Will Ancient Journey Appear Again
No matter where you're from, you probably accept your off-white share of wild myths. From stuff like the fable of Male monarch Arthur and his magic BFF to the mischievous gods of Ancient Greece to the insane epics of Hindu mythology, just most every culture comes with a set of stories that almost other cultures call strange or strange.
Just and so at that place are the universal myths—myths that crop up repeatedly in cultures separated past hundreds of miles and thousands of years. These myths are so most-universal that their prevalence is downright spooky.
ten The Great Alluvion
The idea of a flood that drowns the unabridged world pops upward in nigh every single culture. Jews and Christians know information technology as the story of Noah, but other versions almost certainly predate the Genesis business relationship. The Ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh includes the tale of Utnapishtim, who builds a boat, fills it with animals to escape a deluge, and eventually comes to balance on a mountaintop. The Greeks had Deucalion, who survived a flood sent by Zeus. Other versions appear in Hindu, Mayan, and Native American legends.
These tales may or may not be inspired by reality. In 2009, National Geographic reported on the utter lack of prove for a earth-destroying super-flood. Withal theories even so persist of an aboriginal comet strike near Republic of madagascar sending tsunamis across the globe or a sudden overflowing caused by melting glaciers drowning the entire Blackness Sea surface area. Could this universal myth simply be the faded memory of a real effect that occurred around five,000 BC? We may never know.
9 Paradise Lost
As anyone who's heard to their grandfather wax lyrical about the 1950s knows, people see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But this yearning for nostalgia isn't just restricted to sometime folk rattling on well-nigh how kids showed more respect in their twenty-four hour period. Very oftentimes, it fills entire cultures.
Take the Garden of Eden. The story of a harmonious land uncorrupted by pain or animalism is the biggest slice of "good sometime days" nostalgia you'll always encounter. The Ancient Greeks, meanwhile, fondly recalled their Golden and Heroic Ages—a time when the world was happier, men were men, and things basically didn't suck so bad. Similar ideas announced in Hindu, Norse, and Western farsi belief, e'er featuring a lost utopia to which modern culture tin can never return.
Interestingly, there may be a scientific reason backside all this. Recent research into nostalgia has shown that idealized memories of the past may make us happier in the present.
8 Epic Cosmic Battles
The idea of an unimaginable war that threatens to tear apart the cosmos connects with united states so securely that it still powers our ballsy stories. The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and countless others all feature this age-quondam trope. It can exist found in the legends of about every aboriginal culture. Christianity has the battle between God and the rebel angels led by Satan. Ancient Greece had the story of the Titans taking on the gods of Mountain Olympus. The Hindu tradition involves a boundless serial of battles so epic they'd give Peter Jackson daymares.
There are couple of means of looking at this. One is to become downwards the Scientology route of claiming these legends are genetic memories of some apocalyptic boxing that tore the galaxy autonomously billions of years agone. The other is to remember that most cultures throughout history have consistently been on the brink of war or prone to invasion, then an apocalyptic slaughter was probably never far from everyone'south minds. Either way, it suggests the human bulldoze to war is just about universal.
7 Vampires
If y'all hated the last couple of years of hormone-driven angst-inspired vampire media, attempt living in Medieval Europe. Back then, belief in vampires was and so prevalent that barely a single country didn't consider them a terrifying fact of life. When crops failed or in that location was drought or a baby was built-in with a slight deformity, you'd ameliorate believe vampires got the arraign—a tradition that stretches dorsum thousands of years.
Undead bloodsuckers aren't a mod invention. They weren't fifty-fifty dreamt upward this side of the Common Era. Cultures as mind-bendingly old as the Ancient Egyptians believed wholeheartedly in their existence, while versions of them turn upward everywhere from China to Tibet to Republic of india. Even the Persians of Mesopotamia had a selection of ferocious blood-drinking demons to terrorize children, although they bore differences from our modern Anne Rice-inspired diverseness.
Looked at rationally, information technology'south easy to see how the vampire legend arose: our fright of death crossed with a huge degree of medical ignorance. Looking at information technology once more after dark when a scary current of air howls outside . . . well, let's just say we won't be hawking off our garlic stocks anytime shortly.
6 The Atlantis Myth
We all know the myth of Atlantis: a utopian city wiped out in a unmarried dark thanks to an unearthly cataclysm. But Atlantis is but the virtually famous of mythical lost cities. Near-identical stories crop up with such regularity that it's tempting to remember they must be somehow related.
Take Iram (also known as Ubar). A fabled city in the deserts of mod Kingdom of saudi arabia, Iram is said to accept been wiped out in a single dark when Allah cached it under a alluvion of sand. In other words, it'due south the Atlantis myth translated to a world without water. So you have Ys off the coast of France, which was supposedly flooded effectually the fifth century by a mythical warrior male monarch. And that'south before we get onto the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Hindu myth of Tripura, which both involve gods wiping out immoral cities in a rain of burn.
