Mark O:
>A Sumerian source? There seems to have been something like this
>going on in the New World too with the Mayas. Waters have a universal
>fascination; and objects lost or retrieved, either accidentally or
>deliberately (even ritually) have the same attraction as tossing
>coins into a wishing well or public fountain.
John in response:
>Mark, religious elements have circulated independently from each
>other and rapidly across large areas. [...] To propose that popular
>stories and mythic elements did not circulate extremely widely,
>across the whole of the Indo-European realm, from Jutland to the
>Indus is a risky supposition.
Um, John. Mark is right. You can't honestly believe that stories can travel
from Sumer to the Mayan Kingdom, can you?? The question we always have to
ask ourselves is whether a particular mythological trait of one culture is
something that is easy to have developed independantly elsewhere or whether
this trait we speak of is far to complex to have done so in a likely
fashion. (Kinda similar to CompLx...). What Mark refers to is a simple trait
that truely is likely to have been developed independantly in many other
cultures without having to be from Sumer. Other widespread traits are, for
instance, the development of disaster and creation myths. Two cultures may
have flood myths but... correlation doesn't equal causation!
>When one finds the same mythic elements in Sumeria as we find
>throughout the Middle East, we have to ask about their origins.
And given the many European symbolisms that have existed in Europe based on
archaeological evidence there long before a Sumerian kingdom existed or even
the Ubaid culture, we can see quite clearly where the origins lie.
- gLeN
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