What is the meaning of the story / stories? It is probably not just a story, or a story explaining why star constellations look like they look, but it should have meanings related to the daily life of those telling the story, like an easÖRR to remember route / recipe for hunting, for example.
@@charly996 within the different versions there are different meanings, why the sun moves in the sky, why the leaves go brown, etc if there is a specific story you had thoughts about?
2 things are bugging me: 1. Given that all these people were hunter/gatherers, who must have spent most of the day chasing game (for the guys), and a good part of the night gazing at the sky, how do we know that different ethnic groups didn't invent the same story independently? Particularly when one ethnic group sees a completely different star or stars chasing / being chased from the stars that are chosen by another ethnic group? 2. Maybe I missed your explanation, but I don't understand the connection between the various cyclops stories and the rest of the myths. Is the cyclops in his cave supposed to be the sun hiding at night? What do his goats represent? And where does Odysseus fit in?
@@gerardvila4685 I'll refer back to the video for answers, the first point is because the different cultures use exactly the same stars in the same way, which would be highly improbable if it happened independently (see 9:10 in the video), plus the phylogenetic study takes cognitive evolution of words into account, so you can find words from the same root words being used. As for point 2, Ulysses was hunting goats, but the myth has evolved so he kills a monster, and then escapes a god. I do refer to a paper in the video that explains this further, and I'll probably do a separate video on that in the future. I hope that helps :)
Wow, that was so much more detail than your first video about this story. I almost didn't watch because you already covered this, but I have faith now so I clicked anyway.
Actually, the eldest story known to mankind is the one of an ancient ancestor's struggle to walk to school for ten miles uphill in the snow. Edit: It has been brought to my attention, that ancient topography seems to have defied the laws of physics by going uphill both ways. I now respect our ancestors even more.
You left out the "barefoot part" which is significant because it either points to a simple variant of the tale or a time before shoes. Also, on a somewhat 'metaphysical" level, is the detail that confuses many modern scholars, that of the journey to school being uphill "both ways"! Seriously, your comment caused me to laugh out loud and nowadays that is rare. Thanks.
The original story was very interesting for me as a Georgian(Caucasus) member of the Kartvelian group of people. In the original story you mentioned that the deer jumped so high that it went to the sky. I was trying to find the similarities with that story and it was when I remembered that in kartvelian language we call the milky way ირმის ნახტომი/irmis nakhtomi/ Jump of a deer.
@@Crecganford Actually there is a story which I found that is similar to cosmic hunt in Georgian culture and it touches almost all of the constellations of northern hemisphere with a different kinds of stories
@@georgemtchedlishvili9672 Oh thank you for sharing this information ! I wish we could save everything we know, and make it accessible for the world curious of today, and of tomorrow.
I lived in Georgia in 2021--fascinating and gorgeous country! I still have some stuff there. You can really feel the history in that part of the world. I didn't get a chance to go into Armenia but I'm hoping next time I will.
Happened to live for 18 years in Northen Siberia and what a suprise to find out my dead grandma's story is still alive! More than that it connects us to the world beyond. Thank you for lifechanging experience!
The children repeat the history orally with reverence. Question is, if the ancients held history ahigh. Could this have been why we think they are fairy tales? Beyond history being made by propagandists revisionist is democrats. See they've been redividing forever. Wonder if Discernment will ever develop an ability to recognize anything other than, trump bad. Not that he's any messiah
Beautiful, isn't it? It makes me curious about how the different versions this same story came to be over the generations of people who didn't left written versions left for us to read.
We're so lucky that people who still tell these stories have survived and keep carrying the oldest myths for humankind to explore. Increadable channel, thank you!
@@tylerschoen5643 Some believe a similar loss happened when the Mongols destroyed the library in Baghdad, called the House of Wisdom, especially in mathematics.
@@CorbCorbin or the nazis burning of books, or any moment in history where wars destroyed cities. Who knows, some of the people who died young, even those who are seen as “stupid,” would have probably created something that could had benefitted humanity.
@@DeadlyAlienInvader Trust me, nothing of value was lost when the Nazis burnt books. We know exactly what they burnt and still have copies of them. Lots of degenerate garbage.
I remember I was in 8th grade when I first heard this story. All I could think afterwards was how its like Don Quijote saw dragons instead of windmills! Ulysses saw a cyclops hurling rocks instead of a volcano erupting. Its my first time seeing this channel and I thought I would share an interesting Taino myth. Here it goes! - One day a cannibal Carib tribe came to Boriken to hunt for Tainos. His people being outnumbered the Taino chieftain challenged the Carib chief to a duel, who accepted. They fought 3 days and on the third night, both suffering from great wounds collapsed to their knees, dying. The evil Carib warrior invoked the evil spirit Jurakan, to transform his shadow into a Guaraguao. In response the Taino hero uttered a prayer to Yukiyu, the chief of the gods, who turned the chief's soul into a small bird dart that flew straight into the Guaraguao, screaming "Pitirre!" And so they took to battle in the skies, where the small and fearless gray kingbird (pitirre) defeated the larger red-tailed hawk (guaraguao). - I've seen the little pitirres defending their nests from larger animals, they are like homing missiles, the larger predators either run away or end up dead. I got a few more Taino myths I recall reading that I can share. Thanks for the story and the history lesson! They are both as amazing as the other. Powerful stuff.
@@DocBree13 The origin is from the Tainos, whom inhabited the Antillean Islands, better known as the Caribbean. There were several Taino tribes which in turn were part of the Arawak people. The Caribs were invading tribes from South America that were in the process of invading the Arawak lands when the Spanish explorers arrived. The word Carib in the Arawak tongues is the origin of the word cannibal, which is why I called the islands the Antillean Islands rather than the more used but far less flattering Caribbean. The Taino inhabited from Florida through the Greater and Lesser Antilles, and part of South America (Venezuela iirc). Taino are the ones who told Ponce de Leon to go look for the fountain of youth in Florida instead of in Boriken, where he had tracked it to. Boriken was called San Juan Bautista by Columbus and is currently known as Puerto Rico. That particular myth regarding Ponce de Leon mentions that it was a trap to lead him away from where he might find it and go to where he would find his end. Aside from the cannibal term there are other Taino words that have also give origin to other widespread terms, like hurricane and hammock. We don't often realize it, but they left their mark, even when most of the Taino and their culture was lost. Their stories are worth sharing.
Listened to this at work yesterday: the journey through language and astronomy that traces the tale backwards was absolutely fascinating! When it came to putting my son to bed last night the tale was still burned into my mind, so when he asked for a story he got "The Cosmic Hunt". Felt good to share a tale that our ancestors shared in prehistoric times... and can't wait to show him how it relates to the night sky! Thanks, subscribed.
This is nothing more than a half-remembered anecdote at this point, but I recall reading a paper about how many references there are to seven things in the Pleiades, seven sisters being the common one today. However, there are only six stars readily visible to the naked eye in modern times. The implication being that the story of the seven sisters must've originated many tens of thousands of years ago when there *were* seven distinguishable stars in the Pleiades. Really awesome video though. I'm glad the algorithm deigned to show me the "old gods" video, because now I'm slowly but surely making my way though your entire channel.
Thank you for watching my videos, and taking the time to leave a comment. I will talk about the seven sisters one day as it is a story that is brought up alot.
I heard somewhere as a kid that the ancient Greeks used the Pleiades as a sight test. You were fit for the army if you could see 5 of them, 6 or 7 was considered excellent vision
Depending on local light pollution you can see all seven sisters and Atlas and Pleione with the naked eye now. Don't need to go thousands of years into the past.
*Man tries to hunt elk* *elk runs away so fast she goes to space* *man has to catch her so she doesn't drag the sun away and cause eternal night*. Damn, talk about things getting out of hand :D
I watch a lot of history videos, and this was probably the first to leave me completely lost for words. it doesn't break my understanding of human history, but the knowledge of this ancient story adds to it so much. Absolutely incredible
Years ago I came across a short article showing tradition embroidery patterns of the Reindeer Mother carrying the sun in her antlers. You've given me a broader perspective. Thank you!
Amazing video, thank you for your hard work! There's also an ancient Hungarian legend about two brothers (Hunor and Magor, Hunor representing the father of Huns, while Magor is the father of Hungarians) chase the Miracle Stag for many days. The details vary, but this legend is considered to be the origin of how Hungarians found the Pannonian Basin to settle down. It's also said that this stag carried Venus on its forehead, the Moon on its chest, and the Sun between its antlers. According to research done by Marcell Jankovics, the stag is made up of the constellations Cassiopeia, Auriga and Perseus, fleeing across the Milky Way; while Orion and Gemini represent Nimrod (the father of Hunor and Magor) and the two brothers, respectively.
@@Crecganford You just gained a new subscriber! I also came into the comments to relate the myth of the Miraculous Deer (in Hungarian: Csodaszarvas). Sometimes it is a white stag other times a white hind (the Hungarian word is gender neutral), often with with golden antlers. There's also a Christianized version in medieval poetry where its antlers carry a church bell instead of the sun (the sun and moon are to either side of its antlers), and either its antlers or back are lined with Mass candles. The Uyghurs have an almost identical story to the Hungarian version except that theirs changes the twins to be the fathers of the Tartars and Mongols -- influenced from the original by historical events in their region. It's not that surprising, because the Uyghurs are culturally and genetically related to Hungarians (there are key genetic markers that show a stronger relation between the two peoples than other East European and East Asian peoples). I also wanted to connect your mention the Milky Way being referred to as the Warrior's Road (Hungarian: Hadak Útja). There's a Hungarian legend about that. Prince Csaba was a legendary leader of the Huns, the youngest son of Attila. Following Csaba's death, the Huns had no clear leader and the Franks were poised to defeat and disburse the Huns. For four major battles afterward, Csaba came down along the Warrior's Road with an army to defeat the Franks and save the Huns. This myth was especially told by the Székely people (ethnic Hungarians of Transylvania). Though, today, most Hungarians refer to the Milky Way as the Milky Way instead (Hungarian: tejút), probably due to centuries of Roman and latin influence.
This video was simply amazing! It fills in a huge gap of humanity's timeline. I know we all think places like Göbekli Tepe where agriculture got its start (as well as the Jordan Valley and Mesopotamia) as the really olden days... But those times--10,000 years ago--are just a fraction of time compared to the entire time human beings were around, around 150,000-200,000 years ago! What happened during all that LONG time? Were we simply roaming around, following prey animals, finding roots, nuts and berries in season? And as the long years went by, just more and more of the same? Untill almost all the globe was filled with us? What else happened during all that time? How did we live, day-to-day when we weren't hunting and gathering? What did we think of the new places, animals and climates? And finally, what myths and stories did we believe? You are filling in that gap, and that is amazing!!!
Thank you for your kind words. The Ferryman video may also interest you, another story far older than most realise. And if you have any questions please ask away and I'll do my best to answer them.
Agriculture probably started in the Amazon forrest due to the high content of edible plants compared to every other forest, and the profile of the soil biome.
There's evidence in South Africa of Homo naledi placing their dead with reverence in a chamber as a ceremonial burial 120,000 years ago. The first confirmed ritual burials are Mungo Man and Mungo Lady from Lake Mungo in Australia, who are roughly 45,000 years old.
@@flyingpuma9729 they didnt grow wheat in the americas but modern corn is even worse than the newer high gluten wheat hybrids. But where the limit goes between natural and un natural is hard to say because we are natural and everything we do is in our nature. Stupidly greed is the biggest danger to all of us. Probably natural too.
Absolutely amazing. Such stories put us much closer to our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago. And as an astronomer, I am intrigued about the age of some of the constellations we know today. Orion is clearly known as the hunter in the sky. In the medieval Arabian world, it was even a woman whose name is still encoded in the star we know as Betelgeuze. Incredible how at least some of the stories are retained over such a long time.
Yes, it is exactly that reason too that allows us know they all came from the same, original source. Thanks for watching and commenting, it is appreciated.
Many Constellations and asterisms like the Big Dipper are older than imagined and probably go back 40,000+ years. In Lascaux, there is a painted Bison (Taurus) with what looks to be the Pleiades near the correct position in the sky The Zodiac Constellations are also very old. In ancient times, when you're camping out all the time with pristine night skies with no light pollution other than a nearby torch or camp fire, what do you do? You stare at the sky and you see obvious patterns (Orion, Big Dipper). Even as a child, I knew the Orion and Big Dipper pattern before I knew what they were called. There is no doubt our ancestors knew as well. When I go to places with little or no light pollution like Mauna Kea, I just stare at the sky for hours. I don't even grab a telescope (OK, I'll make room for Omega Centauri) as a pristine night sky with almost no light pollution is beyond imagination.
I am also an astronomer. The pole star has not always been Polaris and has changed even since the time of the oldest pyramids. The shape of the constellations have changed over these long time scales
I’m from the Pacific Northwest and heard a variation of the, I think, Snohomish version of this story years ago at summer camp. In that version the animal is a deer, three hunters and their hunting dogs. They are lifted into the sky when the tribes work together to raise it above the earth, and are forever frozen in the stars as one of the dipper constellations. I always thought the story was fascinating and continued to tell it around campfires and at sleepovers throughout my youth. I had no idea the story had such ancient roots, and that I continued to spread as our ancestors have.
The metaphysical component here is what grabs me, and I'd like to see that worked in more. It's a _cosmic_ hunt, not just a hunt that reduces to a roundabout way of saying that early humans relied upon hunting. Overnaturalizing stories, in a materialistic predeterministic way, misses the whole point of them, which is not I think what you're doing, but many analysts tend to misunderstand the universal/cosmic symbolism/claims inside myths by trying to 'track' them via archaeology or earth-data. What if even earlier humans were telling the Story of the Cosmic Fruit-tree and trying to get the best fruit down from the tallest trees? It seems to me that the cosmic element implies that divinity hunts and chases creatures in the earthly realm, and vice versa to some extent as well. I don't think _hunting_ reduces to mere survival in this case; in that case, the earliest stories would just be oral how-to manuals and training schemes. Early humans combined the metaphysical with the utilitarian. Beyond that, there's no way of 'proving' or knowing what the earliest tales were. What we _don't_ know about this dwarfs what we know.
