Eurasian back-migration: traces in mythology?

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Abstract

The author examines the world distribution of mythological motifs peculiar for Northeast Africa but absent in other parts of this continent. The corresponding narratives describe the events of the time of creation, objects and beings localized at the ultimate limits of the human world as well as episodes of the journeys of heroes to these limits. The motifs in question are absent in Central Asia and Siberia but found across Western, South and Southeast Asia, in Oceania and across the New World. Considering such distribution, these stories probably appeared at the early stages of the peopling of the oikumene (definitely before the peopling of the New World) and were brought to Africa by the populations engaged into the Eurasian back-migrations that were going since the Terminal Pleistocene and possibly earlier.

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Yuri E. Berezkin

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences

Author for correspondence.
Email: berezkin1@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6001-7339

д. и. н., заведующий отделом этнографии Америки

Russian Federation, 3 University Emb., St. Petersburg, 199034

References

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2. Fig. 1. Proteus. Trying to free himself, the captured character successively turns into various substances, objects or animals. 1. Female character. 2. Male character. 3. Horse

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3. Fig. 2. 1. The inhabitants of the underworld or the country on the horizon have red (yellow) hair and/or red or black skin and/or suffer from the heat of the sun, which passes them at a short distance. 2. People living at sunrise or sunset prepare food, using the heat of the passing sun. 3. The inhabitants of the country on the horizon are dwarfs.

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4. Fig. 3. Cranes and Pygmies. Inhabitants of a distant country, different from (ordinary) people, from time to time fight with the enemies of a non-human nature that attack them (usually migratory birds). 1. Chagga. 2. French (Gers department). 3. Arabic written tradition. 4. Ancient Greece. 5. Georgians. 6. Scandinavians. 7. Finns. 8. Western Saami. 9. Sema-Naga. 10. Ancient China. 11. Evenki of China. 12. Nanai. 13. Inupiat of the Bering Strait. 14. Tlingit, Tsimshian, Bellacula. 15. Comox, Snohomish, Skagit, Nisqually, Yakima. 16. Fox. 17. Sarcee, Blackfoot, Gros Ventre. 18. Crow. 19. Natchez, Alabama, Chickasaw. 20. Cherokee. 21. Zuni, Navajo, Jicarilla, Western Apache. 22. Lipan. 23. Tarahumara. 24. Embera, Nonama, Kuna. 25. Shuar. 26. Tacana. 27. Kuicuro, Kamayura

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5. Fig. 4. Caesarean section. Women's abdomens were cut open to extract the baby. Someone explains how to give birth or makes childbirth possible

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