Review of "The origins of the world's mythologies" on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The author makes a good attempt to establish a family tree of myths and myth complexes. He uses techniques analogous to the way linguists know things about proto languages. He also draws from genetics, archaeology, and linguistics as a sanity check against his ideas.
This book was published in 2012 so must have been written and compiled earlier. The author was unaware of the current consensus that H. Sapiens interbred with Neanderthals. He doesn't seem to have heard of Denisovans either. There have been more archaeological finds since then that shed more light on early human migrations. I don't think any of that invalidates this work but could inform follow up work.
This work is a great first stab and I hope more researchers add to it.
The author makes a good attempt to establish a family tree of myths and myth complexes. He uses techniques analogous to the way linguists know things about proto languages. He also draws from genetics, archaeology, and linguistics as a sanity check against his ideas.
This book was published in 2012 so must have been written and compiled earlier. The author was unaware of the current consensus that H. Sapiens interbred with Neanderthals. He doesn't seem to have heard of Denisovans either. There have been more archaeological finds since then that shed more light on early human migrations. I don't think any of that invalidates this work but could inform follow up work.
This work is a great first stab and I hope more researchers add to it.