Systematic methodology

Systematic ethnology

 Systematic anthropology

Systematic linguistics

Population geogenetics

Systematic poetics

 Systematic folkloristics                    

 

 

Reformatorium

Prehistoric tribes

 Prehistoric races

Prehistoric languages

Population ethnogenetics

   Literary genres

Prehistoric folklore

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*       Racial taxonomy

*       Ethnical taxonomy

*       Europids

*       Nordids

*       Indids

*       Littoralids

*        Caucasoids

*        Elamitoids

*        Negrids

*       Melanids

*       Tungids

*       Pelasgids

*       Cimbroids

*       Turanids 

*       Ugro-Scythids

*       Uralo-Sarmatids

*       Lappids

*       Sinids

 

 

*        Religious taxonomy

*     Passionalism     

*     Manism        

*       Chthonism

*       Phytotheism

*       Daphnephorism

*       Piscimorphism

*       Heliotheism/Oculotheism

*       Nanotheism

 

 

*        Myth-motif  taxonomy

*       Eleotheism

*       Polytheism

*        Bovine cults

*        Naturism

*        Hydrotheism

*        Petrotheism

*         Astrotheism/Ovotheism

*        Determinism

 

 

Varieties of Folklore Traditions Derived from Prehistoric Religious Cults

 

 

 

Map 1. The evolutionary tree of religiogenesis, folklore evolution and magic cults

(from P. Bělíček:: The Synthetic Classification of Human Phenotypes and Varieties. Prague 2018, Table 8, Map p. 24)

 

 

 

 

Agrarian Folklore of Prehistoric Herbivorous Plant-Gatherers and Vegetal Hoe-Cultivators (Negrids, Melanids, Amazonids, Caucasoids)

Phytototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the reincarnation of plants, flowers, shrubs and trees

Polytheism: cults of many celestial and subterranean deities

Chthonism: cults of Mother Earth and the underworld deities (from Greek χθών (khthṓngroundsoil)

Elementalism: belief in four primordial elements: air, earth, water and fire

Naturism: belief in natural elements of the nature (from Latin natura nature)

Hylozoism: belief in the spiritual nature of matter (from Greek hylos “matter”)

Phytomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations into plants, shrubs and trees 

Manism: cults of ancestral spirits of dead fathers (Latin manes spirit of the ancestors)

Bovinism: cults of bovine deities (bulls, cows, calves)

Passionalism: worshiping martyr gods of corn, death, sacrifice and suffering  

Eleotheism: worshiping female goddesses of love and mercy (from Greek έλεος, éleos “mercy”)

Endophagism: the rite of endophagia, eating the dead body of fathers and ancestors

 

Agrarian Folklore of Neolithic Peasants and Farmers (Caucasoids, Elamitoids, Europids)

Polytheism: cults of many celestial and subterranean deities

Chthonism: cults of Mother Earth and the underworld deities (from Greek χθών (khthṓngroundsoil)

Elementalism: belief in four primordial elements: air, earth, water and fire

Naturism: belief in natural elements of the nature (from Latin natura nature)

Hylozoism: belief in the spiritual nature of matter (from Greek hylos “matter”)

Manism: cults of ancestral spirits of dead fathers (Latin manes spirit of the ancestors)

Bovinism: cults of bovine deities (bulls, cows, calves)

Passionalism: worshiping martyr gods of corn, death, sacrifice and suffering  

Eleotheism: worshiping female goddesses of love and mercy (from Greek έλεος, éleos “mercy”)

Filial piety: cults of Chinese Confucianism expressing sons’ worship of dead fathers

Prehistoric Folklore of Ugroid Hunters and Scythoid Pastoralists with Kurgan Burials (Ugrids, Scythoids, Dinarids, Baskids)

Theriototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the reincarnation of mammoths and big-game mammals

Monotheism: the cult of one celestial sun-god (Mazda) and one lord of the underworld (Ahriman)