In short, the idea of a metropolis obliterated overnight is so powerful it seems to bear witness up everywhere. Are these half-remembered tragedies with some basis in fact (like Pompeii) or but stories that play to the apocalyptic fantasist in all of usa? Nosotros'll leave it to you lot to decide.
five A God'due south Resurrection
Jesus'due south resurrection is the big selling bespeak of Christianity, a unique moment that established Christ as the one true savior. At least that's the idea. In reality, the thought of a dying deity or of import human who is later resurrected has been around for millennia.
Most famously, this includes the story of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god whose birth was heralded by a star, who was betrayed past a friend, was murdered, and was later resurrected. But in that location are less explicit versions too. The Greek cult of Dionysus had their figurehead killed off every two years, but to rise once again at a later date. Persephone likewise died regularly, and many heathen traditions from Scandinavia to Central America involved gods dying and returning to life or men dying and coming back every bit deities.
Perhaps nigh interestingly of all, a historical tablet known every bit "Gabriel'due south Revelation" allegedly tells the story of a Jewish rebel known as Simon who was killed by the Romans, only to be resurrected three days later. The catch? It was written in iv BC, over 30 years before Jesus allegedly pulled off the same trick. Either it'south a mistranslation, or the Son of God was building on centuries of groundwork past other deities.
4 Dragons
Dragons are probable the most traveled creature in all of mythology. Even more vampires, they have a habit of turning up in societies and cultures and so far apart in fourth dimension and infinite you'd call up it was impossible. There are aboriginal Sumerian tablets that record the act of dragon-slaying, Greek tales of dragons cavorting with other monsters, and an unabridged science built effectually the uses of their bones in Red china. In Central America, the Mayans worshipped the feathered snake Quetzalcóatl, while both Norse and Christian mythologies specifically mention dragons.
As late as 1886, Victorian scientists even so held that dragons had once existed but had gone extinct. Not until dinosaurs became firmly established in the public mind did people come across the probable link between ancient fossils and dragon myths. Currently, our best guess is that various cultures all stumbled over dino bones at some signal and translated them into gigantic mythological beasts.
three The Hero'southward Quest
Thanks to the occasional self-indulgent movie adaptation, most of u.s.a. probably have a vague knowledge of the poems of Homer. Considered the earliest examples of Western literature, his Iliad and Odyssey are ballsy myths of tortured heroes fighting their way across oceans and continents in search of metaphorical conservancy—and they appear in virtually-identical grade in almost every culture.
It'due south called the "hero'southward journey," and but about all epic stories throughout history have followed the specific model. Famously, George Lucas deliberately based the starting time Star Wars on information technology, and you lot tin find its influence in The Lord of the Rings, the Oz books, and even Harry Potter. Simply this archetypal myth was around even earlier fancy-pants anthropologists handed it over to lazy scriptwriters.
The Sumerian Ballsy of Gilgamesh, the story of Sinbad the Sailor in the 1,001 Nights, the legend of King Arthur, the tale of the Argonauts . . . all of these and enough more fit the structure of the hero's journeying but like Homer'southward awesome poems above. In fact, about every single civilisation in recorded history has myths that fall into this category. Even Moses's ballsy wanderings in the Bible fit this model. We every bit a species truly are lazy storytellers.
two Explanations
Cultural myths don't just entertain us and record historical events. They too serve to explain why the globe is the manner it is. Hence the prevalence of stories designed to give a reason for some mystery of existence.
In the Bible, we have the Belfry of Babel, which explains why we take unlike languages. God's speech prior to expelling Adam and Eve from Eden is some other example, giving a reason for both the agony of childbirth and why ancient man had to toil all day in the fields. Wander across traditions into the stories of the Aboriginal Greeks and the legend of Prometheus demonstrates why fire is and then valuable, while the story of Pandora gives a reason for the beingness of affliction and suffering.
Start looking for them and you'll detect these explanatory myths scattered across every culture in history. In that location are myths that explain why rhinoceroses have no hairs, why incest is forbidden, and how medicine came into existence. Annihilation you tin can think of has some poetic explanation somewhere. In an unscientific historic period, poetry was often all we had.
one Apocalypse
Everything that begins has an end, and our ancient ancestors knew that every bit just as nosotros exercise. No surprise then that most cultures carry an Stop of Times myth to counter their creation story—a sort of consolation prize for those who won't live to see the actual end (i.e. anybody).
For Christians, this apocalypse is a gigantic epic that plays out over many, many years and involves then many disasters, wars, and calamities that information technology's hard to keep rail. Same with the Norse Ragnarok, which is a collection of disasters and battles that results in the Earth existence drowned and recreated afresh. In Hinduism, it'south another epic boxing followed past a rebooted universe, while Buddhism annihilates the earth in a pyrotechnic fireworks brandish and then amazing it deserves its ain Michael Bay pic.
In other words, most humans throughout history take lived with their own personal vision of the finish of everything, one that makes sense in the context of their lives and cultures. And that'south all these myths actually are: ways for u.s.a. humans to brand sense of the globe we live in, no matter when or where we are. It's just an added bonus that some of them make absolutely awesome stories, as well.
Source: https://listverse.com/2014/01/16/10-universal-myths-of-the-ancient-world/
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