You're wrong. There is zero evidence that there was ever any metaphysical or symbolic component in the stories of the 'cosmic hunt' or such a point to them, let alone the specific notion you claimed, and there *is* a lot of real evidence of what the earliest tales were, which the papers are based on. You just want there to be something that corresponds to *your* idea of what profound and venerable ancient wisdom should be, and to that end you want to be free to ignore evidence and make up things that *you* like and to give them some kind of venerable veneer of 'ancient wisdom'. That's a noxious intellectual habit leading to falsehoods and disinformation.
@@dumupad3-da241 You're begging the question. You don't know either way, because it's beyond our knowledge, and isn't a human-sense-data phenomenon. Evidence applies to sense-data. The contents and movement of story isn't a sense-data phenomenon. It's not an evidentiary question, it's an epistemological coherentist one. See Hume and Quine: they show that empiricism can't work to ground a universal claim such as you're making. There's no evidence that stories are what _you_ think they are either. Your presupposition is that all phenomena reduce to matter: self-contradicting, since material-based thoughts would not bother making supra-material claims. Mythology is narrative philosophy -- metaphysics, cosmology, ethics, holism: It ought not to exist in a material world. But it's a both-and world, both material and immaterial. You don't know if your own thoughts are metaphysical or not, and the nature of thought can't be empirically measured. They can't be reduced to material, since then the thought itself would be a product in a cause-effect chain that has nothing to do with the contents of thought itself -- thoughts about The Cosmic Hunt would not be trustworthy in that data-world. So knowing something isn't based on material data but on coherentist narratives that perceive harmony in the world. A claim about what a thought is is metaphysical claim. But it's not just thoughts for which we lack proper sense-data. We also have no 'boot-strapping' evidence for the truth value of math, number theory, representational linguistic meaning(metaphor), ethical obligation, time & space, deductive knowledge, narrative flow, or the identity of objects over time. That doesn't mean those things aren't absolutely real -- they're just not reduceable to matter. You also don't have empirical sense-data to ground the existence of Wonder and Awe, which is what you're lacking.
@@dumupad3-da241 So it's both-and, not either-or. It's BOTH metaphysical and physical joined perfectly together. I don't go for simplistic dialectics. I go for relational dynamics, trinities, coherentism. It's not a binary. One doesn't cancel the other out. Both are joined together just fine in a story. Stories don't work like trial-and-error tinkering to figure out the best way to light a fire. I know how that stuff works and so did they. Stories are about reconciling the paradox of the One and the Many, unity and diversity, the tiny with the big, into something that shows how things work together in dynamia and flow. Storytelling is not a Modernist utilitarian project.
Creecganford while I congratulate your research diligence in drawing this amazing story together, I believe you have somehow missed an important node of information. You mention only an single reference to an Australian Aboriginal dreaming story of 2 hunters killing an emu, but indicate you don’t believe this relates to the Great Hunt Myth. However, along the south of Australia there is a reasonably well documented Dreaming story shared by many tribal groups. In this story 7 sisters (actually represented by the Pleiades) are pursued from east to west and then into the night sky by a lone hunter who is represented by a star in the Orion’s Belt constellation. Since I first heard variants of this Dreaming story, as a young archaeologist working with different Australian Indigenous Communities, I marvelled at the similarity of the story to the Greek myth of Orion and the intriguing correlation of stars representing the stories. Now I appreciate, as you point out, that this may be an element of human culture so old that we literally all share it.
Now I already have the seven sisters myth to investigate as a piece of research, and the fact you've now mentioned it then perhaps I need to look at this sooner rather than later. I appreciate your feedback, thank you :)
The earliest arrival of Australian Aborigines from Polynesia was previously fairly well established to be circa 45,000 years ago but recent archaeology suggests a date closer to 60,000 years (I remember the details of the findings but, unfortunately, not the reference). However, if the Southern Australia dreamtime story pans out, that pushes the age of the myth back to at least 45,000 years ago!
@@Crecganford in our versions, the Hunter is facing other way. Aside from 7 sisters, is also 3 brothers stories, which include same same but different varieties of heracles...flood stories from across world interesting too. noice work.
My favorite version of the story is this: "When all the world has gone to sleep The hunters to the forest creep From out the wild wood comes the call 'The hunt is life.. The hunt is all... An ancient forest backons me to run skyclads amongst the trees My lusty spear, it cannot wait The gentle deer to penetrate Cernunnos, Lord of Beast, he grunts: 'Come join us for the Wylde Hunts"
@@JPOGame If this story is truly so old then surely it isn't proto Indo-European. It's got to be MUCH older than that. Do we even no for sure of its origins.
Wonderful ! I can’t say it louder. The idea that a hunter-gatherer human race coming to a more sedentary-agricultural oriented found this myth in the sky, is most probably an explanatory model for: the gods always seen in the sky, gods giving mean to seasonal baffling mysteries, and gods as explanation for many mysteries. Amazing. Thanks again.
Yeah I assume gods was a word back then for creator. It might have been used more like our word 'universe'. The oldest word for God I can find is YHWH which means breath. So I'd imagine people back then believed all living things breath and grow, so that's the idea behind a god. The spirit of life, aka breath.
I remember an old video, which explained that the episode of Polyphemus and Ulysses is a sort of metaphorical tale, and the cyclop, having only one eye, is an allegory of psychic people. So the part where Ulysses hurts the cyclop by taking his eye is another allegory of an ancient people, in harmony with the cosmos, being beaten down by another race, of more brutal and naughty humans, thus passing to a golden age to an iron age.
I am native American heritage "Cherokee Nation" and our family has lived in Tennessee for over a century but North Carolina before that for who knows how long ..My grandfather told his version of The Cosmic Hunt ..so so similar to the oldest primitive story... Simple and short.. Thank you for all the research and work you put into all your uploads.💯
Youre super cool for doin this we have lost so much crucial wisdom from our ancestors, I feel if these stories remain lost we'll end up as Hunter gatherers again and have to start over
In my view, there is a correlation between wisdom and intelligence. The more intelligent (The ability to say YES - take in new information/create new ideas), the less wisdom (The experience needed to say NO, thats not a good idea).
@@ellengran6814 I don’t think the two are correlated at all, and the problems with the world come from people insisting that they are either directly or inversely related. Some people are smart, some people are wise. Neither is set in stone. You can become more intelligent and more wise.
I came across this while researching the philosophy of indigenous wisdom regarding our behaviour towards the rest of the natural world. It's very interesting to see how important the sun was in everyday life and revered as a deity of sorts. The connection our ancestors had with the natural world kept them in a reciprocal relationship with it. Contemporary society disconnects us more and more until we don't even feel the rest of nature as she chokes under the human heel.. we take and take without conscience.. Revering the sun seems to be the most logical religious practice given our knowledge even today. The fundamental elements needed for our contemporary story are present in our oldest stories! Thanks for this video and links to studies ✌️ Awesome work 👌
It makes sense that cosmic stories were some of the first stories when you consider that these early people spent most of their time during the day finding food and steering clear of predators. Night would be the time to contemplate and tell stories.
Can you imagine the sky 100,000 years ago? Can you imagine the stories lost to us of stars we can’t even see. Imagine the feeling of living in and of gods that made everything for us simply to exist and to use.
I watched a video from Dan Davis about how one of the earliest myths we know of is that when you die, you have to walk to a certain point, and then get past a canine of some kind, a lot of the time a dog specifically and not a wolf. That and videos like this of ANCIENT mythology are among my favorite to learn about. Our ancestors were so simple compared to us that we probably carry out some of the same "rituals" still today, it's not the same kind of ritual but I know that combs are a really old invention for instance. Being such simple folk makes it easier to step into their shoes I feel. They needed good harvests to eat, so they worshipped agriculture gods. Once they were conquered by the PIE they adopted more warlike deities but tried to keep many of their most important gods as part of the new pantheon like Demeter or Freya
This is a pretty interesting myth and also how it has managed to survive in different cultures and mythologies over time. An example in Sámi mythology, large group of hunters chase cosmic deer that wreak havoc in Siidas (Sámi villages), and in the Balto-Finnic equivalent, the creature is a mischievous wooden elk of Hiisi (Hiiden Hirvi) that is chased by the deity of skis, Lyylikki, but can never be hunted because it escapes whenever it is caught. And in either case, the myth is still very close and carries the same position as the myth of six-legged celestial deer that was narrated by the Samoyed and Ob-Ugric peoples.
@TurnedLeftAtTheRockyMountains The answer to the second part of the question actually is in the question : many cultures share that ancient myth because... it's an ancient myth, it stemed in some place and time, and migrated with nomadic groups of people who traveld in all directions. The best possible explanation for why any cultural trait is shared by many groups anywhere in the world, even though they don't seem connected, is that they all share common ancestors who'd spread the story ;-)
"When I look up at the stars tonight, what can l see beyond the light, 100 million worlds that we ignore. Who can restrain Pleiades, and know the laws of heavenlys? How many times have we been wrong before?" Pleiades, Kings X. While you were telling this story I could feel the cold when I looked up at the stars. I could also feel warmth on my right shoulder from the fire. You put me there...I could feel it. There is no doubt that when you stand and look up at the stars on a clear, un-light polluted evening and clear your mind you feel part of something bigger, more permanent. Uncounted generations looked up into those same skies and felt what I feel.
My ex calls me a cosmic hunt, go figure. But it's wonderful to hear stories from the ancient world and told in a laidback easy way that encourages listening thank you so much for this segment. A new fan.
12:50 the consistency of associating one part with hunters and the other with the animal could also be because that is the direction it moves in the sky. Similar to how the swan does not fly backwards.
I don't know about most of you, but I picture myself telling one or two versions of the cosmic hunt to my children, and their eyes all lost in the starry night sky.
The Odysseus/Polyphemus story certainly seems to have drifted a lot from the basic template. The hunt for food seems to be just a remnant, a motivating detail at the beginning of the story, but most of the familiar details involve the confrontation between the men and the cyclops (for whom the animals are a tended flock, not wild game to be hunted) and the subsequent complaint to Poseidon. I would like to know more of the reasoning involved in identifying that as a latter-day descendant of the Cosmic Hunt story.
I came upon this gem while trying to actually find if there are any stories that might be about humans interacting with Neanderthals, Devosinians, etc. So your last statement about the researcher looking for those possible stories made me very happy. Well done! What a wonderful channel I have found :). Subscribed and excited for more!
Thank you for watching, and taking the time to leave a kind comment. I will presenting more of this researchers work next week, about the origin of the Flood myth.
Think of the stories we lost in the fire that burned the Library of Alexandria. Think of all the stories that were lost, the languages, natural truths, and maybe even our first written words. I cry when I think of all the information that has been lost and the voices of 10,000 years ago silenced into ash
Do you think that humans may have captured their interactions with other hominids in stories of dwarves, goblins, elves, giants, orcs, yetis and other human like creatures?
Late to the party, but this is incredible. I'm a biological mathematician who's had a hobby interest in history for a while, and adapting techniques that describe genomic divergence on culture makes so much sense that it's blowing my mind. This is incredible! Where have you been all my life?
I just found you today. And I absolutely am so thankful. Story is where everything is.. all the mysteries and truths that are sought in all the ways .. it is the story, the shared experience, that you will find so much more then we even could imagine. And I so appreciate your extensive research, that you are sharing here and that as far as I can tell unbiased and pretty inclusive. Thank you so very much!!!
This is a fantastic video. How you tell the story about the oldest story is extremely captivating. Although I've studied and hold a degree in German language and literature and had to learn some linguistic history background I've never come across it. Thank you so much!
What a fantastic video, thank you. Such a richness of content. All too often these days a podcast or a TH-cam video will just be a direct or almost direct recitation of the Wikipedia page, whereas this is meticulously researched, with the sources provided, and presented well. To hear the story, you can feel a connection to our ancestors and briefly look through a window and see what their lives were like and the things that were important to them.
fascinating!! Have historians rolled back the night sky to see what the painters of the oldest cave art saw in their night sky? It's mind boggling to think about humans being around so long, the constellations change. Time is too vast to imagine!
@@King_Flippy_Nips yeah but this is deeper than that. this isn't the sky moving in relation to the direction our pole is facing. This is the stars themselves moving in their orbits around the Milky Way. 50,000 years ago, the stars were not only in the sky at different points of the year, they were in measurably different places in relation to each other
there's a bit in carl sagan's cosmos where they go back a million years. it would be interesting to see the constellations as they appeared at more times than that. and with different eyes
The industrial revolution gave us so much, but it also took the stars out of our nights, which is honestly sad considering how much those meant to our ancestors. It's hard to imagine now a world full of myths and magic considering our knowleadge of the world and technology, but when I picture myself in the middle of some plains in front of a campfire and hearing stories from the elders all this stories make so much more sense. Thanks you so much for this video and for keeping the cosmic hunt alive.
Fantastic, I'm sorry to myself that I've only just come across your channel. This is exactly aligned with my beliefs. These stories have been reconstructed throughout many civilisations repeatedly. We have had our history rewritten to believe these are myths and legends. Thank you for delivering it so eloquently and understandable.
I want to thank you for making this channel and preserving these stories. I am currently a History major at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee who's focus is on Bronze Age Europe. Our program on that topic is severely lacking and these videos have given me amazing starting points for my personal research while preparing for my upcoming dissertation. Again, thank you so much!!