Oculotheism: worshiping the sun-god as a celestial eye (Latin oculus “eye”) for measuring time, magic    

    evil-eye charms, unsighting slaves and the defeated

Megalithism: using large blocks of stone for building vaulting constructions and tombstone mounds

Coercivism: challenging foreigners to fight and bets so as to enslave them and their children

Mummification rites: embalming and balsaming high dignitaries so as to preserve them for eternity 

Unctioning the quick and the dead, the use of unctions and oils for anointing and healing the body

Ovotheism: legends of genesis from the World Egg hatched by the World Duck on the World Tree 

Zoomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations into the megafauna of big-game mammals  

Heliotheism: the supreme celestial god is identified with the sun

Thesaurism: hoarding aneolithic and chalcolithic treasures for producing weapons

Transmigrationism: belief in the after-death transmigration of souls into lions and feline animals

Felinism: feline totemism, cats, sphinges and other felines worshiped as tutelary spirits

Leonism: leonine totemism, the statues of sphinges and jaguars as guardians of pyramids and hillforts

Circular morphology applied to round tables, agoras as training-grounds, rings of standing stones

Globular morphology applied to amphorae, beehive huts, temples, mosques and tholoi graves

Nagualism: belief that a man can be slain by killing his animal double-ganger or alter ego

 

Prehistoric Folklore of Uraloid Hunters and Sarmatoid Herders  (Uralids, Sarmatids, Sumerids)

Theriototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the reincarnation of big-game mammals

Monotheism: the cult of one celestial sun-god (Mazda) and one lord of the underworld (Ahriman)

Ovotheism: legends of genesis from the World Egg hatched by the World Duck on the World Tree 

Astrotheism: myths about the ascent of a dead king to heavens as a star and the annuciation of the descent of a baby king born in his stead

Nagualism: belief that a man can be slain by killing his animal double-ganger or alter ego

Lupinism:  belief in the wolfish ancestor of all Uralids and Sarmatids (from Latin lupus “wolf”)

Excarnation: defleshing the dead body by explosing it to gluttonous vultures in the desert

Exposition: burials of the dead body by exposing it to beasts of prey on a tree or a wooden scaffolding

Vampyrism: the customs of bloodletting applied to cattle or night sleepers so as to suck their blood

Nagualism: belief that a man can be slain by killing his animal double-ganger or alter ego

Zoomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations into big-game mammals  

Heliotheism: the supreme celestial god (Indra, Marduk)  is identified with the sun

Baptism: baptising newly-born kids by sprinkling their forehead with sacred water 

Transmigrationism: belief in the after-death transmigration of souls into wolfish bodies

Sky burials: the dead corpse is brought to a high peak of a mountain for defleshing bones

Volcano burials: the dead ancestors are exposed to vultures on the top of volcanoes

Dice divination: the bones of the dead are used for divination and for playing dice

Lycanthropy: belief in night raiders who turn into werewolves, rape or kidnap women and suck their blood

Annunciation:  Archangel Gabriel’s annunciation to the Holy Virgin about her immaculate conception,

the Holy Spirit appears in the reincarnation of a feathered dove who kissed the immaculate Holy Virgin 

 

Prehistoric Cults of Piscivorous Fishermen and Neolithic Lake-Dwellers (Tungids, Pelasgoids, Pontids, Ladogans)

Ichthyototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the reincarnation of fish, dolphins, amphibians and reptiles

Monotheism: the cult of one celestial Apollonic sun-god and one satanic underworld god (Belzebub)

Stelarism: erecting upright stelae, menhirs and effigies in honour to prominent warriors (from Latin stela “upright pillar, stele or effigy”)

Petrotheism: worshiping sacred stones embodying heroes in stone alleys of menhirs (petra rock

Cataclysmism: myths about the Great Deluge, a flood, whose survivor Noah was the first human

