How old could a story be?

[Wayland]

I've been doing a lot of reading around Norse Mythology lately, for a big storytelling project I'm working on and a really mad idea has come to me about the Norse creation myth.

The story, for anyone that does not know it, starts with Ice in the North and heat in the South with a void in between.

The heat melts the ice to reveal a being called Ymir who becomes the father of all Jotuns (often translated as giants). Next appears a cow from somewhere that nourishes the Jotun and licks the Ice to reveal Buri, the father of all the Gods.

Now perhaps I have been reading too much stuff about cave art recently but I was struck by the thought that at the end of the last ice age, as the glaciers were retreating, there were indeed two types of human living in Europe.

Neanderthals with their robust build and better adaptation to cold conditions and Cro-Magnon that moved up from the South.

That was around 40,000 years ago. Far longer than any written tradition of course, but could fragments of an oral tradition possibly survive that long?

Rock and cave art survives to this day from about 35- 40,000 so could potentially have been some kind of influence but I cannot think of anything still existent that could be that specific.

We know that these two species interbred, just like the Jotuns and the Gods in the manuscript sources.

I'm left with this uncomfortable thought that this must surely be just a coincidence, but it's an intriguing one.

Now, let's be careful not to get into any religious discussion, the Forum has very sensible rules about that. I am interested in this from a purely historical point of view.

What do you think?

 

[mountainm]

The epic of gilgamesh is thought to be based on a real King who lived around 2500BC. The story itself was passed on as oral folktale until captured in cuniform in about 1200BC. So there is evidence to suggest such great stories survive thousands of years. Atlantis is another example. It is now thought to be a reference to a tsunami that struck the minoan civilisation on crete which was then retold by plato 1000's of years later.

 

[John Fenna]

I am of the firm impression that many ancient stories, in many traditions, have references to pre- Homo Sapiens Sapiens and, later, the previous dominant race.

 

[Goatboy]

If you read tales and creation myths from around the world there are many common threads and repetitions among them. A lot of the stories seem to be being proved as possible by science, or at least have some founding basis with things like the flood possibly being the flooding of the Mediterranean valley and so forth. There's also been some research into finding a common root for languages 'round the globe and a surprising amount of words do seem to be of a common ancestor so possibly those tales have been passed on through time and grown into the myths and legends that enthral us around a fire at night.
Though they do say that there are only seven basic plots (Overcoming a monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, rebirth) so there could be some natural overlap.

 

[mountainm]

Re. Flood myths http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10574119/Noahs-Ark-the-facts-behind-the-Flood.html

With flood myths is always worth thinking of context. When a story says the world was flooded it often referred to the world as they knew it. Their City or County encapsulated the world and events were extrapolated to places unknown.

 

[Wayland]

There is actually a flood in the Norse creation myth.
Buri has a son, Bor, by what mother we are not told, and Bor marries Bestla, the daughter of a Jotun, to produce three sons, Oðinn

, Vili and Ve (Possibly other names for Hœnir and Lódur.) who then set upon Ymir and kill him.

When they tear Ymir apart for the raw materials to make the Earth, his blood causes a flood which kills all but two of the Jotuns. The surviving Jotuns of course constantly seek vengeance on the Gods right up until Ragnarök, the end of the story cycle.

There was a gradual flood in Europe as a result of rising sea levels after the Ice Age too. Britain was only cut off from the mainland 8,500 years ago and Doggerland may have survived until 5000bc.

That time scale is certainly a bit more plausible in my opinion.

 

[oldtimer]

I expect you have come across JG Frazer's The Golden Bough in which he examines the common threads of mythologies. It is close on a thousand pages which generally support your basic premise. Although it would be impossible to prove that you are right, it would seem to me that it would be equally impossible to prove that you are wrong.

Velikovsky is another writer who deals with this Ages in Chaos, Ages in Collison etc. Although he lacks the rigour of Frazer and has been rubbished by many, he also points out the common myths of a flood, for example, and the resonances of cataclismic events in oral traditions.

I can see no reason why the oral transmission of actual events could not reach back to as long as speech has enabled us to do so. There will, of course, be distortion and embellishment over time so it is allthe more remarkable that the common threads can still be disentagled.


It is a fascinating point that you raise and should provide stimulating food for thought in those who are to benefit from your project. Good luck with it.

 

[Wayland]

Checking up on my facts a bit more, I realize I've got my time scale wrong, the last glacial maximum would have been about 20,000 years ago not 40,000.

I have been thinking of interglacial periods of course, we're still technically in the current "Ice Age".

That would mean there was another glacial period between the demise of Neanderthal (35,000 years ago) and the Neolithic revolution (12,000 years ago). I hadn't realised that.