Good luck with your studies, all the universities are suffering in this field, there seems to be so little demand which is why I started this channel during Covid. The move to blended learning, and then remote learning really felt as though students were getting a raw deal, and so I'm pleased some are finding it useful. Feel free to ask questions as I only discuss things at a high level, and am happy to point you in directions of resources etc.
@@Crecganford well initially my focus was the integration of Celtic/Gaelic myth and religion into historical record. Much like how many Middle Age accounts turned these stories into washed out Christiansted tales. (Arthurian legend possibly stemming from both Roman and Celtic influences via Cú Chulainn) Since we don't have shrines to The Morrigann or Epona as such that at there very least have been found, yet we know their symbolism was important based on burial artifacts of the period. Do you have any suggested reading that may help me with this? Admittedly it is more of an anthropolic examination of history, but for this particular culture and time, again Bronze Age from early to late, in my experiences so far little has been done to connect the dots between daily worship/reverence and the Celtic people. Even what we appear to know about larger festivals is somewhat speculative and often skewed my Neo-Paganism. Again any readings or scholors to follow would be greatly appreciated!
I have commented under another wonderful story of yours, which dates the origin of the Pleiades to 100000 years that I believe the King Arthur's stories were much older. I once said I can imagine the original first story about young Arthur pulling out the sword out of the stone could be from Paleolite and its meaning of "pulling a sword from the stone" could originally mean literally pulling the excellent never before seen flint blade or flint axe head from a flint core. But when you lack the support and cold facts behind, somebody was laughing at me how ridiculous was the idea of changing a piece of rock into a sleek two feet long sword. 😏 But yeah, that's what I asked myself when I got to the idea for the first time. But I found support in some archaic Celtic words, so I have that I'd say reasonably supported in this way. But for those who want to believe, perhaps the easiest hint of how the axe changed to a sleek sword, are two words: one is "arm": it is a body part, yet we moved it also to arms, armaments, army. This shows how the subject changes but the word remains the same. And the second hint is - why does Excalibur still contain "axe"? Different spelling, but Axecaliburn sounds the same, so tell me why it hides the axe still in its very name? Well I can't tell why it is English which still has this wonderful connection with prehistory, but also, in my mother tongue, Czech, we have a very unusual name for a hammer: Germanic nations call it hammer. Roman nations have something around m-r-t like marteau or m-r-t-l like martel. Slavic nations have it similar like m-l-t - molot, mlat, molotok etc. But Czechs have kladivo. Which is k-l-d-v. And the hammer is surely not a sword. But the way I got to this was that I was always wondering why we have such an atypical name for such a basic instrument. But as Czechia, also Bohemia, used to be a home of the Boii (and others) Celtic tribe (Boii Haeme they say), I wondered if there could be a Celtic origin of that word? Surprisingly, I found many words for a sword in Celtic /Gaelic/Welsh that contained the same k-l-d-v: Caliburn, Chlodwych and I don't remember others, but it showed me that the word for hammer could stem from the one they used for sword. Then I realized that the French kings used a hammer for their name (Charles Martell), and then I realized that the long succession of French kings used the same k-l-d-v (I mean, "k" is a glottal just like ch, so ch-l-d-w here is the same): Louis comes from Lodovicus, which comes from Chlodowic or something like that (in Czech it is "Ludvík", in German "Ludwig", all the same)! To me, this all makes a lot of sense. Why I wrote it: I hope someone can one day study the possibility of the origin of that Arthurian tale of pulling the sword from the stone to the paleolithic boy who taught the mankind how to knap and pull the stone axe from the flint core. At the same time, I hope it could be proven that Thor is just another name for Ar-Thur - both of these stories are intertwined from the same origin, of course Thor got the supernatural properties because his legend was preserved before it was canceled by the Christian ideology, while in England, the story was skewed towards the Christian hero-king - the story had to be flush with the ideological requirements. Nevertheless, in my eyes, Thor used Mjolnir (m-l-n), a hammer, while Arthur used the battle axe (Axe-k-l-b) both were originally from stone and there was most no difference between the two.
That was my aim, to convert the academia I’ve researched and teach into something more consumable for the lay person. Thank you so much for watching, and taking the time to comment.
very interesting video! I visited Lascaux earlier this summer and learned some interesting things about this strange bison. It is one of the few depictions of a deceased or dying animal in Palaeolithic art in this part of the world, and the only one is Lascaux. Unlike other animals in the cave which come in pairs or larger groups, the bison is alone. It’s a peculiar artistic decision that suggests it was not drawn with the same intention as the other animals that run along the walls. More importantly, the bison is found at the bottom of a pit deep in the cave that has an extremely rich CO2 concentration, being in there for 30 minutes would be enough to kill an adult. Human representations are not quite rare but definitely not common in Palaeolithic art, what is almost unheard of however are hunting scenes. I personally don’t think it’s likely the bird headed man is a hunter, but he may still be relevant in another way. Next to him (not pictured in the video) is the drawing of a bird. The bird in association with death is an element found throughout indo-european creation myths as well as in the Americas, the original myth could be of a similar age as the cosmic hunt since it seems to have followed similar migration patterns. I may be making connections where there aren’t any, but I think it’s not unlikely that the bison and the bird could have been drawn in the pit to signal imminent lethal danger to anyone who may find themselves in the deathly pit. I think it’s plausible that at the time Lascaux was painted both myths were already well established in the many nomadic groups that lived in the area.
Your passion for story research and global culture and language is appreciated. Thank you for your hard work. I have a couple of questions. 1: How is it that variants were not found in the British Isles or Ireland? 2: You have associated the tales with specific constellations and stars--How did you come to the conclusion that those constellations and stars are the ones being represented? 3: How does the first ./water nymph tale work as an ancient variant of the Cosmic Hunt? There wasn't a hunt in this tale nor is there any unrequited love story in any of the other variants. 4. About the pot. The pot, or cauldron is one of the oldest details in mythology. Associated with the transition of life to death, and the resurrection or rebirth, how does this effect the understanding of the story? 5. You speak about the migration of the tales but don't actually tough upon the mechanism of that migration. Is it possible that the origin is from an original storyteller that helps a given culture understand the state of the world they live in and that storyteller moved across the world, spreading the tale to fit the culture he came across? Storytelling is a natural instinct, don't you think? It is proven by cave drawings that helped illuminate a story. I'm very much interested in your answers. I hope you respond. Thank you.
Some great questions there, and I haven't time here to answer them all, but I will remake this video and ensure I answer all of these questions within it. But if you can't wait I have referenced d'Huy's work, and he does have a public article in Scientific American which explains some of this, and their website has an interactive presentation that helps too.
Well done, and quite interesting. That's a good hunter you are, being on the trail of our oldest tales... Keep on the track, and tell us more stories... I'd like to hear about the Hunter who hid inside an animal... Quite fascinating, although off the track of your quest in this video. More, please!
Thank you for watching and the kind words: I will tell specific tales from this in another video in the future, including the one about the hunter who hides in an animal.
The Raramuri (A tribe in northern Mexico) has a different cosmic hunt story, actually two. The first one is about a evil man who has seven kids (Orion). He sent them to bring him water and if they didn't bring it he would hit them. The kids found no water and soon, night came. The father was looking for them to beat them and they ran. When he almost catch them, a tree helped the kids. The tree took them on its branches andput them on the night sky. Another complementary story said the kids had a dog, and the tree also put it on the sky, where it still follos the kids (Sirius or canis majoris).
@@Zhicano A professor from the University of Chihuahua, Enrique Servin, collected ancient stories in a book, that's where I read them. The book is called Aniruame, stories of the raramuri of ancient times.
Your story is a verson of the 'Seven Sisters' myth, which is even older than the Cosmic Hunt! Much much older! This same channel Creganford has made a video on it as well. Check it out.
Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for putting this together. I'd never heard of "The Cosmic Hunt" before but I have always found deep time communication moving. From the areas this myth originated from then our mysterious cousins, the Denisovians, may have told it before us.
Wow! Concepts, elements and environmental things important to them, stories, and words of our ancestors from ~40,000 years ago - a Mammoth Hunt transformed over time - truly beautiful. I find it so interesting how modern knowledge has allowed us to unlock so many mysteries about our ancestors from DNA to Movement Of Constellations to Archology to Phylogeny and on and on... I really appreciate the walk into history and science and the stories which I love. Thank-you for your generous donation of time and the kindness of your Patrons which makes it possible.
The ubiquity of this myth tale is very interesting. Good tracing of the older tales into the more recent, too. I've always been fascinated by the Celtic version of the Wild Hunt, which has very different prey in mind. Hunting was so important to the peoples it makes it into all the cultures, foraging is not as revered for all it kept many early cultures alive!
Yes, I've a video on the wild Hunt, and some of my videos about dogs and death touch on the Celtic myth too. Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment
Korean myth says their ancestors came from Lake Baikal, migrating south east to Manchuria, then into Korean Peninsula. Koreans have many mythical stories concerning Big Dipper, but Orion plays no significant role for some odd reason. Orion in Chinese Astronomy is NOT considered as one constallation, but few smaller constallations. So it doesn't play any major role as a whole entity.
This is so interesting! Thank you for so much information and linking it all together. Just want to say how excited I was to see the Venus of Brassempuoy and the other Mother goddess figures in the background 😍
I worked at Lascaux 4 last summer as a guide and when I first started watching this video I wondered about “the cosmic hunt” story and that scene at the bottom of the shaft at Lascaux so I was excited to hear you mention it. However, I see the man’s positioning and placement with respect to the bison differently. Look at the line that makes up the man’s chest; it has a distinct arch backwards. Now push your shoulders back to make your chest arch back and you will feel like you’re going to fall backwards. For me, then, the man is falling backwards or being knocked back by the bison. Now look at the bison’s head. It’s head is down with its horns horizontal, pointed towards the man, as if charging him. This is the only animal depiction at Lascaux of an animal with its head in this “charging” position. (Per the prehistorian Denis who works there) I believe this narrative is about a man attacking a bison who is simultaneously attacking the man. It still works as a derivative of “the cosmic hunt” myth, but I think attempts to assign astronomical significance to the narrative at the bottom of the shaft are misplaced. There are several dots behind the nearby wooly rhino in a straight line (stars don’t form straight lines of course). And there are tons of dots all over Lascaux. Difficult to make the case that they are all meant to represent stars. But fantastic work man. The amount of research you must have done is really impressive.
I’m not aware of any academic writing that argues for confirmed astronomical significance at Lascaux but I would love to read it if someone knows if any sources!
@@Crecganford 🤜 Appreciate your hard work on educating people about this kind of stuff! If you ever want to do a video on Lascaux I’d love to work with you on it!
I've only just discovered your channel, but am enjoying your videos greatly. The cosmic hunt has intrigued me for a while. Tracking the evolution of the story through migrations and lingual and cultural changes was amazing. Full marks to you and thank you.
What an amazing story, with an impressive amount of details, I find this very interesting. *Inuit myths from Greenland* were collected in a book one of my friends have, the oldest myths first. The oldest myth told (from my vague memory) how the humans (Inuit) lived inland and off hunting a large animal (single animal or a species?) with very long nose and teeth. When they had killed and eaten the (last?) animal they had to move out to the coast and start living from the sea. I only recall these bits from the myth, I don't know if stars and constellations were involved. I guess the animal was a mammoth. The later myths in the book had some connection to the sea, only this first one took place inland on a continent. If this Inuit myth have connection to the "Cosmic Hunt" myth we'll need a "dot" in Greenland as well on the map. Thanks for bringing this video, I am looking forward to finding more interesting videos on your channel. You have a new subscriber.
Thank you for introducing us to the phylogenetic analysis of myths in such an engaging and accessible manner! This has been one of the most fascinating internet rabbit holes for me
This was absolutely amazing! Thank you for creating this presentation. So many wonderings have been cleared up by your videos. I am super glad I found your channel! 😊 So grateful 🙏
This was absolutely wonderful and well done. Thank you for all of your hard work! I love how stories, no matter the telling, seem to bring humanity together. EXCELLENT!
Great vid! I was a bit confused about there being no mention regarding how Odysseus told Polyphemus that his name was 'Nobody'. That's (if true) one of the coolest things ever. Keep up the good work!
I am from the Netherlands, and I believe we even still have a variation of this story. Each year in december, we celebrate 'Sinterklaas'. He rides a white horse, walking in the night, on top of the roofs of houses (made me think of the hunter running over the mountain tops). At the base of the chimney, offerings are layed down as a gift to the horse of Sinterklaas. In return, Sinterklaas gives gifts. But, Sinterklaas is probably a Christianized version of Wodan/Odin. Who led a Wild Hunt during this time of the year, also riding a white horse. Wodan is a hunter, he has a spear, two wolves and two ravens, animals that always hunt together. He even has two brothers, maybe making three hunters, like other variations of the story. He is a god of death but also resurrection, which seams to be the essence of the story, death and returning of the sun, and life. Makes me also think of Fenrir, a wolf brought to Asgard by Wodan, who will swallow the sun in the last hunt during Ragnarok. Maybe a little far fetched, but I think the essence of the story is the same.
I really can't put into words how wonderful it has been chancing upon your channel. This probably fascinates me as much as any subject I study. And when you say get a cup of tea! I do as I am told!
@@Crecganford all we are doing is sitting back and being lazy while you do all the work 😂 amazing work man!! So glad there are people out there that are so passionate about the subjects all of us viewers hold so dear to our hearts. Much love from America! Just found your channel yesterday and have been binging all your videos. I second op, so glad I found your channel! Keep up the great work
I know it would be rough and horrible to be alive 20,000 years ago but imagine the stories and the night sky. Imagine the people and customs. Imagine the small tribe you lived with and just living to live. Nothing extra just living to survive to see the gods dance in the sky at night and tell the stories of how everything became.