Tengrism: the cult of the Turkic and Mongolan sky-god Tengri, Japanese Tenrikyo, Polynesian Maori Tangaroa and Samoan Tagaloa; in India they equal to Tara and Telugu Thalli, Telangana

Totems: Pelasgoid totems were the wolf (Apollo), bear (Diana), swan (Leto) and dolphin (Delos)

Ichthyomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations into fish, dolphins, amphibians and reptiles 

Purificationism: rites of purification in water, baths, wells, spas, fountains or mikve

Hydrotheism: baptising newly-born kids in water and burials of the deceased in sea depths

Ursinism: cults of the bear impersonated by the Moon godess Diana/Artemis (Latin ursus bear)

Geminism: cults of twin children (Greek Dioskuroi, Roman Gemini, Polish Lel and Polel)

Anthism: Pelasgoid flower cult common in Crete, among Polynesian seafarers and Uto-Aztecan poets

(from Greek άνθος, anthos “flower”)

Daphnephorism: the Pelasgic rite of the laurel bearers, daphnephoroi, in honour of Apollo’s twin Diana

Ochreous consecration: the dead bodies were consecrated by hematite ochre paint

Prehistoric Folklore of Piscivorous Fishermen and Neolithic Rock-Cut Cave-Dwellers (Turanids, Hebroids, Graecoids, Etruscoids, Iberoids)

Ichthyototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the reincarnation of fish, amphibians and reptiles

Monotheism: the cult of one celestial Apollonic sun-god and one satanic underworld god (Belzebub)

Petrotheism: worshiping the sacred rock (Kaaba in Mecca) as a supreme divinity (Latin petra rock”)

Petroglyphism: creating magic rock paintings in caves or carvings on cliffs

Cataclysmism: myths about the Great Deluge, a flood, whose survivor Noah was the first human

Tengrism: the cult of the Turkic and Mongolan sky-god Tengri, Japanese Tenrikyo, Polynesian Maori Tangaroa and Samoan Tagaloa; in India they equal to Tamil Tara and Telugu Thalli or Telangana

Ichthyomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations into fish, amphibians and reptiles 

Purificationism: rites of purification in water, baths, wells, spas, fountains or mikve

Hydrotheism: baptising newly-born kids in water and burials of the deceased in sea depths

Transmigrationism: belief in the after-death transmigration of souls into bodies of animals

Hepatomancy: divination from animal livers and drawing roentgen images with intestines

Circumventism: the rites of circumventing sacred rocks and walking around their foothills

Phallic cults: applying phallomorphous pillars as milestones

 

Oral Traditions of Prehistoric Omnivorous Lappids and the Ancient Plebs of Craftsmen (Sanids, Lappids, Alpinids, Pygmids, Sinids, Negritos)

Taoism (Daoism): Chinese belief in determinism and the lawful pursuit of the Tao “the material way of life”

Buddhism: the Burmese and Hindu version of Chinese Taoism and its deterministic teaching

Sophistics: the Greek dialectical philosophy of plebeian preachers and lawyers

Humoralism: the Greek Hippocratic philosophy of temperaments, somatic saps and humours 

Cynicism: the Greek philosophy of plebeian itinerant tramps  

Stoicism: the Greek philosophy of patient suffering and pursuing the deterministic personal fate

Peripatetism: the Greek philosophy of walking“ itinerant evolutionists and systematic comparativists

Protestantism: deterministic beliefs of plebeian democratic leaders (Albigenses, Lutheranism)

Nanotheism: belief in elfin tiny helpers assisting in the household 

Tricksterism: myths and folktales about little but smart and witty animal tricksters

Cremationism: the burial rite of cremations raising the soul to heavens

Aviotheism: cult of swallows, who carry the souls of dead fathers back to their homes (avis ‘bird)

Ventotheism: cults of four winds that carry remains of the cremated dead to heavens (ventus ‘wind)

