The universal flood did not happen only in Genesis. It is told by almost all ancient civilizations around the world, becoming the most widespread myth of humanity. The Hebrew Noah is the Babylonian Utanapishtim, the Hindu Manu, the Greek Decaulion or the Aztec Tezpi, just to name four. It is not the only coincidence between distant ancestral cultures in space and time. The myths, or rather, the archetypes are repeated in an almost amazing way. José Luis Espejo and Diego Méndez have dedicated themselves to collecting them in The Tree of Myths (Editorial Base), an atlas of comparative mythology that starts from the traditions of more than 380 ethnic groups from all over the planet. "There is not a single myth that is really universal, but a few," explains Espejo.
Among these are myths such as that of the Mother Goddess, the twins, the sacred bull, the giants, paradise, the cosmic egg, the sacred mountain, the world tree, the creation of the human being… “The myth recalls time of the origin; for this reason it is a window that allows us to access the most remote past, encrypts traditions and beliefs”, continues the historian co-author of the book. “The collective memory of Humanity resides in myths, they are a source of knowledge that shows us the most primitive of human thought,” adds Méndez.
The big question would be: Why are myths repeated between different cultures? In this sense, the authors present the two most defended arguments currently. On the one hand, there is the possibility of a single origin that later spread to the rest of the planet. “This can happen in certain myths, such as the creation of the human being or the world, but there are other mythical motifs, such as the flood, which would be associated with a specific event, whose singularity suggests the flight of some sailors (the Noahs) ”, explains Mirror. The second argument focuses on the possibility that myths "are somehow stored in what Carl Gustav Jung called the collective unconscious."
For Espejo, the most surprising thing about the study is how "some details are exactly identical in cultures separated in time and space." And he exposes some examples. One of them refers to the famous flood, in which different cultural traditions coincide in narrating the mountain where the boat runs aground, the release of birds, the presence of animals or the rainbow after the rain. Something similar happens in the descent into hell, with aspects such as the boat of the dead or the dog from the underworld. A third example: the creation of the first human being by kneading clay, the breath of life or even the appearance of the spouse from a rib, as occurs in the Bible with the creation of Eve and also in the Polynesian tradition, where “ the first woman is called Eevee, curious, right?” Mirror asks.
"The worldview of various ancient cultures coincides in another common point: the existence of a mythical universe made up of three worlds: the upper, the terrestrial, and the lower," explains Méndez. "The sacred mountain, the world tree or the rainbow allow you to travel to these other worlds," he details. For the authors, “all cultures, absolutely all, are related and form the same family: the human family”.
