<story><title>Scientists Trace Society’s Myths to Primordial Origins</title><url>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-trace-society-s-myths-to-primordial-origins/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Natsu</author><text>How do we know these actually relate to the same original story and not to, say, the fact that there weren&amp;#x27;t quite so many things to do back then but look at stars and hunt, so there would be a lot of random stories about starts and hunting, along with other common elements of daily life?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lgessler</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t the answer to this the same as the answer to Jung&amp;#x27;s hypothesis?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; “Myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul,” Jung argued. But the dissemination of Cosmic Hunt stories around the world cannot be ex­­plained by a universal psychic structure. If that were the case, Cosmic Hunt stories would pop up everywhere. Instead they are nearly absent in Indonesia and New Guinea and very rare in Australia but present on both sides of the Bering Strait, which geologic and archaeological evidence indicates was above water between 28,000 and 13,000 B.C.&lt;p&gt;(So, the absence of Cosmic Hunt stories in New Guinea, Indonesia, and Australia would seem to be a counter to your hypothesis, unless for some reason we could explain why people in those regions thought less about stars and hunting.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Scientists Trace Society’s Myths to Primordial Origins</title><url>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-trace-society-s-myths-to-primordial-origins/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Natsu</author><text>How do we know these actually relate to the same original story and not to, say, the fact that there weren&amp;#x27;t quite so many things to do back then but look at stars and hunt, so there would be a lot of random stories about starts and hunting, along with other common elements of daily life?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nswanberg</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a great question which doesn&amp;#x27;t appear to be answered in the article or the paper. Maybe there is convergent evolution for features in myths just like in biology.</text></comment>