Janusism: sculpting two-faced or four-faced figurines blowing the wind in four directions to heavens

The Origin of Oral Folklore Traditions from Prehistoric Religious Cults

 

   The moderns understand religions as official doctrines of contemporary churches, e.g. Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodox Church, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Lamaism or Shintoism. Their theological creed is however a secondary conglutination of several tribal cults administered by local ethnicities. Their genesis resembled the rise of medieval monarchies, nations and national languages. These secondary unities emerged as a result of unification reinforced by the monarch and his ruling suite. The earliest princedoms emerged thanks to military campaigns undertaken by ambitious retinues of warriors led by a strong tribal chieftain. He managed to subdue a number of weaker tribes in his surrounding and forced them to pay annual tributes in heads of cattle or precious metals. The subjugated tribes preserved their tongues, dialects, customs, myths and cults for a few centuries but had to obey cultural unification propagated by the ruling dynasties.

   The united state, kingdom, church, nation and language were secondary products of civilisation and ethnic cohabitation within the framework of the earliest civilisations. They had no genetically homogeneous character, because they consisted from several incompatible ethnic and social castes. The only original compact ethnicities appeared only in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, when every tribe and race consisted of independent family clans roaming as hordes throughout forests in search for food and sustenance. Their social evolution is now mirrored faithfully in the folktales of prehistoric savages:

a.      Bilateral totemism: the earliest tribes lived in forestal isolation and solitude and classified themselves as animal species living together with other animal species. They hunted game as other inimical beasts and protected only members of  their own affiliated kin. Everyone’s tribal identity in the wood was determined by tattooing and animal hides and fur-coats. Folktales described all marriages as love affairs between two different animals.

b.     Unilateral totemism: hunting clans kill their immediate neighbours unless they recognise them as remote relatives belonging to the same tribe. They begin to distinguish their own relatives, kinsmen and clansmen as humans and  keep distance from all foreigners as monsters of animal nature. Their religious cults prescribe regulations observed strictly as taboos, commandments or laws. They command them what is edible as animal flesh and forbid them to eat their own animal totems flesh. They cannot marry girls from their own horde but are obliged to marry foreign females by kidnapping them from neighbouring tribes. Totemism is a magic cult preserved as far as medieval times in the form of wearing beastly amulets, necklaces, pendants, emblems and coats of arms.

c.     Animism: a higher magic cult of the Upper Palaeolithic, when hunting  warriors wear masks to scare enemies and pendants with teeth of their hunting trophies. All foreigners are classified as terrestrial animist spirits inhabiting a definite hunting-ground. Folktales comment the elopement of a bride by a foreign warrior by saying that she married a chieftain of wolves, reptiles or frogs and describe him as a ‘spirit of the wood’, ‘lord of the lake’ or ‘monster of a mountain’.

d.     Supraterrestrial cults: Neolithic tribes become sedentary populations and assume the possession of their tribal area. Pastoralist highlanders are respected as a higher caste of ogres in the heavens, while the peasants tilling their fields in the lowlands are despised as a lower caste of monsters inhabiting the underworld.  

e.      Confederative cults: the first mixed chieftaincies appear in the Bronze Age when the pastoralist highlanders form a sort of  a multitribal confederation. They extort tithes in corn, flour and vegetables from farmíng lowlanders and make them worship their rulers as deities.

f.       Religions: the first genuine religions arise in the first civilised princedoms uniting several distinct ethnic clans and tribal groups. The ruling caste promotes its chieftain to the highest deity and humiliates the ancestral forefathers of lower castes as his sons and daughters. The ancient divinities Marduk and Zeus seized the heavenly throne in the pantheon by subordinating all ethnic and social factions as their remote nephews and servants. In fact, Apollo represented the tribes of Pelasgians, Hermes stood for a Graecoid caste of messengers and tradesmen and Ares was the chief warrior adored as a patron by the Aryan land-owning aristocracy.

g.     Churches: ancient religions merged into ecclesiastic churches and amphictyonias by closing pacts of military brotherhood with city-states of similar tribal and religions denomination. When they accomplished an integration into one national state they gathered all heroes and mythic tribal legends into one pot and mixed their hash into one undistinguishable potpourri. Such nations had their powerful founders but also high priests who established a hierarchy of deities in the pantheon. Confucius, Moses and Mohammed did not invent national gods but acted as antiquarian collectors of legends who assembled them into a hierarchy of supreme divinities worth adoration.