This is an absolutely brilliant work. I've just discovered your channel and this story is keeping me awake, me battling sleep late at night. It blows your mind to think that not only the story can be traced that much back in time, it also has physical representation in cave paintings (allegedly). I need to know more ot these ten-of-thounsand-year-old stories, I need to know if there are references to other human species. Oh, I want to know it all! Great video, I really appreciate the work you put into. It is making my imagination fly away. Thank you for doing this kind of content.
Thank you! Check out my video about the Ferryman of the Dead, that may also blow your mind! As will a few future videos about the Flood Myth and Serpent Myth.
Check my original comment on this video, I think that I've may have stumbled upon something about "people" being defined as "capable of speech", but it's basically only that the words Nawá ("people" in yawanawa language) and Nahuatl ("speaking clearly", the Aztec language) sound similar. But, there is a plausible connection between the Ute people (I've seen a graph saying they're related to Aztecs, at least linguistically) and the yawanawas, in which both their creation myths feature some kind of entrapment(a box or a basket) which holds all of humanity, and something happens and humanity escapes, according to the Ute, they were the first ones to come out, according to the yawanawa, they were the first to come out. The yawanawa myth specifically talks about sometime before there were (different?) people, when everyone lived together as a big family, those who weren't from that group were called Nawá, and one of the group's elders had, hidden, a basket with the heart of a Nawá, one day resting in is hammock he heard the basket move and went to see what was happening thinking a rat was trying to eat the heart, but he saw nothing and went back to his hammock, then the basket spun up again and this time all the world's people came running from the basket, the first one, with painted bodies and headgear was called yawanawa by the elder. I don't know if the myth specifically talks about other species, but for the yawanawa, Nawá can mean "air people" for the birds, so the "human" property is attributed to all animals too, not specifically modern humans. It might be related to Pandora's box or the cultural explosion like in the tower of babel, or the different morphological variants of humans, both within our species, other humans and our hybrids... But I do think that myths come from trying to tell stories, our own story in this case, merely depicting an observable phenomena which occurred everywhere, so maybe the stories aren't even related at all besides being based on the same underlying observable truth of slightly different types of humans. But just imagine for a second that maybe what was used to define the concept of "people", just might have had to do with our ability to speak clearly(or the absence of it in others) Other humans must've influenced our culture, language, and brains. We've mated, after all, that's a hard influence we can measure.. So we've interacted with them, they were like us, but not quite, probably the most significant difference at the time(between when we got to europe 40,000 years ago, when we had already been developing languages for quite a while, and 10,000 years ago or so when we became the last human species alive) was that, even if neanderthals and denisovans could speak, they probably wouldn't be sounds in the same structure and range as our speech, it'd sound off, confusing and unclear. Kinda like orangutans are seen as the "old tree people" by native humans around them. Maybe we started to separate us and them because our species was becoming evermore socially dependant, so somewhere in that time we started to consider ourselves superior, and I bet we killed them off with war and dominating resources, we had every reason to, better technology, better organization, stronger social structures, better numbers and communication capabilities.. Somewhere sometime there might have been a human that talked about eugenics or just about the hate for other people, it's a huge window of time, in which I believe at least one prehistorical Holocaust happened. I also believe that we were black till we went up to Europe, so only when we mated with neanderthals we got light skin(excluding albinism) and only then we moved to the Americas (I think they do have bigger amounts of neanderthal DNA than the Africans that never went to Europe and instead stayed in Africa this whole time, barely mixing with neanderthals at all), so knowledge about humans that couldn't speak clearly might've turned into the words for "people", Nawá; and "speaking clearly/spoken", Nahuatl. I'm not saying it's even probable, but I am saying that maybe, just maybe, it might could kinda be almost plausible.. But I know it's probably just too far of a stretch, but if so, it probably means that it can easily be dismissed. So I think it's worth investigating, even if to discover that there's nothing to it, I still think it's a fun interpretation to our story as one of the human species
An interesting tale to look into is the australian aboriginal origin myth that discusses a real volcanic eruption that successfully dates the story back past 37 thousand years. much older than the myth in this video. 7 thousand years older.
I would say that ther definitely are myths that relate to other human species; look at all the stories across the world--and I mean on every continent, among almost every group of people--that deal with the fair folk, the little people, underground dwellers, and so on. Or those relating to giants, titans, ogres, trolls; they're ubiquitous. The very ubiquity of these stories around the world makes me think that no other possible origin really holds up for them since there are so many specifics that, if not common to quite all variants of these stories, are common to many, even most.
About the aboriginal stories: I've heard of ones that are supposedly even older than that, things such as hunting songs that correspond to real world migration routes with recognizable scar positions, landmarks, and so on. Some of these when analyzed correspond to geographic features that were submerged since the depth of the last ice age or the one before that so somewhere between 25 and 100,000 years ago if I'm not mistaken. I've also read that store bringing infants story that we tell children Mike correspond to a bird/spiritual messenger story bringing new human life from The Well of souls myth, and this myth is common to cultures that haven't had contact with each other in something like 60,000 years. They seem to be common to the furthest one branches of humanity including the oldest populations in Africa like the !Kung, aboriginal Australians, New Zealanders, Europeans, and native Americans. And of course you have things like the babylonian astronomical lists which according to them go back 4 hundreds of thousands of years but things more likely go back for a few tens of thousands, maybe 30,000 at most, as they accurately describe the precession of the equinoxes and other long term astronomical cycles. It is absolutely incredible to me that a story could be conserved for that freaking long of a time.
Imagine telling your friends aboht this exciting story about a Mamooth that hide in a river, and they just tell you "bruh it's actally a deer and is flying over the sea level"
This is educational and interesting and told in a brief calming easy to understand way. I was expecting Gilgamesh in there somewhere... but I like this story and all the different versions and what people and places they originated from much more. And I liked the pronunciation crack. I will need to watch this many times... so much info on the origins... the story is quiet short..... but the thread of folklore so long. Nice job. Thanks.
This is totally fascinating, thanks for producing these videos. I wonder if these stories evolved to entertain ancient people as well as explain nature. I too hope earlier myths can be found from a time when modern humans coexisted with other hominids.
You missed the best part of the cyclops story as i remember it. The cyclops asked the guy what his name was and he responded "nobody" so after the monster was blinded and pleaded to Posiedon, he said "nobody blinded me!" Hence why our heroes sailed away safely
Actually, that is not accurate. Initially, the humans were able to escape the island itself, meaning the other cyclops living there did not go after them because "nobody blinded me". However, Odysseus, being a smartass, yelled his name at the cyclops as he was leaving, to rub the truth in his face, allowing the cyclops to ask his dad for help.
Very interesting and thank you! All of your videos on ancient stories, myths, and deities are fascinating. (Just in case this is helpful: Iroquois is pronounced ear-ah-KWAH.)
I was surprised that the first story was about Ulysses and the Cyclops. I thought you were going to mention the story of Callisto, who was turned into a bear and hunted. That story must be related to the Native American story of the great sky bear. I spoke too soon 😄
Just imagine, this story could have been told for generations among Neanderthal or Denisovan people in the area who then told it to modern humans that they intermingled with, and then these people took the story with them on their travels as they spread around the world. Obviously there's no evidence for that, but it is an interesting thought.
The neanderthals would have had different languages than sapiens, so I wonder if in the dealings between the two if there was any bilingualism and vocabulary crossover into sapiens languages. Neanderthal languages like paleolithic human languagses is sadly something we will never know much about
@@Crecganford I'm going through your previous videos now. In all seriousness, I wish TH-cam would have recommended your channel long ago. It's not like my search history changed all that much.
If you look at elephant's or mamooth's skulls, you will notice that they look like if they have only one orbit, then, they seem to be the skulls petraining to long dead giants with only one eye. My theory is that the legends of cyclopes and other giants from atiquity derives from those amazing findings.
Yes, I agree. There were Pygmy elephants on mediterranean islands and these, as you say, look a little like one eyed giants, and could have easily helped evolve the cyclops story.
This was a wonderful thing to happen upon accidentally. I was looking for a video by a chap named Simon Roper, who has a very interesting video on old stories and linguistics (you'd like him, I imagine), but wound up glued to this one, you're a wonderful story-teller in your own right and I appreciate all the effort. I wonder though, could you point me to a reference or further info which establishes that the story of Polyphemus is cognate with these earlier cosmic hunt stories? It just seems to me a little far removed from the other stories in its structure - not that I doubt the work and research you've put into it - I would just like to better appreciate the thread linking the other stories to the Greek myth.
I subscribe to Simon on my personal channel :) He has some fascinating insights and a great delivery. And, yes, the Polyphemus link does seem stretched as I have seen it linked with other stories (such as a reflex of the Indo European cattle raiding myth) but it is referenced within the paper I link to in the description. If you have any questions please ask, and thanks for watching and your comment :)
Wow. I´m currently studying history (and actually should go to sleep since I have latin tomorrow) and this video just opened a whole new world to me. Thank you so much. Like and subsribtion guaranteed.
the fact that we can use computers to analyse and then map the evolution and spread of the story across time and continents is truly astonishing. I think we take for granted just how sci fi this is. we are peering back in time tens of thousands of years, to distant, incomprehensible times. And giving the smallest window, the narrowest insight into what our ancestors believed and thought about. incredible video.
Let me know if there is anything else about this story you would like to know
What is the meaning of the story / stories? It is probably not just a story, or a story explaining why star constellations look like they look, but it should have meanings related to the daily life of those telling the story, like an easÖRR to remember route / recipe for hunting, for example.
@@charly996 within the different versions there are different meanings, why the sun moves in the sky, why the leaves go brown, etc if there is a specific story you had thoughts about?
2 things are bugging me:
1. Given that all these people were hunter/gatherers, who must have spent most of the day chasing game (for the guys), and a good part of the night gazing at the sky, how do we know that different ethnic groups didn't invent the same story independently? Particularly when one ethnic group sees a completely different star or stars chasing / being chased from the stars that are chosen by another ethnic group?
2. Maybe I missed your explanation, but I don't understand the connection between the various cyclops stories and the rest of the myths. Is the cyclops in his cave supposed to be the sun hiding at night? What do his goats represent? And where does Odysseus fit in?
@@gerardvila4685 I'll refer back to the video for answers, the first point is because the different cultures use exactly the same stars in the same way, which would be highly improbable if it happened independently (see 9:10 in the video), plus the phylogenetic study takes cognitive evolution of words into account, so you can find words from the same root words being used. As for point 2, Ulysses was hunting goats, but the myth has evolved so he kills a monster, and then escapes a god. I do refer to a paper in the video that explains this further, and I'll probably do a separate video on that in the future. I hope that helps :)
Wow, that was so much more detail than your first video about this story. I almost didn't watch because you already covered this, but I have faith now so I clicked anyway.
It's not every day that you hear The Odyssey described as "one of the more modern" versions of anything.
Actually, the eldest story known to mankind is the one of an ancient ancestor's struggle to walk to school for ten miles uphill in the snow.
Edit: It has been brought to my attention, that ancient topography seems to have defied the laws of physics by going uphill both ways. I now respect our ancestors even more.
I’m sure that would feel like the eldest story.
You left out the "barefoot part" which is significant because it either points to a simple variant of the tale or a time before shoes. Also, on a somewhat 'metaphysical" level, is the detail that confuses many modern scholars, that of the journey to school being uphill "both ways"! Seriously, your comment caused me to laugh out loud and nowadays that is rare. Thanks.
My ancestors walked to school, uphill in the snow, barefoot with old newspaper stuffed in their coats for warmth.
@@IndieUSA Oh, you had coats? Wow, rich kid huh?
and the oldest joke passed down from venerable elders is "pull my finger"
The original story was very interesting for me as a Georgian(Caucasus) member of the Kartvelian group of people. In the original story you mentioned that the deer jumped so high that it went to the sky. I was trying to find the similarities with that story and it was when I remembered that in kartvelian language we call the milky way ირმის ნახტომი/irmis nakhtomi/ Jump of a deer.
That is so interesting, I wonder if it is directly linked? It would be amazing if we could prove it was. Thank you for sharing this.
@@Crecganford Actually there is a story which I found that is similar to cosmic hunt in Georgian culture and it touches almost all of the constellations of northern hemisphere with a different kinds of stories
@@georgemtchedlishvili9672 Oh thank you for sharing this information !
I wish we could save everything we know, and make it accessible for the world curious of today, and of tomorrow.
I lived in Georgia in 2021--fascinating and gorgeous country! I still have some stuff there. You can really feel the history in that part of the world. I didn't get a chance to go into Armenia but I'm hoping next time I will.
The fact that others can share matching parts of the story adds veracity to your point that so much is connected.
Happened to live for 18 years in Northen Siberia and what a suprise to find out my dead grandma's story is still alive! More than that it connects us to the world beyond. Thank you for lifechanging experience!
@@costypury if i where to move to live in siberia, newr Altai! Any advices 4 me then?
It's crazy to think that thousands upon thousands of years ago one individual told the first version of this story and that it still lives today. 😳
It was probably a dream they had. The dream is the private myth, Jung said, and the myth is the cultural dream.
The children repeat the history orally with reverence. Question is, if the ancients held history ahigh. Could this have been why we think they are fairy tales? Beyond history being made by propagandists revisionist is
democrats.
See they've been redividing forever. Wonder if Discernment will ever develop an ability to recognize anything other than, trump bad. Not that he's any messiah
Beautiful, isn't it? It makes me curious about how the different versions this same story came to be over the generations of people who didn't left written versions left for us to read.
Important stories. Important topos. Outgrow civilisations and outlast them.
What's more, we don't know what species the first teller might have been... just sayin'.
We're so lucky that people who still tell these stories have survived and keep carrying the oldest myths for humankind to explore.
Increadable channel, thank you!
Thank you for watching and your kind words. They are appreciated.
