Was there a "proto" or "primal" religion that all others are divulged from? I was just thinking about how there are similarities between Religions on other sides of the globe.
How is it that different cultures share similar myths and legends despite having no contact what so ever? For example the similarities between Shinto and Greek mythology can't be a coincidence right?
Educate my dumb ass on the origins of religion.
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> For example the similarities between Shinto and Greek mythology
What similarities?
>Was there a "proto" or "primal" religion that all others are divulged from?
Animism.
>How is it that different cultures share similar myths and legends despite having no contact what so ever?
Jung speculated that we have, just like we have instincts, a shared psychic heritage made of images and symbols. Read his Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious for the full story.
Similar pantheon, myths and legends that have similar themes.
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Our ability as humans to comprehend supierior states is inherently flawed. Each tradition offers a glimpse into the nature of the divine.
I've read a bit of Shinto and Greek mythology and have no idea what you're talking about.
Nigga you high.
well take the pic I posted in the OP. It's Izanagi and Izanami. The legend is similar to Orpheus.
>Was there a "proto" or "primal" language that all others are divulged from? I was just thinking about how there are similarities between languages on other sides of the globe.
>How is it that different races share similar Sounds and Words despite having no contact what so ever? For example the similarities between French and Indian can't be a coincidence right?
>Educate my dumb ass on the origins of language
Unironically found your answer
T. Catholic
>dumb ass
This is Veeky Forums the only colors we accept are yellow
The similarity begins and ends with a male deity going to the underworld to get back his dead love/wife.
Which isn't exactly a story that requires divine inspiration to write.
A more interesting common point is that eating the food of the underworld binds you there and prevents you to leave, but that comes into play with Persephone rather than Orpheus, and if you had to explain the similarity it probably had something to do with the sacredness of breaking bread with someone. Maybe in both ancient cultures the bride was considered irreversibly married when she first had dinner at her husband's home, for example. Maybe some long-forgotten princess was shipped off to be married to a foreign ruler and when she was to come back, it was argued that she had become a stranger by eating strange food in a strange land. I'm sure anthropologists have a field day with these.
desu I don't know a whole lot about Shinto, I just have some vague knowledge on the pantheon and know the myth of Izanagi. Kagasuchi reminds me of Hephaestus a bit.
Probably should've said Norse and Greek or brought up Hinduism or something.
There was a thread up earlier about Semetic, Greek, and Hindu linkages.
I think it's possible but very removed. Maybe somehow linking chink stuff to Mesopotamian stuff then to Japanese shinto but I don't know enough about Chinese folk religion to even begin.
Another problem with interpreting these things is that religions do evolve. For example, Japanese, Korean and Chinese shinto/shamanism are believed to have been extremely similar 1500 years ago but it's pretty hard to notice now. On top of that, contact with foreign religions gives native religions new concepts and stimuli to evolve, yet modern believers rarely want to admit that their religion has changed, especially not thanks to the influence of heathens.
Tower of Babel, that city culture is where all humans came from and where they shared ideas before they got spread across the earth.
I find it more likely that they've developed independently. They share common themes, but the themes are present because they were important in peoples' lives.
You could say that about any number of myths
Everyone from Siberia to Africa to Polynesia
There's a shared Indo-European ritual tradition that led to the Indian Brahminial religions, Greek and Germanic pantheons, etc.
Humans all face similar trials and obstacles, in addition to biological similarity, so there's always going to be some overlap between religions and legends, regardless of how disconnected they are. (Similarly, everyone is going to discover Pi, Phi, the golden mean, and what not.)
On the other hand, there is a lot of evidence in the universally shared human DNA that, at some point in our early history, we were reduced to an isolated extended family of a few thousand, and there was whole lotta inbreeding going on during that time, some of which lead to some of the more common genetic disorders of the day.
So it may very well be we once all shared a common culture, and there's perhaps wisps of ashes of it pervading into the modern era.
Short of a time machine though, there's no way to be certain. Presupposition bias can easily lead you to the conclusion, through entirely erroneous means.
But regardless, certain aspects of life do unite all men on some level of common experience, both past and present.
There's *some* contact between all those regions - asia, the middle east, europe, africa - pretty much the entire eastern hemisphere. It only takes one guy to tell an exciting tale to spread it elsewhere, so it's objectively say they are connected.
It's more interesting when you see parallels in opposite hemispheres. Even then though, it's not as if they don't have a shared history, should you go back far enough. The telephone game played out over 15 millennia might still get some vague semblance of the original message across.
The proto-religion to all other religions is animism. Having said that, Ancient Greek mythology and Shinto mythology are nothing alike.