   Every world religion has cultivated files of  monastic brotherhoods bringing dogmatic proofs of religious integrism or integralism and brought them up as a united army of orthodox clergymen. Yet the ultimate goal of scientific religionistics is not to support such methodological mishmashing. It should not mingle all legends into one mixture but isolate all original tribal subcomponents in order to explain origins and restore the state of the earliest pure elements.   

   When we decompose modern religions into elementary particles, we see that the core of Mahomeddanism was composed from the Hebrew legends about Abraham and his wife Sarah, who founded the illustrious Cave of Patriarchs and  the Wailing Wall. Abraham was a forefather of Hebrids and Hebroids, his tribal faiths bore the signs of petrotheism and the rites of circumventing the Sacred Stone known to Arabs as Kaaba. Moses was not a pure Hebrew priest but a Midianite, whose strict monotheism made him hate Judaeans and their iconolatry. This makes it clear that the Edomites, Judaeans or Jews were originally peasants worshipping the idols of the Golden Calf and affiliated to the biblical Hetaeans or Anatolian Hittites. They were all Elamitoids and had nothing to do with the Hebrew pastoralist goat-keepers. The Arabs built up the Islamic religious centre in Mecca but recruited from camel-breeders who were genetically related to Sumerians. Islam found its ardent supporters in horseback-riding Saracens and Moors and Mauritanians.

  Sumerian origin can be attributed also to the pioneers of Christianism in Galilee and Samaria. Jesus and his apostles rode on donkeys like Sumerians. His birth was forecast by the Christmas Star of Bethlehem and welcomed by the Sumerian “wise men from the East”. They confessed astrotheist beliefs in baby-kings descending from stars to replace the old dead king on the earth. The archangel Gabriel annunciated the immaculate conception to Holy Virgin, who became pregnant  by

a kiss of the  Holy Spirit in the reincarnation of a dove. Birdy supreme gods were known to Yazidists worshiping the peacock angel, to Uralic people adoring the World Bird and to Assyrians, who revered deities with feathered aureola. The pioneers of Christianism was John the Baptist and the prophet Isaiah, who propagated baptism by sprinkling water and advocated the cult of the Holy Spirit. Other precursors of Christianism were the Essenes or Essenoi, who lived in the 2nd two century before Christ.

The Rise of Oral Folklore and Ethnic Folklore Customs from Tribal Religious Cults

 

Linguistic structures predetermined types of versification and prosodic patterns but had little bearing on the thematic substance of poetry. Literary historians start their compendia from the earliest literary records and omit chapters on ancient pagan myths and oral traditions. Christianisation brought literacy but at the expense of destroying monuments of heathen arts. The modern academic hearsay assumes that prehistoric oral lore, ancient poetry and medieval religious literature are but heaps of unusable junk and all that matters are feats of present-day fashionable writing. Such prejudices do not allow anyone to get a deeper insight into the systematics of literary forms. Studying modern literary production without historical poetics and its evolutionary graphs of oral genres does not promote scientific cognition. It is as ineffective as studying contemporary fauna and flora without elemental outlines of zoogenesis and phytogenesis.