Just imagine what we lost in the great fire that consumed the Library of Alexandria
@@tylerschoen5643
Some believe a similar loss happened when the Mongols destroyed the library in Baghdad, called the House of Wisdom, especially in mathematics.
@@CorbCorbin or the nazis burning of books, or any moment in history where wars destroyed cities. Who knows, some of the people who died young, even those who are seen as “stupid,” would have probably created something that could had benefitted humanity.
@@DeadlyAlienInvader
Trust me, nothing of value was lost when the Nazis burnt books. We know exactly what they burnt and still have copies of them. Lots of degenerate garbage.
I remember I was in 8th grade when I first heard this story. All I could think afterwards was how its like Don Quijote saw dragons instead of windmills! Ulysses saw a cyclops hurling rocks instead of a volcano erupting.
Its my first time seeing this channel and I thought I would share an interesting Taino myth. Here it goes!
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One day a cannibal Carib tribe came to Boriken to hunt for Tainos. His people being outnumbered the Taino chieftain challenged the Carib chief to a duel, who accepted. They fought 3 days and on the third night, both suffering from great wounds collapsed to their knees, dying. The evil Carib warrior invoked the evil spirit Jurakan, to transform his shadow into a Guaraguao. In response the Taino hero uttered a prayer to Yukiyu, the chief of the gods, who turned the chief's soul into a small bird dart that flew straight into the Guaraguao, screaming "Pitirre!" And so they took to battle in the skies, where the small and fearless gray kingbird (pitirre) defeated the larger red-tailed hawk (guaraguao).
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I've seen the little pitirres defending their nests from larger animals, they are like homing missiles, the larger predators either run away or end up dead.
I got a few more Taino myths I recall reading that I can share.
Thanks for the story and the history lesson! They are both as amazing as the other. Powerful stuff.
Thank you so much for watching, and for taking the time to share this story, I really appreciate reading these and hearing about them. Thank you!
That’s beautiful - thank you! Where is this myth from, please?
@@DocBree13 The origin is from the Tainos, whom inhabited the Antillean Islands, better known as the Caribbean. There were several Taino tribes which in turn were part of the Arawak people. The Caribs were invading tribes from South America that were in the process of invading the Arawak lands when the Spanish explorers arrived. The word Carib in the Arawak tongues is the origin of the word cannibal, which is why I called the islands the Antillean Islands rather than the more used but far less flattering Caribbean.
The Taino inhabited from Florida through the Greater and Lesser Antilles, and part of South America (Venezuela iirc). Taino are the ones who told Ponce de Leon to go look for the fountain of youth in Florida instead of in Boriken, where he had tracked it to.
Boriken was called San Juan Bautista by Columbus and is currently known as Puerto Rico. That particular myth regarding Ponce de Leon mentions that it was a trap to lead him away from where he might find it and go to where he would find his end.
Aside from the cannibal term there are other Taino words that have also give origin to other widespread terms, like hurricane and hammock. We don't often realize it, but they left their mark, even when most of the Taino and their culture was lost. Their stories are worth sharing.
Bueno ver una historia Taina entre estos videos. Un saludo desde la isla Boriken.
I LOVED reading this Taino tale, and I want more.
Gotta be real careful with the pronunciation of "The Cosmic Hunt"!
Hahaha!
The entrance to the Great Mother's birth canal? 😂
A sense of humor that is the upmost of all refreshments.
Funny
It really is, tho.
Listened to this at work yesterday: the journey through language and astronomy that traces the tale backwards was absolutely fascinating!
When it came to putting my son to bed last night the tale was still burned into my mind, so when he asked for a story he got "The Cosmic Hunt".
Felt good to share a tale that our ancestors shared in prehistoric times... and can't wait to show him how it relates to the night sky!
Thanks, subscribed.
That is such an amazing thing to hear, thank you for watching, and for sharing.
Study a bit of hebrew and itll blow your mind more
I think that it is wonderful that there is a small community of youtubers making a effort to maintain the stories of old.
And thank you for watching what we do.
This is nothing more than a half-remembered anecdote at this point, but I recall reading a paper about how many references there are to seven things in the Pleiades, seven sisters being the common one today. However, there are only six stars readily visible to the naked eye in modern times. The implication being that the story of the seven sisters must've originated many tens of thousands of years ago when there *were* seven distinguishable stars in the Pleiades.
Really awesome video though. I'm glad the algorithm deigned to show me the "old gods" video, because now I'm slowly but surely making my way though your entire channel.
Thank you for watching my videos, and taking the time to leave a comment. I will talk about the seven sisters one day as it is a story that is brought up alot.
You don't think it started with the beings who came from there? It was their story. The stars were the seven GODDESSES.
I heard somewhere as a kid that the ancient Greeks used the Pleiades as a sight test. You were fit for the army if you could see 5 of them, 6 or 7 was considered excellent vision
@@lindencairns7365 I heard the same thing about the Romans
Depending on local light pollution you can see all seven sisters and Atlas and Pleione with the naked eye now. Don't need to go thousands of years into the past.
*Man tries to hunt elk* *elk runs away so fast she goes to space* *man has to catch her so she doesn't drag the sun away and cause eternal night*. Damn, talk about things getting out of hand :D
And whenever mankind develop interstellar travel, we might catch that pesky elk and eat at last. Hope they don't forget to bring the cooking pot. ;)
I watch a lot of history videos, and this was probably the first to leave me completely lost for words. it doesn't break my understanding of human history, but the knowledge of this ancient story adds to it so much. Absolutely incredible
Thank you so much for such an amazing comment, it really is appreciated.
Years ago I came across a short article showing tradition embroidery patterns of the Reindeer Mother carrying the sun in her antlers. You've given me a broader perspective. Thank you!
Thank you for sharing, I do like stories like that.
Amazing video, thank you for your hard work! There's also an ancient Hungarian legend about two brothers (Hunor and Magor, Hunor representing the father of Huns, while Magor is the father of Hungarians) chase the Miracle Stag for many days. The details vary, but this legend is considered to be the origin of how Hungarians found the Pannonian Basin to settle down. It's also said that this stag carried Venus on its forehead, the Moon on its chest, and the Sun between its antlers. According to research done by Marcell Jankovics, the stag is made up of the constellations Cassiopeia, Auriga and Perseus, fleeing across the Milky Way; while Orion and Gemini represent Nimrod (the father of Hunor and Magor) and the two brothers, respectively.
Wow, what a great comment, thank you so much for taking the time to write it. It is very much appreciated. Thank you.
@@Crecganford glad that you found it interesting, if there’s anything you’d like to know about this topic, I’m happy to help translating some stuff!
@@Crecganford You just gained a new subscriber!
I also came into the comments to relate the myth of the Miraculous Deer (in Hungarian: Csodaszarvas). Sometimes it is a white stag other times a white hind (the Hungarian word is gender neutral), often with with golden antlers. There's also a Christianized version in medieval poetry where its antlers carry a church bell instead of the sun (the sun and moon are to either side of its antlers), and either its antlers or back are lined with Mass candles.
The Uyghurs have an almost identical story to the Hungarian version except that theirs changes the twins to be the fathers of the Tartars and Mongols -- influenced from the original by historical events in their region. It's not that surprising, because the Uyghurs are culturally and genetically related to Hungarians (there are key genetic markers that show a stronger relation between the two peoples than other East European and East Asian peoples).
I also wanted to connect your mention the Milky Way being referred to as the Warrior's Road (Hungarian: Hadak Útja). There's a Hungarian legend about that. Prince Csaba was a legendary leader of the Huns, the youngest son of Attila. Following Csaba's death, the Huns had no clear leader and the Franks were poised to defeat and disburse the Huns. For four major battles afterward, Csaba came down along the Warrior's Road with an army to defeat the Franks and save the Huns. This myth was especially told by the Székely people (ethnic Hungarians of Transylvania). Though, today, most Hungarians refer to the Milky Way as the Milky Way instead (Hungarian: tejút), probably due to centuries of Roman and latin influence.
@@davidg5898 Well written comment, thanks for the great addition to my rather concise description of our Csodaszarvas, Dávid!
Best,
Another Dávid
This video was simply amazing! It fills in a huge gap of humanity's timeline. I know we all think places like Göbekli Tepe where agriculture got its start (as well as the Jordan Valley and Mesopotamia) as the really olden days... But those times--10,000 years ago--are just a fraction of time compared to the entire time human beings were around, around 150,000-200,000 years ago! What happened during all that LONG time? Were we simply roaming around, following prey animals, finding roots, nuts and berries in season? And as the long years went by, just more and more of the same? Untill almost all the globe was filled with us?
What else happened during all that time? How did we live, day-to-day when we weren't hunting and gathering? What did we think of the new places, animals and climates? And finally, what myths and stories did we believe? You are filling in that gap, and that is amazing!!!
Thank you for your kind words. The Ferryman video may also interest you, another story far older than most realise. And if you have any questions please ask away and I'll do my best to answer them.
Agriculture probably started in the Amazon forrest due to the high content of edible plants compared to every other forest, and the profile of the soil biome.
There's evidence in South Africa of Homo naledi placing their dead with reverence in a chamber as a ceremonial burial 120,000 years ago. The first confirmed ritual burials are Mungo Man and Mungo Lady from Lake Mungo in Australia, who are roughly 45,000 years old.
Agriculture was a Desaster for humanity.
It's unnatural. Humans became shorter, weaker and more sick due to wheat.
@@flyingpuma9729 they didnt grow wheat in the americas but modern corn is even worse than the newer high gluten wheat hybrids. But where the limit goes between natural and un natural is hard to say because we are natural and everything we do is in our nature. Stupidly greed is the biggest danger to all of us. Probably natural too.
Shot of water every time cosmic hunt is said, gotta hydrate man.
Absolutely amazing. Such stories put us much closer to our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago. And as an astronomer, I am intrigued about the age of some of the constellations we know today. Orion is clearly known as the hunter in the sky. In the medieval Arabian world, it was even a woman whose name is still encoded in the star we know as Betelgeuze. Incredible how at least some of the stories are retained over such a long time.
Yes, it is exactly that reason too that allows us know they all came from the same, original source. Thanks for watching and commenting, it is appreciated.
Many Constellations and asterisms like the Big Dipper are older than imagined and probably go back 40,000+ years. In Lascaux, there is a painted Bison (Taurus) with what looks to be the Pleiades near the correct position in the sky The Zodiac Constellations are also very old. In ancient times, when you're camping out all the time with pristine night skies with no light pollution other than a nearby torch or camp fire, what do you do? You stare at the sky and you see obvious patterns (Orion, Big Dipper). Even as a child, I knew the Orion and Big Dipper pattern before I knew what they were called. There is no doubt our ancestors knew as well. When I go to places with little or no light pollution like Mauna Kea, I just stare at the sky for hours. I don't even grab a telescope (OK, I'll make room for Omega Centauri) as a pristine night sky with almost no light pollution is beyond imagination.
does the betel in betelgeuse hsve any reference to betel nut and the reddish stain known in that part of the world?
@@michaelwerkov3438 It's complicated. It stems from a wrong translation from Arabic. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#Etymology
I am also an astronomer. The pole star has not always been Polaris and has changed even since the time of the oldest pyramids. The shape of the constellations have changed over these long time scales
I’m from the Pacific Northwest and heard a variation of the, I think, Snohomish version of this story years ago at summer camp. In that version the animal is a deer, three hunters and their hunting dogs. They are lifted into the sky when the tribes work together to raise it above the earth, and are forever frozen in the stars as one of the dipper constellations. I always thought the story was fascinating and continued to tell it around campfires and at sleepovers throughout my youth. I had no idea the story had such ancient roots, and that I continued to spread as our ancestors have.
Thank you for such an interesting comment.
The metaphysical component here is what grabs me, and I'd like to see that worked in more. It's a _cosmic_ hunt, not just a hunt that reduces to a roundabout way of saying that early humans relied upon hunting. Overnaturalizing stories, in a materialistic predeterministic way, misses the whole point of them, which is not I think what you're doing, but many analysts tend to misunderstand the universal/cosmic symbolism/claims inside myths by trying to 'track' them via archaeology or earth-data. What if even earlier humans were telling the Story of the Cosmic Fruit-tree and trying to get the best fruit down from the tallest trees? It seems to me that the cosmic element implies that divinity hunts and chases creatures in the earthly realm, and vice versa to some extent as well. I don't think _hunting_ reduces to mere survival in this case; in that case, the earliest stories would just be oral how-to manuals and training schemes. Early humans combined the metaphysical with the utilitarian. Beyond that, there's no way of 'proving' or knowing what the earliest tales were. What we _don't_ know about this dwarfs what we know.
You're wrong. There is zero evidence that there was ever any metaphysical or symbolic component in the stories of the 'cosmic hunt' or such a point to them, let alone the specific notion you claimed, and there *is* a lot of real evidence of what the earliest tales were, which the papers are based on. You just want there to be something that corresponds to *your* idea of what profound and venerable ancient wisdom should be, and to that end you want to be free to ignore evidence and make up things that *you* like and to give them some kind of venerable veneer of 'ancient wisdom'. That's a noxious intellectual habit leading to falsehoods and disinformation.
