is important because its roots are the underground the trunks in our world and the branches are in the sky the heavens it's a really strong powerful consistent almost archetypal view uh there Not many myths of it, but we do see it around the world. That's more like what you're suggesting. Um, but this view of the this sea being like land being created from the sea exists and we see it dispersed such even into the Americas that we know it must have been told before humans went to the Americas. Now, we you said something pretty definitive was that we know when they went and usually the explanation has been for a long time and correct me if it's been updated or fixed and you you're front row seat to this stuff that I am not is that there was a land mass of of ice that they traveled across in the north and found their way down practically through Alaska, Canada region down into the Americas. So there was a bridge between over here to over here and they brought these with them as stories and so I don't know if that's still the the
sort of
so uh in the last galatial maximum period we would call it which is the period where ice formed across the whole of the Arctic region and down into the northern hemisphere. There was a ice bridge over Bunia to Alaska up where Alaska is. Although we do believe the first humans that migrated probably used a sea route rather than went over the ice because we don't necessarily find the evidence we would expect in Alaska for first humans that more into the Americas which suggest that we're round it.
Do you think we've kind of underappreciated our our seafaring skills for
Absolutely. Absolutely.
I do too. Um, but what we also see in myth is that we see four distinct separate migrations into America during that period because we see different myth types. So, and it's quite interesting that sometimes we see things in myth that archaeologists and DNA and linguistic experts don't pick up for till they have more tangible evidence because we're just I mean pokeristics is an inexact science. So, is it necessarily taken as you know, the evidence isn't as strong to stem scientists?
Of course.
And and we get that. But sometimes we say things and they go, "Oh my god, yes, that all makes sense now." That yes, your story is right. Well, thank you. We did tell you that 20 years ago, but yeah, there we go. So, so the but we see stories in North America that are dispersed in such a way and going into South America that we know could have only been there because of not where only where they are, but the type of story it is. So if there was a flood myth in South America, which there is. If it was like Noah's arc, we would say it was probably put there by mishies from but it isn't like Noah's arc. So it wasn't put there by mysteries. It is come up through a different route and there are different flood stories. Um, I just gave one with the bird scout and at Kashmouth, but there are others the cabella. There's a fruit called a Cabella we see and that looks like that may well have replaced the earth diver myth in many places and that's where someone now goes up a tree to drop fruit. Sometimes the bird pecks an animal pecks at the fruit and it it drops as opposed to the bird flying as opposed to the bird diver. We see develop but still the mymes are persistent that makes us feel it's confident that they are the same core story that has been told.
Okay. So, I love this. You just And what's funny is you just barely scratched the surface. You dealt with Genesis flood, Genesis creation, and of course, some of these interesting things. My final question on this episode, cuz I want to stay tuned because we should dive in deeper. There's much more to cover. is how old can we trace this earth diver myth where the earth was water before there were flood stories that were like catastrophes right the way that they they have them now separating them in away from creation cuz really even Genesis hints that there's a there's a relationship between the flood and the creation it's there's there's still some type of relationship in a sense
yeah so so we can talk about dragons because if actually Before pastel farming, all dragon slaying happened in water or in the clouds, never on land. Isn't that weird? Um, but in terms of the age of the the earth diver myth, uh, because we believe the the earth diver creation myth turned into flood myth. Uh, and that's just logical sense. You you stories go in one direction much like linguistics. You very rarely have a story where a man uh changes into an animal as a story evolves through time. Animals may change into people as stories evolve. So equally uh, we know that creation myths turn into flood myths. We don't see examples of flood myths turning in to creation. Therefore, we feel the creation myth was for the flood myth because of the dispersal the flood myth. We think it's Southeast Asia that would carry before the glass glacia maximum to allow people to go over to Americas which was about 20 22,000 years ago. We know people left Africa the culture of people that we see in the world today 55,000 years ago. So somewhere between 55 thou and we don't see that earth diver myth really in Africa. So, we therefore believe the myths probably started after 55,000 years ago, but before the flood myth of 30,000 years ago.
Yeah, I'd love to get into more details. Let's pick this up where we left off because I think there's so much more. If you haven't already, John F. White has a YouTube channel, Kraken Ford. On YouTube, you can go check him out. Um, do you have a website as well?
Uh, the mythology database, just mythology database.com. uh if it is a academic site, it's a scholarly site, so it isn't necessarily easy for the average person to use. But if you're interested in the story, give it a go. It's free. You may find out something really interesting. Go there.
Go subscribe to him. Check out his YouTube channel. Check out mythologydatabase.com. And also, he has a Patreon for all those who help support him as we do early access, you know. So help the poor people that you enjoy learning from and want to see more material from. John
Derek. Brilliant. Thank you. Pick it.