Natural sciences constituted their foundations once they were able to sketch the first approximate drafts of the evolutionary phylogenesis of species. In the nearest future the same goal awaits humanities and social sciences. All their considerations get drowned in psychological vagueness unless they reconstruct basic patterns of prehistoric religions, myths, rites and festivals. This makes it clear why we go into archaeological, ethnical and cultural taxonomy in greater detail than any literary expert would expect. The integral understanding of history presupposes devising the following subtheories:

* primatogenesis – a polygenic elucidation of the evolution of several closely related and interbreedable genetic strains of primates that were together elevated to higher stages of civilisation in central areas and later isolated as independent species and genera; they underwent a process of paragenesis involving prograde evolution in areas of environmental deforestation (abandoning rainforest isolation) and retrograde devolution in regions of environmental reforestation, i.e. renewing cohabitation with retarded communities in peripheral forest solitude,

* anthropogenesis: a similar model of evolution and devolution for populations of prehistoric humankind, a parallel process of hominisation for ethnovarieties of robust plant-gatherers and (pre)agriculralists, slim agile hunters and (pre)pastoralists, nomadic melancholic piscivores and fishermen and clever hairy short-sized omnivores, standlopers and (pre)artisans,

*       archeogenesis: the family-tree of bifurcation chaining Paleolithic archeological cultures and classifying them into stocks of the Acheulean Macrolithic, Mousterian Lanceolithic, Levalloisian Leptolithic and Natufian, Tsitolian and Maglemosian Microlithic,

*       ethnogenesis: the diversification of racial verieties into ethnic families by means of long-range migrations of Paleolithic archaeological cultures,

*       religiogenesis: the historical evolution and typological classification of tribal forms of superstitions, magic, faiths and religions from the Stone Age to their fusion into the canonised doctrines of medieval churches,

*       glottogenesis: the origin and prehistoric development of languages,

*       poetogenesis: the genealogy of poetic kinds and genres from prehistoric oral lore to modern literary production,

*       prosodogenesis: the ethnic evolution of prosodic and musical systems.

 

 

 

 

    The best guide to understanding oral tradition and literary genres is concealed in forms of prehistoric magic. Actions carried out during a magic ritual usually copy operations common to everyday forage. Sanctity is nothing but a desirably idealised copy of the profane and quotidianity. The earliest hunters professed totemistic theoriomorphism, they worshipped an animal ancestor, identified with its species by wearing its hides and strove to chase different species of animal game. They considered themselves as one of animal genera in the wood and hunted their favourite game as a pantry for food, trophies and brides. In a totemistic tale an Amazonian Indian chases urubu vultures, kills them, brings one of them home and to his surprise he discovers that it is a beautiful girl, his future wife.1 Hunters practiced polygynous exogamy, taboo commandments told them to marry foreign brides. Their society lawfully produced lots of totemistic legends about kidnapped animal brides. The chief leitmotif always centred on husbands’ and in-law’s offences mocking the bride’s fur dress sewn from her totem animal hides. When she gave birth to a child and wrapped it in furs of her clan’s totem animal, her fellow-wives accused her of delivering an animal cub.2 Also death and the after-world were associated with zootheism. Most hunters’ societies shared a belief in transmigrations of souls, in their postmortal reincarnations and metamorphoses into animals. They exposed their dead father’s corpse lying in the desert so that his flesh might be devoured by a strong predator and his spirit could find a new embodiment in this beast of prey.

    On the other hand, axe-tool cultures professed totemistic phytomorphism (Greek fyton ‘plant’), they ate vegetal food, deified flowers and trees, worshipped them as their ancestors’ reincarnation and underwent metamorphoses into their blossoms or twigs. The folktales of Melanesian hoe-cultivators and Australian aborigines bore a close resemblance to Ovid’s relation about social life on Mount Olympus. A young girl works in a female work gang digging up roots in the wood but when she moves away from their crowd, she is raped by a supernatural spirit. She dies and turns into a flower. Such a ‘phytothanasia’ happened also to ancient Greek nymphs Daphne, Callisto, Dryope and Dione raped in the sacred groves by supernatural deities.3