@@dumupad3-da241 You're begging the question. You don't know either way, because it's beyond our knowledge, and isn't a human-sense-data phenomenon. Evidence applies to sense-data. The contents and movement of story isn't a sense-data phenomenon. It's not an evidentiary question, it's an epistemological coherentist one. See Hume and Quine: they show that empiricism can't work to ground a universal claim such as you're making. There's no evidence that stories are what _you_ think they are either. Your presupposition is that all phenomena reduce to matter: self-contradicting, since material-based thoughts would not bother making supra-material claims. Mythology is narrative philosophy -- metaphysics, cosmology, ethics, holism: It ought not to exist in a material world. But it's a both-and world, both material and immaterial. You don't know if your own thoughts are metaphysical or not, and the nature of thought can't be empirically measured. They can't be reduced to material, since then the thought itself would be a product in a cause-effect chain that has nothing to do with the contents of thought itself -- thoughts about The Cosmic Hunt would not be trustworthy in that data-world. So knowing something isn't based on material data but on coherentist narratives that perceive harmony in the world. A claim about what a thought is is metaphysical claim. But it's not just thoughts for which we lack proper sense-data. We also have no 'boot-strapping' evidence for the truth value of math, number theory, representational linguistic meaning(metaphor), ethical obligation, time & space, deductive knowledge, narrative flow, or the identity of objects over time. That doesn't mean those things aren't absolutely real -- they're just not reduceable to matter. You also don't have empirical sense-data to ground the existence of Wonder and Awe, which is what you're lacking.
@@dumupad3-da241 So it's both-and, not either-or. It's BOTH metaphysical and physical joined perfectly together. I don't go for simplistic dialectics. I go for relational dynamics, trinities, coherentism. It's not a binary. One doesn't cancel the other out. Both are joined together just fine in a story. Stories don't work like trial-and-error tinkering to figure out the best way to light a fire. I know how that stuff works and so did they. Stories are about reconciling the paradox of the One and the Many, unity and diversity, the tiny with the big, into something that shows how things work together in dynamia and flow. Storytelling is not a Modernist utilitarian project.
Creecganford while I congratulate your research diligence in drawing this amazing story together, I believe you have somehow missed an important node of information. You mention only an single reference to an Australian Aboriginal dreaming story of 2 hunters killing an emu, but indicate you don’t believe this relates to the Great Hunt Myth. However, along the south of Australia there is a reasonably well documented Dreaming story shared by many tribal groups. In this story 7 sisters (actually represented by the Pleiades) are pursued from east to west and then into the night sky by a lone hunter who is represented by a star in the Orion’s Belt constellation. Since I first heard variants of this Dreaming story, as a young archaeologist working with different Australian Indigenous Communities, I marvelled at the similarity of the story to the Greek myth of Orion and the intriguing correlation of stars representing the stories. Now I appreciate, as you point out, that this may be an element of human culture so old that we literally all share it.
Now I already have the seven sisters myth to investigate as a piece of research, and the fact you've now mentioned it then perhaps I need to look at this sooner rather than later. I appreciate your feedback, thank you :)
you got there first...
I knew this was a Dreaming story but grew up hearing a story about the 7 sisters being chased bythe hunter.
The earliest arrival of Australian Aborigines from Polynesia was previously fairly well established to be circa 45,000 years ago but recent archaeology suggests a date closer to 60,000 years (I remember the details of the findings but, unfortunately, not the reference).
However, if the Southern Australia dreamtime story pans out, that pushes the age of the myth back to at least 45,000 years ago!
@@Crecganford in our versions, the Hunter is facing other way. Aside from 7 sisters, is also 3 brothers stories, which include same same but different varieties of heracles...flood stories from across world interesting too. noice work.
It is so cool to hear the ancient stories of Indo Europeans. So much of our ancestors stories pre Greco Roman, were lost to time and assimilation.
I'm please you found it interesting, and there will be a few more of these kind of stories in the coming months :)
My favorite version of the story is this:
"When all the world has gone to sleep
The hunters to the forest creep
From out the wild wood comes the call
'The hunt is life.. The hunt is all...
An ancient forest backons me
to run skyclads amongst the trees
My lusty spear, it cannot wait
The gentle deer to penetrate
Cernunnos, Lord of Beast, he grunts:
'Come join us for the Wylde Hunts"
There were also the proto Indo Europeans.
And people before even that.
@@JPOGame If this story is truly so old then surely it isn't proto Indo-European. It's got to be MUCH older than that. Do we even no for sure of its origins.
Wonderful ! I can’t say it louder. The idea that a hunter-gatherer human race coming to a more sedentary-agricultural oriented found this myth in the sky, is most probably an explanatory model for: the gods always seen in the sky, gods giving mean to seasonal baffling mysteries, and gods as explanation for many mysteries. Amazing. Thanks again.
Thank you for watching and your comment. I appreciate it.
Yeah I assume gods was a word back then for creator. It might have been used more like our word 'universe'. The oldest word for God I can find is YHWH which means breath. So I'd imagine people back then believed all living things breath and grow, so that's the idea behind a god. The spirit of life, aka breath.
I remember an old video, which explained that the episode of Polyphemus and Ulysses is a sort of metaphorical tale, and the cyclop, having only one eye, is an allegory of psychic people. So the part where Ulysses hurts the cyclop by taking his eye is another allegory of an ancient people, in harmony with the cosmos, being beaten down by another race, of more brutal and naughty humans, thus passing to a golden age to an iron age.
I am native American heritage "Cherokee Nation" and our family has lived in Tennessee for over a century but North Carolina before that for who knows how long ..My grandfather told his version of The Cosmic Hunt ..so so similar to the oldest primitive story... Simple and short.. Thank you for all the research and work you put into all your uploads.💯
Youre super cool for doin this we have lost so much crucial wisdom from our ancestors, I feel if these stories remain lost we'll end up as Hunter gatherers again and have to start over
I pleased you found it interesting
In my view, there is a correlation between wisdom and intelligence. The more intelligent (The ability to say YES - take in new information/create new ideas), the less wisdom (The experience needed to say NO, thats not a good idea).
@@ellengran6814 I don’t think the two are correlated at all, and the problems with the world come from people insisting that they are either directly or inversely related.
Some people are smart, some people are wise. Neither is set in stone. You can become more intelligent and more wise.
Would'nt be the first time we've been sent bak to default settings, is another on the horizon as we speak
Nope. And there are still hunter gatherers. That model of history is incorrect. A religion. Thats what prehistory is.
I came across this while researching the philosophy of indigenous wisdom regarding our behaviour towards the rest of the natural world. It's very interesting to see how important the sun was in everyday life and revered as a deity of sorts. The connection our ancestors had with the natural world kept them in a reciprocal relationship with it. Contemporary society disconnects us more and more until we don't even feel the rest of nature as she chokes under the human heel.. we take and take without conscience.. Revering the sun seems to be the most logical religious practice given our knowledge even today.
The fundamental elements needed for our contemporary story are present in our oldest stories!
Thanks for this video and links to studies ✌️
Awesome work 👌
And thank you so much for taking the time to comment such a thoughtful piece, it is much appreciated.
It makes sense that cosmic stories were some of the first stories when you consider that these early people spent most of their time during the day finding food and steering clear of predators. Night would be the time to contemplate and tell stories.
Happy solstice! Maybe you will inspire more people to look up again. Our modern age has us looking down and disconnected too much.
Can you imagine the sky 100,000 years ago? Can you imagine the stories lost to us of stars we can’t even see. Imagine the feeling of living in and of gods that made everything for us simply to exist and to use.
I watched a video from Dan Davis about how one of the earliest myths we know of is that when you die, you have to walk to a certain point, and then get past a canine of some kind, a lot of the time a dog specifically and not a wolf. That and videos like this of ANCIENT mythology are among my favorite to learn about. Our ancestors were so simple compared to us that we probably carry out some of the same "rituals" still today, it's not the same kind of ritual but I know that combs are a really old invention for instance. Being such simple folk makes it easier to step into their shoes I feel. They needed good harvests to eat, so they worshipped agriculture gods. Once they were conquered by the PIE they adopted more warlike deities but tried to keep many of their most important gods as part of the new pantheon like Demeter or Freya
I too have made videos about the canine, and the afterlife. They are so fascinating.
This is a pretty interesting myth and also how it has managed to survive in different cultures and mythologies over time. An example in Sámi mythology, large group of hunters chase cosmic deer that wreak havoc in Siidas (Sámi villages), and in the Balto-Finnic equivalent, the creature is a mischievous wooden elk of Hiisi (Hiiden Hirvi) that is chased by the deity of skis, Lyylikki, but can never be hunted because it escapes whenever it is caught. And in either case, the myth is still very close and carries the same position as the myth of six-legged celestial deer that was narrated by the Samoyed and Ob-Ugric peoples.
Thank you for watching, and taking the time to write your comment, very interesting.
reindeer are very important creatures in Siberian shamanism even among different ethnic groups!
The peyote Indians were gifted peyote by a mythical, silver deer...
The peyote Indians were gifted peyote by a mythical, silver deer...
@TurnedLeftAtTheRockyMountains
The answer to the second part of the question actually is in the question : many cultures share that ancient myth because... it's an ancient myth, it stemed in some place and time, and migrated with nomadic groups of people who traveld in all directions.
The best possible explanation for why any cultural trait is shared by many groups anywhere in the world, even though they don't seem connected, is that they all share common ancestors who'd spread the story ;-)
"When I look up at the stars tonight, what can l see beyond the light, 100 million worlds that we ignore. Who can restrain Pleiades, and know the laws of heavenlys? How many times have we been wrong before?" Pleiades, Kings X. While you were telling this story I could feel the cold when I looked up at the stars. I could also feel warmth on my right shoulder from the fire. You put me there...I could feel it. There is no doubt that when you stand and look up at the stars on a clear, un-light polluted evening and clear your mind you feel part of something bigger, more permanent. Uncounted generations looked up into those same skies and felt what I feel.
Youre lucky to have access to skys with no light pollution. I can't remember the last time I saw a single star. Let alone constellations.
My ex calls me a cosmic hunt, go figure. But it's wonderful to hear stories from the ancient world and told in a laidback easy way that encourages listening thank you so much for this segment. A new fan.
12:50 the consistency of associating one part with hunters and the other with the animal could also be because that is the direction it moves in the sky.
Similar to how the swan does not fly backwards.
Yeah, that's what I also thought when I heard this.
I don't know about most of you, but I picture myself telling one or two versions of the cosmic hunt to my children, and their eyes all lost in the starry night sky.
You and me both. You and me both... Amazing old story...
The Odysseus/Polyphemus story certainly seems to have drifted a lot from the basic template. The hunt for food seems to be just a remnant, a motivating detail at the beginning of the story, but most of the familiar details involve the confrontation between the men and the cyclops (for whom the animals are a tended flock, not wild game to be hunted) and the subsequent complaint to Poseidon. I would like to know more of the reasoning involved in identifying that as a latter-day descendant of the Cosmic Hunt story.
I came upon this gem while trying to actually find if there are any stories that might be about humans interacting with Neanderthals, Devosinians, etc. So your last statement about the researcher looking for those possible stories made me very happy.
Well done! What a wonderful channel I have found :). Subscribed and excited for more!
Thank you for watching, and taking the time to leave a kind comment. I will presenting more of this researchers work next week, about the origin of the Flood myth.
Think of the stories we lost in the fire that burned the Library of Alexandria. Think of all the stories that were lost, the languages, natural truths, and maybe even our first written words. I cry when I think of all the information that has been lost and the voices of 10,000 years ago silenced into ash
Do you think that humans may have captured their interactions with other hominids in stories of dwarves, goblins, elves, giants, orcs, yetis and other human like creatures?
Late to the party, but this is incredible. I'm a biological mathematician who's had a hobby interest in history for a while, and adapting techniques that describe genomic divergence on culture makes so much sense that it's blowing my mind. This is incredible! Where have you been all my life?
Thank you so much.
This is the kind of of thing that brings us closer to an understanding of our common genus, that we truly are brothers and sisters.
I just found you today. And I absolutely am so thankful. Story is where everything is.. all the mysteries and truths that are sought in all the ways .. it is the story, the shared experience, that you will find so much more then we even could imagine.
And I so appreciate your extensive research, that you are sharing here and that as far as I can tell unbiased and pretty inclusive.
Thank you so very much!!!
Thank you fro your kind words, and I try to remain unbiased and academically focused.
This is a fantastic video. How you tell the story about the oldest story is extremely captivating. Although I've studied and hold a degree in German language and literature and had to learn some linguistic history background I've never come across it. Thank you so much!
Thank you so much for watching, and taking the time to comment. It is all very much appreciated.
What a fantastic video, thank you. Such a richness of content. All too often these days a podcast or a TH-cam video will just be a direct or almost direct recitation of the Wikipedia page, whereas this is meticulously researched, with the sources provided, and presented well.
To hear the story, you can feel a connection to our ancestors and briefly look through a window and see what their lives were like and the things that were important to them.
Thank you so much for your kind words, and for watching the video.
fascinating!! Have historians rolled back the night sky to see what the painters of the oldest cave art saw in their night sky? It's mind boggling to think about humans being around so long, the constellations change. Time is too vast to imagine!
I know, it blew my mind when I first read it.
It's a truly awe-inspiring thought. At no point in human history have we ceased to be fascinated by the stars.
the constellations reset every 26,000 years, its the precession of the equinox
@@King_Flippy_Nips yeah but this is deeper than that. this isn't the sky moving in relation to the direction our pole is facing. This is the stars themselves moving in their orbits around the Milky Way. 50,000 years ago, the stars were not only in the sky at different points of the year, they were in measurably different places in relation to each other
there's a bit in carl sagan's cosmos where they go back a million years. it would be interesting to see the constellations as they appeared at more times than that. and with different eyes
The industrial revolution gave us so much, but it also took the stars out of our nights, which is honestly sad considering how much those meant to our ancestors. It's hard to imagine now a world full of myths and magic considering our knowleadge of the world and technology, but when I picture myself in the middle of some plains in front of a campfire and hearing stories from the elders all this stories make so much more sense.
Thanks you so much for this video and for keeping the cosmic hunt alive.
And thank you so much for watching it, and appreciating it.
Fantastic, I'm sorry to myself that I've only just come across your channel. This is exactly aligned with my beliefs. These stories have been reconstructed throughout many civilisations repeatedly. We have had our history rewritten to believe these are myths and legends. Thank you for delivering it so eloquently and understandable.
