Original Post April 9, 2015 What did the ancient people think of the axis mundi (world axis)? In the footsteps of Mircea Eliade, mythologists and anthropologists tend to think of the axis mundi or ‘world axis’ as a straight object running through the cosmos vertically. While this is, of course, correct…
Left: Bone pendant from Saint-Marcel (Argenton-Sur-Creuse, Indre, France) Right: Bone pendant from the Grotte Des Espélugues (Lourdes, Hautes-Pyrénées, France) Original Post January 6, 2015 Reproduced above are images of two engraved pendants made of reindeer bone, from prehistoric sites in France. Both objects are attributed to the Magdalenian culture, which subsisted…
Original Post January 1, 2015 By what physical mechanism do planets and moons orbit around their larger hosts? Before Newton’s theory of gravity burst onto the scene, the so-called ‘vortex theory’ of the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650), first proposed in the 1630s, was much in vogue. Invoking experimental analogues…
Original Post December 22, 2014 The melting of the glacial ice sheets in North America, Europe and elsewhere was a stochastic process. Long periods of slow melting alternated with bursts of accelerated melting. Between the Late Glacial Maximum and the early Holocene, global sea level rose by 100 to…
Original Post September 22, 2014 An essential building block of a sound theory is the recognition that Jewish legend was considerably more elaborate than the sterile version of the story come down in the ‘first book of Moses’. More than a hint of an intended coup d’état is gleaned from…
Original Post September 19, 2014 From a comparative viewpoint, perhaps the most common ‘contaminations’ in mythological data are distorted echoes of the Hebrew myths of paradise, Noah’s flood and the tower of Babel, conveyed to exotic societies by Christian missionaries. Similar to stratigraphical clues in archaeological excavations, elements of language,…
Original Post September 4, 2014 In the study of myth, the question of metaphors presents many a challenge. When does a ‘sun’ literally refer to the quotidian sun and when is it a metaphor for some other bright sky light? Hard-and-fast rules are risky; every tradition is best examined in its…
Original Post July 3, 2014 If folk memory is anything to go by, global warming in its most dreaded form is a thing of the past. The universality of flood myths is widely known, but fewer people are aware that traditions of unbearable heat, often leading to a devastating Weltbrand,…
Original Post June 26, 2014 Shell gorgets were found in mounds of the prehistoric Mississippian culture, often still reposing on the chest of the wearer. The spider is a recurrent theme on gorgets in mounds in Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee. The early anthropologist William Henry Holmes (1846-1933) observed that the…
Original Post March 6, 2014 Things may be carved in stone and still be nebulous. Petroglyphs come without captions; clues of their intended meanings are more often missing than not. Yet though certainty is rarely to be had, the quest for the meaning of rock art is as legitimate…