Religions

Marriages 

Burials and graves

Transmigration

totemism

theriomorphism

animal ancestors

exogamy

buying/abduction of brides

exotaphy – burials and tombstones outside  human settlements

zoothanasia 

posthumous change into an animal

astrotheism monotheism

exogamy – brides from foreign clans

dendrotaphy – burials

in trees/on scaffolding

astrothanasia – re-incarnation in stars

monotheism

petrotheism -  worshipping stones and rocks

exogamy – rapes and kidnaps of brides, paying the bride price

hydrotaphy - burials in water depths, petrotaphy – stone stelae, rockcut caves

petrothanasia - postmortal meta-morphoses into

a rock and cliffs

polytheism phytotheism

hylozoism

endogamy -wedlock inside a clan or tribe

endotaphy - burials under kitchen floors inside settlements

phytothanasia, re-

incarnation  in trees,

plants, flowers,

aviotheism - cult

of birds or winds

endogamy - wedlock in a clan 

pyrotaphy - burials by cremation on a pyre

aviothanasia - a change into a bird

Table 9.  Types of ethnic cults and rituals

    After hunters’ transition to pastoralism their myths underwent anthropo-morphisation, their deities ascended to heavens and their dead departed to the night sky as stars. The Maoris and Tibetans carried the dead corpse uphill in order to expose it to vultures in craters of volcanoes and resembled Nazarenes in astrotheism1 (star cult), in worshipping stars as divine messengers. As the old dying dalai lama’s soul ascended to the sky and reincarnated as a star in heavens, a nova star turned up and signalled that his dauphin successor had descended to the earth as a newborn baby. 

    Nomadic fishermen’s oral tradition resembled heroic stories and plots typical of the brotherly tribes of Altaic hunters and herdsmen. They passed through the same stages of totemism and animism and differed only by adoring various kinds of fish, reptiles, frogs and other waterside amphibians. One half of their kinsmen continued to inhabit caves and rock overhangs and even after moving to log cabins they buried their fathers in rock-cut caves. They professed a kind of petrotheism (rock cult) illustrated by worshipping the cube stone Kaaba in Mecca installed by the forefather Ibrahim (Abraham). Another faction lived as bog fishers in tree-dwellings and later began to construct lakeside post-dwellings and stilt-dwellings. Their dead were simply sunk into water depths.

    Neolithic novelties afflicted also plant-gatherers who learned the art of hoe- cultivation and mystified sowing grains of cereals as an offering to Mother Earth. Thracian cults dedicated to Dionysus required human sacrifices illustrated by the tragic death of the king Pentheus. He betrayed himself when eavesdropping the midnight dances and revels of bacchant witches headed by his mother Agave. When they caught him, they dismembered his body to pieces and sowed them in furrows like new planting for the next year’s harvest. Neolithic farmers’ fairy tales expressed motifs of hylozoistic naturism, a belief in four primordial elements (earth, air, water, fire) embodied in Mother Earth, Father Heaven, dragon rain-gods and victorious sun-gods. Folktale heroines were endowed with a dowry by weird sisters, who represented a sort of the clan’s matriarchal council of elders. Male heroes set out on travels to phratries of relatives to conclude a marriage contract and obtain consent with a planned marriage. In their bag they brought loaves of food and made a point of presenting every poor wanderer with a slice of bread.

 

 

Extract from Pavel Bělíček: Systematic Poetics II. Literary Ethnology and Sociology. Prague 2017,  pp. 37-39

 

 



1 Danièle Küss: Mýty a legendy amerického kontinentu. Praha 1992, p. 16.

2 Leo Frobenius:  Volkererzählungen und Volksdichtungen aus der Zentral-Sudan. Jena 1924, S. 165.

3 V. Kudinov:  Mify i legendy Avstralii. Moskva 1976, p. 39.

1 E. H. Henrotte: Babylonian Astrotheism, the Chinese Art of Astral Omina and the Dragon Imagery. Castricum 1988.