Thank you so much for watching, and for taking the time to write such kind words.
I want to thank you for making this channel and preserving these stories. I am currently a History major at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee who's focus is on Bronze Age Europe. Our program on that topic is severely lacking and these videos have given me amazing starting points for my personal research while preparing for my upcoming dissertation. Again, thank you so much!!
Good luck with your studies, all the universities are suffering in this field, there seems to be so little demand which is why I started this channel during Covid. The move to blended learning, and then remote learning really felt as though students were getting a raw deal, and so I'm pleased some are finding it useful. Feel free to ask questions as I only discuss things at a high level, and am happy to point you in directions of resources etc.
@@Crecganford well initially my focus was the integration of Celtic/Gaelic myth and religion into historical record. Much like how many Middle Age accounts turned these stories into washed out Christiansted tales. (Arthurian legend possibly stemming from both Roman and Celtic influences via Cú Chulainn) Since we don't have shrines to The Morrigann or Epona as such that at there very least have been found, yet we know their symbolism was important based on burial artifacts of the period. Do you have any suggested reading that may help me with this? Admittedly it is more of an anthropolic examination of history, but for this particular culture and time, again Bronze Age from early to late, in my experiences so far little has been done to connect the dots between daily worship/reverence and the Celtic people. Even what we appear to know about larger festivals is somewhat speculative and often skewed my Neo-Paganism. Again any readings or scholors to follow would be greatly appreciated!
An animal leaping into the sky to escape a hunter as well as an elk with the sun in its antlers is such powerful imagery
And let's not forget the version of the story where Eredin, Caranthir and Imlerith hunt down Ciri, until confronted by a very determined witcher.
I also noticed the similarity.
As an Australian I would like to thank you on behalf of my country for actually pronouncing ‘Emu’ correctly.
Thank you.
I have commented under another wonderful story of yours, which dates the origin of the Pleiades to 100000 years that I believe the King Arthur's stories were much older. I once said I can imagine the original first story about young Arthur pulling out the sword out of the stone could be from Paleolite and its meaning of "pulling a sword from the stone" could originally mean literally pulling the excellent never before seen flint blade or flint axe head from a flint core. But when you lack the support and cold facts behind, somebody was laughing at me how ridiculous was the idea of changing a piece of rock into a sleek two feet long sword. 😏
But yeah, that's what I asked myself when I got to the idea for the first time. But I found support in some archaic Celtic words, so I have that I'd say reasonably supported in this way. But for those who want to believe, perhaps the easiest hint of how the axe changed to a sleek sword, are two words: one is "arm": it is a body part, yet we moved it also to arms, armaments, army. This shows how the subject changes but the word remains the same. And the second hint is - why does Excalibur still contain "axe"? Different spelling, but Axecaliburn sounds the same, so tell me why it hides the axe still in its very name? Well I can't tell why it is English which still has this wonderful connection with prehistory, but also, in my mother tongue, Czech, we have a very unusual name for a hammer: Germanic nations call it hammer. Roman nations have something around m-r-t like marteau or m-r-t-l like martel. Slavic nations have it similar like m-l-t - molot, mlat, molotok etc. But Czechs have kladivo. Which is k-l-d-v. And the hammer is surely not a sword. But the way I got to this was that I was always wondering why we have such an atypical name for such a basic instrument. But as Czechia, also Bohemia, used to be a home of the Boii (and others) Celtic tribe (Boii Haeme they say), I wondered if there could be a Celtic origin of that word? Surprisingly, I found many words for a sword in Celtic /Gaelic/Welsh that contained the same k-l-d-v: Caliburn, Chlodwych and I don't remember others, but it showed me that the word for hammer could stem from the one they used for sword. Then I realized that the French kings used a hammer for their name (Charles Martell), and then I realized that the long succession of French kings used the same k-l-d-v (I mean, "k" is a glottal just like ch, so ch-l-d-w here is the same): Louis comes from Lodovicus, which comes from Chlodowic or something like that (in Czech it is "Ludvík", in German "Ludwig", all the same)! To me, this all makes a lot of sense. Why I wrote it: I hope someone can one day study the possibility of the origin of that Arthurian tale of pulling the sword from the stone to the paleolithic boy who taught the mankind how to knap and pull the stone axe from the flint core. At the same time, I hope it could be proven that Thor is just another name for Ar-Thur - both of these stories are intertwined from the same origin, of course Thor got the supernatural properties because his legend was preserved before it was canceled by the Christian ideology, while in England, the story was skewed towards the Christian hero-king - the story had to be flush with the ideological requirements. Nevertheless, in my eyes, Thor used Mjolnir (m-l-n), a hammer, while Arthur used the battle axe (Axe-k-l-b) both were originally from stone and there was most no difference between the two.
Instantly subscribed. So much incredible information here, completely unbiased. Love the video and the story! Thank you.
Thank you for watching, and taking the time to comment. It is appreciated.
You provide a wonderful bridge between academia and the lay person. Great job and thank you!
That was my aim, to convert the academia I’ve researched and teach into something more consumable for the lay person. Thank you so much for watching, and taking the time to comment.
very interesting video! I visited Lascaux earlier this summer and learned some interesting things about this strange bison. It is one of the few depictions of a deceased or dying animal in Palaeolithic art in this part of the world, and the only one is Lascaux. Unlike other animals in the cave which come in pairs or larger groups, the bison is alone. It’s a peculiar artistic decision that suggests it was not drawn with the same intention as the other animals that run along the walls.
More importantly, the bison is found at the bottom of a pit deep in the cave that has an extremely rich CO2 concentration, being in there for 30 minutes would be enough to kill an adult.
Human representations are not quite rare but definitely not common in Palaeolithic art, what is almost unheard of however are hunting scenes. I personally don’t think it’s likely the bird headed man is a hunter, but he may still be relevant in another way. Next to him (not pictured in the video) is the drawing of a bird. The bird in association with death is an element found throughout indo-european creation myths as well as in the Americas, the original myth could be of a similar age as the cosmic hunt since it seems to have followed similar migration patterns.
I may be making connections where there aren’t any, but I think it’s not unlikely that the bison and the bird could have been drawn in the pit to signal imminent lethal danger to anyone who may find themselves in the deathly pit. I think it’s plausible that at the time Lascaux was painted both myths were already well established in the many nomadic groups that lived in the area.
Your passion for story research and global culture and language is appreciated. Thank you for your hard work. I have a couple of questions. 1: How is it that variants were not found in the British Isles or Ireland? 2: You have associated the tales with specific constellations and stars--How did you come to the conclusion that those constellations and stars are the ones being represented? 3: How does the first ./water nymph tale work as an ancient variant of the Cosmic Hunt? There wasn't a hunt in this tale nor is there any unrequited love story in any of the other variants. 4. About the pot. The pot, or cauldron is one of the oldest details in mythology. Associated with the transition of life to death, and the resurrection or rebirth, how does this effect the understanding of the story? 5. You speak about the migration of the tales but don't actually tough upon the mechanism of that migration. Is it possible that the origin is from an original storyteller that helps a given culture understand the state of the world they live in and that storyteller moved across the world, spreading the tale to fit the culture he came across? Storytelling is a natural instinct, don't you think? It is proven by cave drawings that helped illuminate a story. I'm very much interested in your answers. I hope you respond. Thank you.
Some great questions there, and I haven't time here to answer them all, but I will remake this video and ensure I answer all of these questions within it. But if you can't wait I have referenced d'Huy's work, and he does have a public article in Scientific American which explains some of this, and their website has an interactive presentation that helps too.
Thank you for having such a thorough presentation of the material via timestamps, transcript, and academic references.
And thank you for watching it
Well done, and quite interesting. That's a good hunter you are, being on the trail of our oldest tales... Keep on the track, and tell us more stories... I'd like to hear about the Hunter who hid inside an animal... Quite fascinating, although off the track of your quest in this video. More, please!
Thank you for watching and the kind words: I will tell specific tales from this in another video in the future, including the one about the hunter who hides in an animal.
The Raramuri (A tribe in northern Mexico) has a different cosmic hunt story, actually two.
The first one is about a evil man who has seven kids (Orion). He sent them to bring him water and if they didn't bring it he would hit them. The kids found no water and soon, night came. The father was looking for them to beat them and they ran.
When he almost catch them, a tree helped the kids. The tree took them on its branches andput them on the night sky. Another complementary story said the kids had a dog, and the tree also put it on the sky, where it still follos the kids (Sirius or canis majoris).
Wow, thanks for sharing, it's crazy how closely connected the themes and stories are
I'm Raramuri through my dad. All the stories told by my ancestors were forgotten when my grandparents went t Catholic schools in Chihuahua Mexico
@@Zhicano A professor from the University of Chihuahua, Enrique Servin, collected ancient stories in a book, that's where I read them. The book is called Aniruame, stories of the raramuri of ancient times.
Your story is a verson of the 'Seven Sisters' myth, which is even older than the Cosmic Hunt! Much much older! This same channel Creganford has made a video on it as well. Check it out.
Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for putting this together. I'd never heard of "The Cosmic Hunt" before but I have always found deep time communication moving.
From the areas this myth originated from then our mysterious cousins, the Denisovians, may have told it before us.
Thank you for watching it, and for leaving as comment. It is always appreciated.
This was fabulous! I’m so happy YT recommended this channel to me. I look forward to watching and learning more!
Thank you so much for watching, and your kind words.
Wow! Concepts, elements and environmental things important to them, stories, and words of our ancestors from ~40,000 years ago - a Mammoth Hunt transformed over time - truly beautiful. I find it so interesting how modern knowledge has allowed us to unlock so many mysteries about our ancestors from DNA to Movement Of Constellations to Archology to Phylogeny and on and on... I really appreciate the walk into history and science and the stories which I love. Thank-you for your generous donation of time and the kindness of your Patrons which makes it possible.
The ubiquity of this myth tale is very interesting. Good tracing of the older tales into the more recent, too. I've always been fascinated by the Celtic version of the Wild Hunt, which has very different prey in mind.
Hunting was so important to the peoples it makes it into all the cultures, foraging is not as revered for all it kept many early cultures alive!
Yes, I've a video on the wild Hunt, and some of my videos about dogs and death touch on the Celtic myth too. Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment
Korean myth says their ancestors came from Lake Baikal, migrating south east to Manchuria, then into Korean Peninsula.
Koreans have many mythical stories concerning Big Dipper, but Orion plays no significant role for some odd reason.
Orion in Chinese Astronomy is NOT considered as one constallation, but few smaller constallations.
So it doesn't play any major role as a whole entity.
This is so interesting! Thank you for so much information and linking it all together.
Just want to say how excited I was to see the Venus of Brassempuoy and the other Mother goddess figures in the background 😍
Thank you for watching, and your kind comments.
I worked at Lascaux 4 last summer as a guide and when I first started watching this video I wondered about “the cosmic hunt” story and that scene at the bottom of the shaft at Lascaux so I was excited to hear you mention it.
However, I see the man’s positioning and placement with respect to the bison differently.
Look at the line that makes up the man’s chest; it has a distinct arch backwards. Now push your shoulders back to make your chest arch back and you will feel like you’re going to fall backwards. For me, then, the man is falling backwards or being knocked back by the bison.
Now look at the bison’s head. It’s head is down with its horns horizontal, pointed towards the man, as if charging him. This is the only animal depiction at Lascaux of an animal with its head in this “charging” position. (Per the prehistorian Denis who works there)
I believe this narrative is about a man attacking a bison who is simultaneously attacking the man. It still works as a derivative of “the cosmic hunt” myth, but I think attempts to assign astronomical significance to the narrative at the bottom of the shaft are misplaced. There are several dots behind the nearby wooly rhino in a straight line (stars don’t form straight lines of course). And there are tons of dots all over Lascaux. Difficult to make the case that they are all meant to represent stars.
But fantastic work man. The amount of research you must have done is really impressive.
I’m not aware of any academic writing that argues for confirmed astronomical significance at Lascaux but I would love to read it if someone knows if any sources!
Thank you for letting me know, and I will look into this more.
@@Crecganford 🤜 Appreciate your hard work on educating people about this kind of stuff! If you ever want to do a video on Lascaux I’d love to work with you on it!
I love this intersection between myth and ancient history. Our remote ancestors were endlessly creative!
Thank you for watching, it is fascinating research.
This is a story I was told in my youth. I can't remember who it was that told it but the story has always been a big part of my life
That’s so cool to know people are still being told this type of story, thank you for watching, and for taking the time to comment
I've only just discovered your channel, but am enjoying your videos greatly. The cosmic hunt has intrigued me for a while. Tracking the evolution of the story through migrations and lingual and cultural changes was amazing. Full marks to you and thank you.
Thank you for watching it, and taking the time to leave such kind words. It is appreciated.
What an amazing story, with an impressive amount of details, I find this very interesting.
*Inuit myths from Greenland* were collected in a book one of my friends have, the oldest myths first. The oldest myth told (from my vague memory) how the humans (Inuit) lived inland and off hunting a large animal (single animal or a species?) with very long nose and teeth. When they had killed and eaten the (last?) animal they had to move out to the coast and start living from the sea. I only recall these bits from the myth, I don't know if stars and constellations were involved. I guess the animal was a mammoth. The later myths in the book had some connection to the sea, only this first one took place inland on a continent. If this Inuit myth have connection to the "Cosmic Hunt" myth we'll need a "dot" in Greenland as well on the map.
Thanks for bringing this video, I am looking forward to finding more interesting videos on your channel. You have a new subscriber.
And thank you for watching, and taking the time to right such an interesting comment. It is appreciated.
@@Crecganford You are welcome. It deserved to be mentioned.
As an American, where nothing is real but quite fake, these old stories are so real and interesting. The for the channel, dude.
Thank you.
