Voordrachten: 'Mythologie tot Orthodoxie'

Graven naar de wortels van de menselijke verbeelding: Over Michael Witzels 'The Origins of the World’s Mythologies'

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Abstract

This contribution discusses The Origins of the World’s Mythologies, a voluminous study by Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University Michael Witzel (Oxford University Press, 2012). A simple review would not do the book justice, as it attempts to redefine the field of comparative mythology and is already the object of great controversy. Using the comparative method and buttressed by data from historical linguistics, archaeology and genetics, Witzel aims to reconstruct the family tree of human myths right up until the Paleolithic. He distinguishes two great branches, Gondwana and Laurasian mythology. The last one in particular gets his attention, for he claims that it was in this branch that around 40.000 BC separate myths were moulded together into a ‘story line’ – an all-encompassing narrative about the cosmos from which all dominant modern day religions ultimately descend. Witzel’s extraordinary study has been both praised as revolutionary and heavily criticized as flawed and implicitly racist. This contribution considers the arguments from both sides.

How to Cite:

Sels, N., (2016) “Graven naar de wortels van de menselijke verbeelding: Over Michael Witzels 'The Origins of the World’s Mythologies'”, Tetradio 25(1): 1, 11–33. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tetradio.91849