You can tell I'm not a Palaeoanthropologist can't you.

Told you it was a mad idea, just goes to show how memory can fool you.

 

[Goatboy]

One of the findings put forward for tales having basis is that of the origins of the Cyclops legend. Paleontologist Othenio Abel put forward that the dwarf elephant skulls found fossilised on Crete, Malta and in Cyprus may have been mistaken for skulls of the Cyclops. The large central nasal cavity being thought of as a single central eye socket. Remembering that the early inhabitants finding these would have little or no knowledge of elephants.

 

[Wayland]

I think confronting something like that in an eroding riverbank for example would give even a modern human something to think about.

As you say, old fossils and bones almost certainly sparked a few legends of their own, possibly even the origin of dragons in so many mythologies.

 

[sandbender]

The Epic of Gilgamesh also mentions a world destroying flood, additionally the eponymous hero meets a chap (Utnapishtim) who had in earlier times been tasked with building a giant ship to preserve his family, animals and craftsmen from the flood.

Some time back I watched a documentary which talked about the creation of the Black Sea, initially a large fertile valley, the Mediterranean eventually made an opening and started to pour in, at one point the resulting falls would have dwarfed Niagara or Victoria and been audible in France.

I think something like that might stick around in tales and legends for quite a long time.

Interesting thought Wayland, I think probably yes, songs and stories around the fire would endure, especially when the entire family young to old would spend their evenings together.

 

[boatman]

There were elephants on some Mediterranean islands so inhabitants could have been familiar with them.

I do think that memories can be transmitted by stories over very long periods of time. Read one of my favourite maverick archaeologist's book, The Legend of the Sons of God by T. C. Lethbridge

In connection with experiential archaeology I have been looking also at the longevity of human traits which would also suggest how long reactions to events and the reporting of them could last. I have had an American (irrelevant but he was also a lawyer which was relevant) casting doubts on some of our family stories which reach back over one hundred and fifty years or five generations or more.

The Killing of William Rufus by Duncan Grinnell-Milne has a nice suggestion as to how family stories are transmitted most likely grandparent to grand-child. It is being relised that the grandparents played and still play a vital part in child-rearing amongst hunter-gatherers and early agriculturists.

 

[Wayland]

Just think about a game of "Chinese Whispers" with an average of two generations between players.

Stories would distort an awful lot like that but the themes might survive for quite a while.

Once you get ritual storytellers, trained to get it "right" as many cultures have done, then the distortion would slow down somewhat but probably not disappear altogether.

To put that into perspective, you would be looking at around 250 transfers of information back to the start of the last interglacial, 1000 transfers for the demise of the Neanderthal.

I think that probably puts Neanderthal out of the story but it could possibly still include the meeting of indigenous Mesolithic dark skinned blue eyed hunter gatherers, now considered extinct, and the incoming near eastern farmers, us.

 

[Goatboy]

On a slightly shorter timescale on the theory of family Chinesevwhispers my father always said that one of the reasons our family name was spelled differently from others is that wee were brought over to be serps of the McLeod clan from Norway as a bunch of hired thugs to knock the stuffing out of their enemies. Now I can find nothing to back this up but have spoken to others with the same spelling that have no obvious other conections who heard the same story from their older generations. So sometimes these stories may have a grain of truth.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[Wayland]

When tracing my family history back, I found a spelling change in our family name that occurred in the ten years between census reports.

Same family, different spelling. Possibly no one could write or spell well so the recorder just took a guess.

 

[boatman]

I think that probably puts Neanderthal out of the story but it could possibly still include the meeting of indigenous Mesolithic dark skinned blue eyed hunter gatherers, now considered extinct, and the incoming near eastern farmers, us.

Or agriculture in Britain was as much home developed as imported. Herding of "wild" animals, preparing grazing for them by forest clearance, development of gardening and beginnings of selection of food plants. If this is so then it would explain why the "Neolithic Revolution" was accomplished so quickly in Britain.

 

[Bishop]

Just think about a game of "Chinese Whispers" with an average of two generations between players.

Here's a great example with the Saturn V moon rocket explained using only the thousand most common words in English.
https://xkcd.com/1133/

 

[sandbender]

Here's a great example with the Saturn V moon rocket explained using only the thousand most common words in English.
https://xkcd.com/1133/

"This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space"

Brilliant.

 

[Macaroon]

Anybody remember the old "Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance" thing? Perfect illustration of the chinese whisper phenomenon

 

[Tengu]

Wasnt there periods in recent millenia, when it was colder, and there was glaciers in the Scottish mountains?

(was it the the Younger Dryas? Im tired...)

We know the Saami have been there a very long time, maybe since the end of the ice age?