Thank you for introducing us to the phylogenetic analysis of myths in such an engaging and accessible manner! This has been one of the most fascinating internet rabbit holes for me
Thank you so much for your support, I have many other videos where I discuss this, it is a very interesting branch of mythology.
This was absolutely amazing! Thank you for creating this presentation. So many wonderings have been cleared up by your videos. I am super glad I found your channel! 😊 So grateful 🙏
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment with such kind words.
This was absolutely wonderful and well done. Thank you for all of your hard work! I love how stories, no matter the telling, seem to bring humanity together. EXCELLENT!
Thank you so much for watching, and leaving such kind words.
@@Crecganford You are so very welcome ;)
Great vid! I was a bit confused about there being no mention regarding how Odysseus told Polyphemus that his name was 'Nobody'. That's (if true) one of the coolest things ever. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for watching, and that is one of the great stories from Homer, and I will talk about Odysseus in a future video.
Your demeanour is very comforting.
Thank you
I am from the Netherlands, and I believe we even still have a variation of this story. Each year in december, we celebrate 'Sinterklaas'. He rides a white horse, walking in the night, on top of the roofs of houses (made me think of the hunter running over the mountain tops). At the base of the chimney, offerings are layed down as a gift to the horse of Sinterklaas. In return, Sinterklaas gives gifts. But, Sinterklaas is probably a Christianized version of Wodan/Odin. Who led a Wild Hunt during this time of the year, also riding a white horse. Wodan is a hunter, he has a spear, two wolves and two ravens, animals that always hunt together. He even has two brothers, maybe making three hunters, like other variations of the story. He is a god of death but also resurrection, which seams to be the essence of the story, death and returning of the sun, and life. Makes me also think of Fenrir, a wolf brought to Asgard by Wodan, who will swallow the sun in the last hunt during Ragnarok. Maybe a little far fetched, but I think the essence of the story is the same.
That is very interesting, thank you for taking the time to share it,
I really can't put into words how wonderful it has been chancing upon your channel. This probably fascinates me as much as any subject I study. And when you say get a cup of tea! I do as I am told!
Thank you so much for watching, and taking the time to comment. Your support is appreciated.
@@Crecganford all we are doing is sitting back and being lazy while you do all the work 😂 amazing work man!! So glad there are people out there that are so passionate about the subjects all of us viewers hold so dear to our hearts. Much love from America! Just found your channel yesterday and have been binging all your videos. I second op, so glad I found your channel! Keep up the great work
I know it would be rough and horrible to be alive 20,000 years ago but imagine the stories and the night sky. Imagine the people and customs. Imagine the small tribe you lived with and just living to live. Nothing extra just living to survive to see the gods dance in the sky at night and tell the stories of how everything became.
This is an absolutely brilliant work. I've just discovered your channel and this story is keeping me awake, me battling sleep late at night. It blows your mind to think that not only the story can be traced that much back in time, it also has physical representation in cave paintings (allegedly).
I need to know more ot these ten-of-thounsand-year-old stories, I need to know if there are references to other human species. Oh, I want to know it all!
Great video, I really appreciate the work you put into. It is making my imagination fly away. Thank you for doing this kind of content.
Thank you! Check out my video about the Ferryman of the Dead, that may also blow your mind! As will a few future videos about the Flood Myth and Serpent Myth.
Check my original comment on this video, I think that I've may have stumbled upon something about "people" being defined as "capable of speech", but it's basically only that the words Nawá ("people" in yawanawa language) and Nahuatl ("speaking clearly", the Aztec language) sound similar.
But, there is a plausible connection between the Ute people (I've seen a graph saying they're related to Aztecs, at least linguistically) and the yawanawas, in which both their creation myths feature some kind of entrapment(a box or a basket) which holds all of humanity, and something happens and humanity escapes, according to the Ute, they were the first ones to come out, according to the yawanawa, they were the first to come out.
The yawanawa myth specifically talks about sometime before there were (different?) people, when everyone lived together as a big family, those who weren't from that group were called Nawá, and one of the group's elders had, hidden, a basket with the heart of a Nawá, one day resting in is hammock he heard the basket move and went to see what was happening thinking a rat was trying to eat the heart, but he saw nothing and went back to his hammock, then the basket spun up again and this time all the world's people came running from the basket, the first one, with painted bodies and headgear was called yawanawa by the elder.
I don't know if the myth specifically talks about other species, but for the yawanawa, Nawá can mean "air people" for the birds, so the "human" property is attributed to all animals too, not specifically modern humans.
It might be related to Pandora's box or the cultural explosion like in the tower of babel, or the different morphological variants of humans, both within our species, other humans and our hybrids...
But I do think that myths come from trying to tell stories, our own story in this case, merely depicting an observable phenomena which occurred everywhere, so maybe the stories aren't even related at all besides being based on the same underlying observable truth of slightly different types of humans.
But just imagine for a second that maybe what was used to define the concept of "people", just might have had to do with our ability to speak clearly(or the absence of it in others)
Other humans must've influenced our culture, language, and brains.
We've mated, after all, that's a hard influence we can measure..
So we've interacted with them, they were like us, but not quite, probably the most significant difference at the time(between when we got to europe 40,000 years ago, when we had already been developing languages for quite a while, and 10,000 years ago or so when we became the last human species alive) was that, even if neanderthals and denisovans could speak, they probably wouldn't be sounds in the same structure and range as our speech, it'd sound off, confusing and unclear. Kinda like orangutans are seen as the "old tree people" by native humans around them.
Maybe we started to separate us and them because our species was becoming evermore socially dependant, so somewhere in that time we started to consider ourselves superior, and I bet we killed them off with war and dominating resources, we had every reason to, better technology, better organization, stronger social structures, better numbers and communication capabilities..
Somewhere sometime there might have been a human that talked about eugenics or just about the hate for other people, it's a huge window of time, in which I believe at least one prehistorical Holocaust happened.
I also believe that we were black till we went up to Europe, so only when we mated with neanderthals we got light skin(excluding albinism) and only then we moved to the Americas (I think they do have bigger amounts of neanderthal DNA than the Africans that never went to Europe and instead stayed in Africa this whole time, barely mixing with neanderthals at all), so knowledge about humans that couldn't speak clearly might've turned into the words for "people", Nawá; and "speaking clearly/spoken", Nahuatl.
I'm not saying it's even probable, but I am saying that maybe, just maybe, it might could kinda be almost plausible..
But I know it's probably just too far of a stretch, but if so, it probably means that it can easily be dismissed.
So I think it's worth investigating, even if to discover that there's nothing to it, I still think it's a fun interpretation to our story as one of the human species
An interesting tale to look into is the australian aboriginal origin myth that discusses a real volcanic eruption that successfully dates the story back past 37 thousand years. much older than the myth in this video. 7 thousand years older.
I would say that ther definitely are myths that relate to other human species; look at all the stories across the world--and I mean on every continent, among almost every group of people--that deal with the fair folk, the little people, underground dwellers, and so on. Or those relating to giants, titans, ogres, trolls; they're ubiquitous.
The very ubiquity of these stories around the world makes me think that no other possible origin really holds up for them since there are so many specifics that, if not common to quite all variants of these stories, are common to many, even most.
About the aboriginal stories: I've heard of ones that are supposedly even older than that, things such as hunting songs that correspond to real world migration routes with recognizable scar positions, landmarks, and so on. Some of these when analyzed correspond to geographic features that were submerged since the depth of the last ice age or the one before that so somewhere between 25 and 100,000 years ago if I'm not mistaken.
I've also read that store bringing infants story that we tell children Mike correspond to a bird/spiritual messenger story bringing new human life from The Well of souls myth, and this myth is common to cultures that haven't had contact with each other in something like 60,000 years. They seem to be common to the furthest one branches of humanity including the oldest populations in Africa like the !Kung, aboriginal Australians, New Zealanders, Europeans, and native Americans.
And of course you have things like the babylonian astronomical lists which according to them go back 4 hundreds of thousands of years but things more likely go back for a few tens of thousands, maybe 30,000 at most, as they accurately describe the precession of the equinoxes and other long term astronomical cycles.
It is absolutely incredible to me that a story could be conserved for that freaking long of a time.
You seem very genuine and kind, I'm glad that you exist and are sharing your passion, and I wish you the best
And thank you for your kind words, and for watching the video.
Very well done. This would have been considered prime time tv content only 30yrs ago
Thank you.
Imagine telling your friends aboht this exciting story about a Mamooth that hide in a river, and they just tell you "bruh it's actally a deer and is flying over the sea level"
This is educational and interesting and told in a brief calming easy to understand way. I was expecting Gilgamesh in there somewhere... but I like this story and all the different versions and what people and places they originated from much more. And I liked the pronunciation crack. I will need to watch this many times... so much info on the origins... the story is quiet short..... but the thread of folklore so long. Nice job. Thanks.
Thank you
This is totally fascinating, thanks for producing these videos. I wonder if these stories evolved to entertain ancient people as well as explain nature. I too hope earlier myths can be found from a time when modern humans coexisted with other hominids.
Thank you for taking the time to comment, such kind words.
Fantastic. A keen mind will be able to see how relative to resurrection deities this narrative is. Fascinating!
Thanks for sharing this primordial tale.
Thank you Crecganford!
And thank you for watching it.
You missed the best part of the cyclops story as i remember it. The cyclops asked the guy what his name was and he responded "nobody" so after the monster was blinded and pleaded to Posiedon, he said "nobody blinded me!" Hence why our heroes sailed away safely
Yes, that is a version of the story I remember too.
Actually, that is not accurate. Initially, the humans were able to escape the island itself, meaning the other cyclops living there did not go after them because "nobody blinded me". However, Odysseus, being a smartass, yelled his name at the cyclops as he was leaving, to rub the truth in his face, allowing the cyclops to ask his dad for help.
Very interesting and thank you! All of your videos on ancient stories, myths, and deities are fascinating. (Just in case this is helpful: Iroquois is pronounced ear-ah-KWAH.)
Or EAR-oh-koy
Or Please French stop using Consonant Symbols for Guttural Stops instead of Apostrophes.
@@KebaRPG No one in this response thread used apostrophes and I think you meant glottal stop, not gutteral.
In the Midwest we say EAR-oh-koy
I was surprised that the first story was about Ulysses and the Cyclops. I thought you were going to mention the story of Callisto, who was turned into a bear and hunted. That story must be related to the Native American story of the great sky bear.
I spoke too soon 😄
This might be the best and most important thing I have found on youtube lately. Thanks so much for the amazing content and research.
And thank you for watching
I’ve started craving tea whenever I begin one of your videos, this a good thing to give in to I think. Cheers!
Marvelous! This can only improve things in your life.
Just imagine, this story could have been told for generations among Neanderthal or Denisovan people in the area who then told it to modern humans that they intermingled with, and then these people took the story with them on their travels as they spread around the world. Obviously there's no evidence for that, but it is an interesting thought.
It could have been, and you're right we will never know. But very interesting thought indeed! Thank you for watching
The neanderthals would have had different languages than sapiens, so I wonder if in the dealings between the two if there was any bilingualism and vocabulary crossover into sapiens languages. Neanderthal languages like paleolithic human languagses is sadly something we will never know much about
Very interesting! I love learning about these ancient tales and their incredible age. So appreciative of your work.
Thank you for the kind words :)
This is incredibly fascinating and I can't wait to watch more of your videos. You are a wonderful storyteller.
Thank you for the kind words of support.
Thank you for the amazing content. I am absolutely enthralled by our history and your work. Thank you again.
I really enjoy how you eased me in there, very captivating! Keep up the good work 👏
I've always been curious how stories share so many similarities between cultures.
I hope you found that enjoyable, and my next video will explain the origins of the flood myth using similar methods.
@@Crecganford I'm going through your previous videos now. In all seriousness, I wish TH-cam would have recommended your channel long ago. It's not like my search history changed all that much.
If you look at elephant's or mamooth's skulls, you will notice that they look like if they have only one orbit, then, they seem to be the skulls petraining to long dead giants with only one eye. My theory is that the legends of cyclopes and other giants from atiquity derives from those amazing findings.
Yes, I agree. There were Pygmy elephants on mediterranean islands and these, as you say, look a little like one eyed giants, and could have easily helped evolve the cyclops story.
This was a wonderful thing to happen upon accidentally. I was looking for a video by a chap named Simon Roper, who has a very interesting video on old stories and linguistics (you'd like him, I imagine), but wound up glued to this one, you're a wonderful story-teller in your own right and I appreciate all the effort.
I wonder though, could you point me to a reference or further info which establishes that the story of Polyphemus is cognate with these earlier cosmic hunt stories? It just seems to me a little far removed from the other stories in its structure - not that I doubt the work and research you've put into it - I would just like to better appreciate the thread linking the other stories to the Greek myth.
I subscribe to Simon on my personal channel :) He has some fascinating insights and a great delivery. And, yes, the Polyphemus link does seem stretched as I have seen it linked with other stories (such as a reflex of the Indo European cattle raiding myth) but it is referenced within the paper I link to in the description. If you have any questions please ask, and thanks for watching and your comment :)
Wow. I´m currently studying history (and actually should go to sleep since I have latin tomorrow) and this video just opened a whole new world to me. Thank you so much. Like and subsribtion guaranteed.
Thank you so much for watching, and for taking the time to comment. Good luck with Latin!
the fact that we can use computers to analyse and then map the evolution and spread of the story across time and continents is truly astonishing. I think we take for granted just how sci fi this is. we are peering back in time tens of thousands of years, to distant, incomprehensible times. And giving the smallest window, the narrowest insight into what our ancestors believed and thought about. incredible video.
Thank you, and you may really enjoy my next one, out next Saturday on the origin of the Flood Myth.
@@Crecganford I bet I will! Already liked and subscribed, your videos are mind blowingly good!!